“I am a complete moron”, I whispered under my breath. My lungs slowly filled up to their full capacity. Like any rabbit, I could run as fast as necessary, especially if it meant for my life. And it did.
I was on my way to the big city, ready to make my place in the world. Ready to tell the tales of old legends and hopefully upcoming new ones. Any man in my profession dreams for their songs to be heard, to be sung, to be praised. To be immortalized beyond my lifespan.
But I was stupid to think cheap travel would mean safe travel. I was poor and unsure about what life was like outside of my little bumpkin village. I thought the traveling caravan group would be helpful. Maybe others were and I just got unlucky with this one. A set-up by bandits preying upon the poor. They were quite unlucky too since I was their only patron. Maybe that’s why they took everything I had, even something as little to them as my lute.
I kicked the nearest tree to me, ready to break anything in my path for my own relief. I had the grace to spare the small, broken spear in my hand. It was the only thing I clutched tightly as I fled. It wasn’t the spear’s fault it got into this crazy mess, it was mine and mine alone. No point in making it suffer.
With no idea as to where I was, I searched for a decent place to make an equally decent camp. The trees around me provided some shade against the summer sun. Yet nothing around me could combat against the suffocating humidity. I found one of the trees had lost an entire main branch, splintered diagonally from the trunk. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one suffering. Back home, I had seen a few trees like that after a bad rainstorm.
It looks like a recent wound, I thought, Perhaps two, three days ago. Hasn’t rained since then.
In case of another rainstorm, I checked underneath the broken piece. A sufficient amount of space was left by the fallen piece of nature. No animals, no poisonous plants, maybe some bugs but I couldn’t complain about something like that. Not when I left a situation with my life intact. Dumb luck, my mother always told me I had.
Maybe I was just always dumb, I continued to berate myself.
Grrrrr, my stomach growled to agree with my internal thoughts.
What could I do to find food? I couldn’t pay the forest in crowns to magically give me it’s children for my own sustenance. Nor tips to obtain such. I wasn’t much of a plant guy, but I had wished I was for this moment in my life. Anything in these woods could kill me - fauna, flora, man, woman.
I glanced down at the spear, “But not fish.” Dumb luck indeed, mother.
Content with this plan, I set out away from my ‘camp’ in search of food. I left in the opposite direction in which I came from. At every other tree I made a shin-height ‘X’ mark, making sure I would find my way back. Any other mark could have been covered up by a buck’s own mark. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to combat against a buck with my thin spear. I didn’t have the same aggression as they did to come out on top.
It took longer to find a stream than it did to find a fallen branch. My luck ran in a different direction. I couldn’t help but take in the view of this untamed, raw beauty of a forest. That was the other thing I lacked back home - new sights, new experiences. The woods around my village were all known to me, like the back of my own hand. Yet seeing something new, even being as simple as a forest stream, was exhilarating to me.
The experience of fishing with a half-broken spear wasn’t as fun as perhaps I thought it to be. I hunched over the stream, watching small fish scuttle away. I stabbed the water with hope that I’d skewer a decent sized fish. My timing wasn’t perfect for when they did enter my personal hunting bubble, but I was able to get three small ones. It was better than nothing at all. At least I had a good breakfast that morning.
I happily trotted down my marked path with the soon-to-be-eaten fish wrapped in my tunic. Along the way I collected a small amount of dry sticks, perfect to build a fire with. The twigs and sticks varied in size, some abysmally small, some thicker than the others. As long as they were dry and ready to burn, they were all good for me.
“Home sweet, not home,” I spoke aloud.
Several feet away from the nature-made home, I dug a small hole to keep the fire contained. Fire building became second nature to country bumpkins like myself. Using the elements to our advantage as much as possible. My father was a thick skinned blacksmith that attempted to teach me every survival trick he learned away from home. On the day he believed it was time for me to become a ‘man’, he forced the knowledge of making fires into my head.
“Tinder in the middle, kindle on the out,” He’d repeat.
Just as my old man taught, I took the thin, easy to burn twigs and sticks in the middle. Surrounding the little guys, larger sticks formed a house around them, keeping them safe to burn. The tinder is the core of the burning process to a campfire, but it’s the kindle that’ll allow it to become a grand campfire. I couldn’t cook fish with just the tinder, it wouldn't be hot enough.
I snapped off one of the more dense pieces of the fallen branch. Took my spear and attempted to cut it a part of the way to make it as flat as possible on one side. There were some edges here and there, but I did as much as I could. I carved the inside of it, the supposed-flatten part, in the shape of a pig’s trough going off of the board. With another stick, I whittled it down to a thinner, quill-like shape.
Now for the hard part
I took the thinner stick in the center of the trough I carved and began to rub. This was my preferred method, since I was always a persistent person. The idea of this method was to generate enough heat between the two wooden pieces that it would burn the tinder to later become a fire. Small, medium, large. All it took was time and determination. Both of which I had. But my stomach was still growling, so I went faster than usual.
I had to wait a short while for the fire to grow to its full potential before attempting to cook the fish. Three fish skewered through my spear, I kept the fire at a decent distance away. If I had the tools, I would have preferred to hunt rabbits. They taste much nicer in less-than-desirable conditions. Each fish slowly turned brown from its fins to its gills, making them crispy in seconds.
Once they were done, I dug in to my heart’s content.
Night befell upon me, the soft red and yellows of the content sunset transformed into the darkened purple and blue. Yet I was not without guidance as the moon graced me with its presence. Its star children twinkled in the sky, creating patterns for children to listen about its stories. Though, the stories would stay within the family, teaching lessons only they could learn. When I was a child, my brother would conjure a new story that had only one purpose - to entertain me.
“That’s William the Great Beyond Man,” he once said, “Took the chance to enter into a spiritual state where God could not reach him. He would fiddle with people’s things just to have a laugh at them. But he means no malice, just fun!”
Not all of his stories were good, but they were fun to listen to. I always wondered if he just came up with it on the spot, or if he spent all day thinking up a new one. I loved and admired my elder brother. There were seldom any fights between us two. It was hard to accept that he became a different kind of Great Beyond Man.
A rustle in the bushes, my thoughts pushed back into reality. Another rustle, I stood slowly with the spear in hand. Were the bandits from before coming back? What else could they want with me? They took all that I had. What if -
“Don’t. Move.” A female voice.
“A-alright, um…” I stuttered, “why don’t you come to the fire? It’s quite, uh, c-cold tonight.”
She did as I asked and probably would have without my permission. The first thing I noticed about the owner of the voice was her absolute beauty. Her auburn, curled hair pushed back into a messy bun. Strands of her hair caressed her cheek, barely touching her shoulders. Her eyes pierced into me like daggers, amplified by the fire that separated us. A scowl that never let up. A she-devil that came into my dreams.
The second thing I noticed - with all of her darkened clothing, a sheen of silver light caught my eye. Not only had she unsheathed a sword at our first meeting, but carried multiple others at her back. A knife at her boot and leg. The woman was prepared more so than I could ever be on my best day.
“Wh-wh-what can I do for you, Miss…?” A name. I begged for a name from this woman.
“Why give a name to a dead man?”
Droplets of cold sweat trickled down my forehead to my cheek and beyond. I forced myself to calm with minimal success. Yet I knew that as long as I could convince this woman to be of help somehow, she may let me live. I could be quite the convincing man.
“If I shall die, I wouldn’t mind dying in the hands of a beautiful huntress such as you.” A cheesy line that always worked with the village girls back home.
However, her scowl didn’t lessen at all. It worsened.
“A country boy, eh? Only someone so dumb as them could come up with such petty words.”
Fuck. A woman who hates words. My arch-enemy.
She took a step closer, “After I kill you, I shall take hold of this camp. Saves me the trouble.”
“Woah woah woah! W-we can share it! Yeah! I-I-I don’t mind sleeping on the ground, you can sleep in the nice little tree tent!”
The pupils of her fiery eyes dilated, her head swung to the side. With her free hand, she pushed back the fallen strands behind her ears. Then I saw it. A dark red streak fell from the middle of her neck. That free hand of hers stayed fixed on her side, pressed down.
“You’re hurt”.
“Shut up,” the Huntress growled through her teeth, “someone’s here”. The whisper that escaped her lips almost didn’t reach my ears. The fire’s crackles and pops filled the leftover silence between us. I attempted to listen the same as she did, but my attention was fixated on her wounds. My eyes overtook the other senses of my body.
The Huntress swung her head back towards me, towards the fire. “The fire! They’re coming -”
Two battle-cried men came out of the shadows, swords drawn. One ran to her and the other ran to me. She deflected one man’s swing only to return one of her own. I could not see the possible wound on the man, but the droplets of blood on her sword told me enough. The other brandished his sword at me with a wicked grin on his face.
“Oi! Is ‘dat you, little birdie?” He recognized me and I him. More so, I recognized the object strung on his back. My lute! My pupils dilated at the sight of its dark neck. I felt as if I could hear its strings pluck themselves, begging for me to rescue them. All I had to do was muster some courage for its sake.
“Yeah, ‘dats right,” I imitated him, “betcha you tink imma let you ‘av it? Well, no fucking way.”
I threw the broken spear at him like an assassin of yore would with a knife. It distracted him to give me enough time to run to the Huntress, preoccupied with the other bandit. If she were a horse, she would have kicked my head in. Hastily, I unsheathed a thinner blade than the one she had in her hand. Perhaps a backup, should something have happened to her preferred sword. Beside me, the Huntress’ snarl reached my ears. I gave it no attention.
My back positioned against hers, the blade in my hand raised, we danced. We danced a warrior’s waltz - pivoting, advancing, lunging - our feet danced to a tune only we knew. Her attacks were more aggressive as she used her strength and speed to not give her opponent a moment’s reprieve. She was more prone to use the true edge of the sword. My movements were the antithesis of hers. With the thin blade, I used only my rabbit speed to retreat, guard and perform empty fades. I found the openings that my opponent could not hide with the blade’s false edge.
The dance brought back beautiful memories of my childhood. After my chores were done, for hours my father would force my brother and I to do our footwork exercises. Some days were dedicated to sparring, some days were dedicated to technique. But all days were given footwork the attention it desired. His days in the military shaped my brother’s desire to find the same.
To end my battle, I bashed the back of the bandit’s head with the pommel of the blade. He fell to the ground in a large thud face first. Yet the Huntress did not spare her enemy for he was dead, cut all over in a tarn of his own blood. She sat away from him, unfazed by what she had done. Then again, she was ready to take my life as well. This woman was used to such a bloody life. The same kind I had spent so much time and effort to avoid.
I grabbed the bottom of the living man’s tunic and ripped as much as I could. He was too big for me to roll over on my own. The tunic was shredded into strips and I attempted to approach the fierce swordswoman.
“You’re hurt,” I reiterated. She grumbled, no longer interested in the end of my life. “Show me.”
She surprised me by doing as I asked. Either she was too tired to fight me or she was ready to meet the Maker. With her dark brown tunic lifted, I could find the gash that caused her pain. For her to fight and pretend it didn’t bother her amazed me. For her to act so tough throughout it all. It was amazing.
I began the process of cleaning and taking care of her wound, my gentle words given to her as a gift. “You’re quite amazing, you know.”
“I am nothing.”
“Heh, then you don’t see your true worth.”
“... What do I owe you for this service?” she blatantly ignored my sweet, yet truthful, words.
After doing all that I could for her wound, I stood to walk back toward the man who took my lute. It was a smaller thing, made of darker wood in the hands of someone I loved dearly. I cut the string the bandit used to carry it, reattached it , and strung it on me. Where it always belonged. With the right amount of force, the lute went from my back to my front, my hands at the ready to gentle pluck at its strings. The sound it made was just as perfect as the day it was born.
“You’ve already paid me well enough.”
Confused about the sentimentality of my lute, the Huntress stood and gathered herself. “Keep the sword. But you shouldn’t stay here, others will find their friends.”
“Alrighty!” I swung the lute back to my back and trotted to her side like a hoppily child. “So, where are we going?”
Another scowl. I was starting to expect those kinds of sounds from her, “You can’t be serious. I had the intent to kill you.”
“Yeah. And now you don’t. So I’m coming along with you.”
She sighed heavily, “You’re some kind of moron, aren’t you?”
With a large triumphant grin, I swung the lute to my hand to fiddle with the strings to create a joyful tune, “Yes. A complete one.”