The Hunter

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"I appreciate the offer, Rain, but I'm fine."

Rain had led me to the hut of a hunter whose property looked like someone had dumped the contents of three different storage sheds onto it, then gave up on putting everything back halfway through. A half-skinned deer hung from a wooden frame beside his hut, and a collection of overflowing baskets, broken traps, tools, and other miscellaneous supplies sat scattered around him like the aftermath of a small storm.

Somewhere within all of it stood a man. His short, curly black hair was already matted with grease and sweat, and his lightly tanned skin was covered in dirt and grime. The sharp angles of his face were stiff with concentration as he worked a knife along the edge of a hide, with several more waiting in piles on either side of him.

He was clearly not fine. It looked as though this guy was on the losing side of a war against half of all of the supplies in the entire village!

"Bone here likes to keep himself busy," Rain explained, turning to me.

I blinked, trying to take in the sheer amount of work that surrounded him, "I think this goes beyond just busy..."

Bone turned to me, his black eyes shooting daggers as he took a step forward.

"I'm fine !" he growled before turning his attention back to the hide in his hands, "I've got it handled."

"Listen," Rain sighed, crossing his arms, "You've been drowning in work for days now. Thorn wants to help. Why not share your load and put him to work?"

" Thorn wants to help? The last time Thorn ' helped ', half of my meat stores went missing."

"Well, you have to do something . These hides and that deer carcass will take you at least until the end of today to complete, and tomorrow there will be more. How do you expect to make any sort of progress at this rate?"

Bone stopped, his eyes shifting between Rain and me for several seconds before he finally dropped his shoulders.

"You're sure he can be trusted with this?"

Rain nodded, "I am."

There was another silence before Bone eventually sighed through his nose and set the hide in his hands aside.

"Fine," he said, before directing a finger towards me, "You, come with me."

I nodded as I left Rain's side and followed Bone through his mess and around the edge of his hut to a separate building sitting behind it. The building was a storage den that looked like the village had just given up on it. Shelves lay collapsed in broken heaps against the walls, scattering their contents across the floor. Baskets, pelts, tools, and supplies lay strewn about, like people had picked up items and dropped them back off without taking any sort of care to return them to their proper place.

It was overwhelming to look at, and I knew that if I was getting overwhelmed just from looking at it, Bone had to be suffocating in it.

"You can start here," he said as I stepped in through the doorway, "Clean this place up so that it's at least somewhat organized. If you can manage to fix the shelves, that should make this a lot easier."

"I'll see what I can do," I stated, giving him a nod.

"And Thorn?"

"Yes?"

Bone's eyes narrowed as he leaned in closer to me.

"This will be your final chance. Don't mess this up."

With that, Bone turned and left, leaving me alone with the mess in the storage den.

I immediately began looking around, trying to break the space up into more manageable pieces. I decided to start by clearing everything away from the shelves. There was no sense in trying to put them back together if I was always climbing over baskets and piles of hide every time I moved. I dragged everything to the center of the den, dividing it up into rough groups as I went - tools in one pile, hides and pelts in another, baskets and buckets in another, and anything that I couldn't identify was given its own spot near the doorway.

The going was slow, at first. Dust, dried grass, and clumps of dirt covered most of the floor, and there was more than one instance where I had to stop to untangle a length of rope or leather from something it had no business being wrapped around. By the time I finally had enough room to actually work, my hands were already filthy and a thin layer of sweat had started to form beneath my tunic.

Even so, the den was already looking better.

Moving over to the nearest shelf, I crouched down and gave one of the loose planks a careful tug. The wood itself was still solid, despite the way it had started to bow towards the middle. That was good. The real problem seemed to be in the bindings that were being used to hold the joints together. Some had stretched so much over time that any notable amount of weight caused the joints to shift, while a few others had already snapped completely.

Back at home, Grandpa probably would have told me to just tear the whole thing down and rebuild it again properly. Without any nails, screws, or even a proper toolbox, though, I was going to have to settle for working with what I had.

In one of the baskets, I found several lengths of spare cord that I could make do with. It took some experimenting, but I eventually managed to pull the frame back into shape and bind the first joint tightly enough to keep it from wobbling. From there, I moved onto the next joint, and then another, making sure to reinforce each corner before I tested the shelf with my weight. There was one bowed plank that was too far gone to trust with anything heavy, so I swapped it with a sturdier one from one of the upper tiers. It wasn't pretty, but by the time I stood back up, the shelf was stable again.

"Alright, now we're getting somewhere," I said to myself, a small smile tugging at the corners of my mouth as I moved on to the second shelf.

Somewhere along the way, the thought occurred to me.

Bone had only told me to clean the place up and make it somewhat organized. Technically, as long as there was room to walk into the den and everything had been picked up off of the floor, I would have done exactly what he had asked of me. I could have stopped there...

But after the way he had looked at me outside, "somewhat" didn't feel good enough.

Rain had put his word on the line for me, and Bone had decided to give me a chance when he clearly hadn't wanted to. I wasn't about to hand either of them another reason to regret it.

So I kept going.

Once every shelf was standing again, I turned my attention back to the supplies. The things I figured Bone would need most often - tools, rope, empty baskets - were placed closest to the entrance where they could be quickly grabbed without him having to dig through everything else. Hides and pelts were stacked together farther back instead of being shoved wherever there happened to be room. I collected the smaller supplies into baskets and lined them along the lower shelves, making sure their contents were visible without needing to be pulled apart again.

Finally, I swept the floor as best as I could with an old bundle of twigs I'd found in one of the corners, pushing the dirt, grass, and dust back outside where it belonged.

By the time I was done, the supply den hardly looked like the same place.

It still wasn't perfect, by any means. Some of the shelves were going to need to be replaced sooner rather than later, and there were still a few things sitting against one of the walls that I hadn't figured out what to do with. But there was a clear path from the entrance to the back of the den now. Everything had a place, and there was still plenty of room left for whatever needed to be brought in next.

I planted my hands on my hips and looked around.

For the first time since I'd arrived in this world, I had found something that I was able to understand completely. A messy shed was a messy shed. Whether it was sitting behind a cabin in Alaska or behind a hunter's hut in a village of therians, it didn't matter. I knew how to fix one of those.

Now I just hoped Bone thought so, too.

My eyes drifted towards the doorway as I heard a set of footsteps approach. Bone stepped into the den, now looking dirtier and more tired than he had earlier this morning.

"Alright, Thorn," he sighed, wiping the sweat from his brow, "Let me see what-"

Bone's words caught in his throat, his eyes going wide as they gazed around the room.

"What the--? You... actually managed to fix the shelves?"

I nodded, "Yup! It wasn't easy, but they'll hold, for now."

Bone continued to look around the den, completely awestruck as his eyes lingered on the shelves and neatly stacked supplies.

Slowly, he turned to me, something shifting in his gaze, "What did you take?"

"Nothing..."

My body stiffened as Bone grabbed me roughly by the front of my furs, pulling me closer to him. He searched me from head to toe, looking for any signs I might have pocketed something. My hands instinctively started to come up, but I forced them back down to rest against my sides. Clearly, this was something he felt like he needed to do, if only to put his own mind at ease.

"Open!" he ordered as he stepped back in front of me.

I raised a brow at him in confusion, "Open?"

"Your mouth, stupid."

Despite my utter confusion, I did as he told me. Bone leaned forward, and drew a few deep breaths in through his nose. It was only then that I recalled what he had said about Thorn earlier. The last time he'd trusted him with something, Thorn had stolen food from him. This time, Bone wasn't taking any chances.

"You haven't eaten since this morning," he finally stated, releasing his grip, "Small meal."

I nodded in confirmation, "Some dried meat from the healer's den. Rain offered it to me."

Bone returned my nod, "You must be hungry... Come eat."

My stomach twisted as I followed Bone out of the storage den and around the side of his hut.

It was only then that I noticed the smell.

Smoke drifted lazily from a small fire burning a short distance from the doorway, carrying with it the rich scent of fish and rendered fat. Several heads of salmon had been skewered onto sticks and propped up over the flames, their red and green scales darkening as the skin crackled from the heat.

My stomach twisted even more as I settled onto the ground across from Bone, sitting close enough so the fire would keep the winter cold at bay.

Bone crouched down beside the pit and reached for one of the sticks, turning it so that the other side of the fish was facing the heat.

For a little while, neither of us said anything. That was fine by me. After spending most of the morning running around through the woods and wrestling shelves back together, the chance to actually sit down and rest for a while was almost as welcome as the food itself. My shoulders ached, my arms felt heavy, and the grime covering my hands had worked its way so deep into the creases of my skin that I doubted a quick wash was going to do much for them.

Bone didn't look much better. If anything, he looked worse. Apparently, while I'd been working on the storage den, he had been hard at work chipping away at the mess in front of his hut. There were fewer hides piled beside the wooden frame now, and the deer carcass had been stripped down considerably since I'd last seen it.

Pulling one of the skewers away from the fire, Bone took a fish off and inspected it for a brief moment before he passed it over to me.

"Here," he said with a grunt.

"Thanks," I responded, trying not to cringe, all the while wondering if I had really just seen what I thought I saw.

This guy had just pulled a freshly cooked sockeye off of a fire and handled it with his bare hands!

I was more cautious, taking the fish carefully in my hands while guarding my skin with my sleeves. Watching from the side, I sat back and observed as Bone selected a fish for himself. Then, picking up a handful of snow, he rubbed it over the fish until the steam faded away from it, and took a large bite from its back.

Bone looked up at me, noticing my stare.

"What? I thought you were hungry?"

My stomach twisted again as I looked down at the fish resting in my hands, and I resolved myself with a quiet sigh.

When in Rome, right?

I picked up a fistful of snow and quickly brushed it over the scales of the salmon before I leaned in and took a hesitant bite. My teeth tore through the thing's back with a sharp crunching sound that made me flinch.

Oddly enough, however, I didn't hate it. Normally, finding a pinbone in my fillet would have been enough to put me off. Now, though, the bones broke apart between bites with ease. The texture paired well with the fish's scales and flesh, and after two days of nothing but dried meat and stew from the healer's den, it might as well have been the best meal I'd had in weeks.

"So you like red fish..." Bone piped up.

I swallowed, "Yeah. A lot."

Bone let out a quiet snort through his nose, "So did Thorn."

I nearly choked. Although, I can't say I was all too surprised.

Of course Thorn did - just another little piece of that guy that somehow managed to perfectly align itself with me.

Bone's eyes narrowed as he continued to stare at me from across the fire.

"Do you find that strange?" he asked.

I shrugged, "A little bit."

"Why?"

I hesitated. Translating my thoughts into words felt harder than it should have.

"I guess I expected everything about that guy to be completely different from me, is all."

"You are different from him," Bone stated firmly, lifting his head, "I don't know what you are, and I don't know where Thorn went or why you're walking around in his skin. But I do know that you're not him."

I hadn't expected to hear those words come from Bone, not after how he had treated me earlier when I had arrived at his hut with Rain.

"What gave it away?" I asked.

Bone tore another piece of fish away with his teeth before pointing the sorry-looking remains of the salmon in the direction of the storage den.

"Thorn wouldn't have done that."

I tossed a glance over towards the building, "But he could have, couldn't he?"

"No, Thorn would have cleared enough space to make it looked like he had worked. Then he would have spent the rest of the day complaining that I gave him too much work to do."

I couldn't help but smile a little, "That bad, huh?"

"No. Worse." Bone's expression darkened, "He worked hard when he wanted something. Harder than most others, even, sometimes. The real problem was getting him to care when there wasn't anything in it for him in return."

I frowned a little at that. That sounded a bit different from some of the other things I'd heard about Thorn since I'd arrived at the tribe. Not better, necessarily. Just more complicated.

"So he wasn't always lazy?" I asked, taking another bite of salmon.

"No," Bone replied, "Thorn could hunt. He could fight, too, when he found a way to get away with it. He was strong... He just..."

His words trailed off as he stared into the fire.

"What?" I pressed.

Bone's jaw tightened.

"He stopped trying. It was little things, at first. He'd make a mistake or do something stupid and swear it would never happen again. Then he'd do it again, and again, until eventually he stopped apologizing for it."

The irritation remained in Bone's tone as he spoke, but there was something else lying underneath it now. Something tired, maybe even disappointed.

"Rain did say that people gave him chances," I mentioned, staring down at the salmon in my hands, "Did you?"

Bone finally looked back up at me, "Too many."

That explained the storage den, then - why Bone had grabbed me without the slightest bit of hesitation. He wasn't suspicious because I was some stranger that he disliked, but because Thorn was someone he had trusted once before. And Thorn had made him regret it by stealing from him.

"I understand," I said quietly.

Bone scoffed, "No, you don't. You've barely been here two days. You have Thorn's face. You don't have any of his memories. You don't understand anything."

His words were harsh, but there wasn't much anger behind them.

I took another bite of my salmon and nodded.

"You're right," I admitted, "I don't understand what he did to you, or Rain, or anyone else here... But I can understand why you didn't want me near your things."

That seemed to surprise him. Bone watched me carefully for a moment before he turned away and let out another low snort. I was beginning to think that little grunt of his was his answer whenever he didn't know what to say.

The two of us continued eating, letting the silence settle in between us. It felt different this time, though. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but it was less hostile now.

After another minute, Bone gave a nod toward my half-eaten fish.

"You really do like red fish."

I smiled, "Yeah. My grandpa and I used to catch these all the time back home."

"Your grandfather hunts?"

"Hunts, fishes, traps. Pretty much anything that puts food on the table."

Bone's attention sharpened, "Do you hunt?"

"A little. Small game, mostly. Rabbits, grouse... I've hunted deer and caribou a few of times, though."

Bone studied me with considerably more interest now.

"Do you know how to dress an animal?" he asked.

I nodded, "Yeah."

"Know how to skin one?"

"Yeah."

"How to preserve meat?"

"I've helped..."

Bone stared at me, and I stared back. We both must have been thinking the same thing as our eyes shifted over to the half-skinned deer that was still hanging beside the hut.

I let out a laugh.

Bone's brow furrowed, "What?"

"It's nothing," I said, as I finished off the last of my fish, "But I think I know what I'll be doing tomorrow." 154Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG3QXnvuVqr

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