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I awoke early, and it was raining. King had made a sufficient roof so that it did not come through the ceiling onto us, but I found that the ground was cold, the wet from the outside world seeming to linger inside to us. He was curled around me, though, the massive spoon to my smaller body, and we were on our side. He kept me warm, though he slept so quiet and still that I sometimes wondered if he actually was even sleeping. There was no way of knowing. As I blinked my eyes and stared out into the foggy wilderness through the open door I immediately recalled what he had told me the night before, the expectations he had for me to be able to visit town again.

I'd never been a hunter. Dad never had interest in teaching me all the ways to "be a man", he was barely capable of doing those things himself. I grew up largely sheltered from the brutal reality of the outside world. That's not to say I grew up pampered, far from it. But, I certainly had never learned the ways of the wild as I probably should have. That's partially why I'd come out to the woods in the first place. I felt like something was missing inside me, survival skills and strength. I felt so weak, so incapable of standing on my own. I told myself I could hunt if I had to, but, now that I knew it was expected of me I suddenly had to face myself and consider whether or not I could kill something. I told myself I could maybe shoot a creature, but we had no guns. We had no weapons. I was sure King was going to expect me to kill it with my bare hands.

I would slowly crawl from him and stand up, looking back. He was lying still, motionless save for his breathing. I guessed he was asleep, or he wanted me to think he was. I needed to pee, and quite frankly I needed a bath as well, so I decided to wander out into the woods in the rain, out to the creek. The rain was a steady, all-day rain. Not torrential, no, rather slower. Consistent. It had already wet my fur by the time I reached the creek, even with tree coverage, and I waded into the water up to my waist and stood there. It was cold, but I'd gotten used to it by now. When you spend long enough away from the comforts of civilization, you begin to adapt to do without them. Where I'd trembled the first few nights I was outside, nowadays I found myself unaware of the cold until it really set in, at night or after King fed off me.

Here, though, I felt like nothing. I barely felt the water around me. I felt as if I existed in a dimension of my own, as King had, and that the world around me was simply something I could witness but not directly contact. I didn't know why I felt the way I did that morning. Outside of the conversation the night before, the day before had been a fairly decent one. King and I felt like we were doing fairly well together, I just simply needed to prove my dedication to our relationship for his comfort. I had no reason to feel so detached, so lost, I was simply being spoiled. I sank to my knees in the water and my head fell below the surface. I sat there, holding my breath, letting the current pull my hair and ears forward with it. There was a part of me that hoped I'd rise up and find the sky blue again, or to surface in an entirely different place where King was with me but my life was otherwise back to normal. I wanted to be sitting in a truck bed in a gas station parking lot, my favorite people sitting there with me as we socialized in the sunlight, God's grace shining down on us in a world where everything was alright and no one hurt anyone else. That was not the world I surfaced in, though, and I rose up from the creek water with my head back as I sat there, letting the rain pour down on my face.

Life was exactly what it was, and nothing could wash that off of me. I had to stop being so spoiled and always wanting sunlight and love and attention. I had to be stronger, to be comfortable with these dreary days, to be able to face the brutality of the woods and the world and myself, otherwise I'd spend forever sitting in creeks wishing someone or something would take me away from it all. I felt so pathetic. I felt certain I was going to disappoint King when left to hunt for myself, and he was going to hate me. I was going to fail him like I'd failed Buck, and the men before him, being the usual broken-winged fragile birdboned thing I was. I had to do this right. I had to prove to him how much I loved him, and how strong I was.

"You are going to get sick, soaking yourself in the rain like this. Your kind cannot do that as we can."

King was at the water's edge, and I opened my eyes to look over to him.

"I'll be fine."

"You likely won't. You'll come inside and dry off, and we will discuss what we're going to do today."

"Give me a minute, I'm thinking."

"You can think outside the water" he said, approaching me. I curled up and sank below the surface again, holding my breath and balling up. This threw off my center of gravity, and I found the water much more capable of pushing me around than before. How weak I was.

I felt the huge hand grab ahold of the scruff of my neck and jerk my up rather suddenly, forcefully, yanking me to a limp-legged standing as it held me upright. I was indeed soaked in creek water, admittedly starting to feel the cold a bit more than before I'd fully submerged.

"You're acting out" he'd fuss, and I looked away from him. I was, I guess, but I didn't want to admit that.

"I'm upset" I'd fuss back.

King would drag me from the water, away from the creek and back up to the house, where he would drop me inside and kneel just inside the doorway, blocking my exit. I wanted to pretend to make a run for it, but I didn't want to have to commit to it if I actually made it past him. I really didn't want to run out into the woods again, I just wanted him to think I would.

"Why are you upset?" he'd ask.

"I'm gonna fuck this up," I confessed, looking down at my lap. I was so cold now. I don't know what I was thinking earlier when I said I barely felt cold anymore, that was complete bullshit. I was very cold at this moment.

"What?"

"My hunt. I'm going to fail and you're gonna doubt my commitment."

"Why do you feel that way?"

"Because that's what I do. I always let people down when they have expectations for me. Things get to where they're going good and then something happens where I totally crash and burn and fail someone. I--"

"Hush" he interrupted.

"But, I do! I--"

"I said to hush. You're speaking nonsense."

King went from kneeling to sitting, and crossed his arms. He always did that when he was aggravated with me, it was one of the most anthro things he did.

"You are acting spoiled again. You're wanting me to soothe you and assure you that you can do it."

"No, I--" my brow furrowed up in frustration, and he interrupted me again.

"Yes, you are. You are crying out for soothing, and I cannot soothe you. If you want to prove yourself, you have to do it. I cannot tell you that you're capable. All I can do is tell you when you will be tested."

"And when will that be?" I asked with a heaping amount of attitude in my voice.

"Today."

"Today!?" I barked out in protest.

"Today. I will leave here and you will be alone. You have no food. You will be alone until you either succeed in hunting, or you leave for your old way of living. I will give you tools, and then I will be gone. When it is done, if it is done, I will return."

"King, I--"

He interrupted me by leaving the shelter, heading out to a nearby tree, and snatching up several things that seemed to have been laying under a pile of leaves. He threw them at my feet, and stood outside the shelter in the rain. A long piece of rope, and a sharp-pointed rock. That was all.

"Your best options are larger beasts, a coyote or a deer. You lack the tools to catch something smaller and faster, and you lack the strength for an anthro or a bear. Whatever you hunt, you will kill, and we will eat it."

His head tilted down, and I could feel he was staring directly at me. There was something about his energy, I could always tell when he was looking me in the eyes. The rain had picked up.

"If you love me, you love the wild. If you hate the wild, you hate me, and if you cannot handle the wild then I cannot be with you. I will be too intense for you, and you will run away."

"But, aren't you doing just that? Running away from me?" I'd ask.

"That is up to you. I love you, Nico. Show me you love me too."

He turned abruptly and bounded off on all fours, and within seconds I heard him gallop through the creek, gone. There was no way I would find him, even if I tried. He really had left. I had wanted so badly to have another day or two to spend with him and prepare myself for this event. The rain had only intensified, and he'd just fussed at me for being out in it. Now, I was expected to trudge right back out into the weather, into the mud, and find and kill something with only rope and rock. He was right about the food, though, we'd picked at my rations for the past few weeks and I'd run out of things I'd brought from town.

What was I even expected to do with these? I had never hunted before, but I was fairly sure it rarely involved rope, if ever. Still, I knew that I not only had to figure this out to prove myself to King, but for my own survival. I truly was out of food, and I wasn't even sure if I could find my way back to the truck in this rain, even if I wanted to. I was still so cold, though, I hadn't even had time to fully dry off before he left. I had no track of time, or how much daylight I had, and every day I postponed hunting would make it harder and harder to successfully do so. I wished at that moment that I could've just eaten some worms and made him happy.

I would let some time pass as I pondered on it, and luckily the rain started to let up a bit. It was still consistent, but not as heavy as it was that morning. I decided to head out into the woods, nude, carrying the rock with the rope tied like a sash around my midsection. I wandered about in the woods for a while, trying to look around at the scenery for anything that could inspire what to do with that damned rope, only to find myself wandering further and further into the wilderness. I didn't even consider it, at the time, but I was straying farther from home than I ever had before, and I was entirely alone this time. Still, at that moment I was focused on figuring something out, and the rain had temporarily stopped so I felt confident I would solve King's puzzle.

It was probably about midday when I started to make my way down a hill, seeing running water at the bottom and realizing that that must've been the same creek that had run through the woods close to home. I had lost track of where it was earlier, and seeing that brought me a sense of familiarity that filled me with a bit of confidence. There was a spot right at the water's edge where a lot of mud was present, and as I approached I saw tracks. Deer tracks, among them, but a lot of different animals. I realized that was the best place for me to try to set up a trap, but I still had no idea WHAT that trap should be. My decision determined, though, whether I got to eat any time soon, and whether I got to ever see King again. I drew close to the trees and looked them over, contemplating what I could do.

The truth was, I had no idea how to figure this out. I had no idea what sort of trap to set, or even how a trap worked. King had thrown me out into this wilderness expecting me to be able to do something I'd never even fathomed before, and here I stood at the creek with rope and rock and no clue how to make use of them. I'd considered making a trip wire, simply tripping an animal, and waiting in a tree to drop on it. But, that felt comical. I didn't have any faith in it. I didn't have enough rope to form any sort of net. I spent hours contemplating this, analyzing everything I could possibly do, and I was coming up empty. The rain had returned somewhat, and I was getting hungry.

Nightfall came eventually, and I found myself still in the same place, alone in the wild, setting up the rope and trying idea after idea for some sort of trap I could set with it that seemed logically possible and not entirely stupid. Everything felt useless, though, and everything did indeed feel stupid. I felt like a child trying to drive a car. All the tools were right in front of me, but I had no idea how to utilize them. I was handed the ability to do something and I was entirely useless. At this point, my stomach was growling loudly, and I'd gone the entire day without eating. I figured it was best to wander back to the shelter and see if maybe there was a can of food left, but as I turned around I realized I was in the darkness, totally unaware of my surroundings. All I knew was that I was at the creek, but I had no idea which direction to follow back home. I was lost.

Fear would've set in, normally, but I had faith that King would come back if I could figure this out. All I had to do was stay up, in the darkness, and think. I did just that. I sat, in the mud, looking at the forest around me, and how I could utilize the trees and set up the rope. Through the night, I sat, thinking, looking, and through the night I tried to think if I had ever seen anything of use. Nothing came to me, and eventually dawn would come. I was starving, and I felt as though I'd come up with an idea. It was preposterous, but it was the best I could imagine.

I had crawled in the creek, and slathered myself in mud to cover my scent. Then, I fashioned the rope into a slipknot, and dug several holes in the ground in which I stuck sticks, using two of them hold the rope along with one branch from the nearby tree to form a triangle. The sticks in the dirt held firm enough to hold the rope open, but they would easily dislodge when the rope was pulled. I had set a perfect trap, with the end of the rope in my hand to be pulled when a creature walked through it. The noose would tighten, most likely around the abdomen, and I would have my prey lassoed. From there, I just had to finish the job. My trap was set, and I laid down on my belly beside the creek, in the soft earth right before the grassline. I covered myself partially in mud to act as cover for my striking red fur, and I waited.

I laid in this spot for two more days.

I soiled myself numerous times, and as the rain would come it would cause the water to rise, sometimes leaving me partially submerged. But, I still laid there, unmoving, barely sleeping at all. Sometimes I would nod off, but the cold of the creek water would wake me. It was the night of the third night when I heard footsteps. Large footsteps, like hooves. Several deer were making their way down to the creek.

The does came first, and began to drink at the water's edge. None of them walked through the rope, though, but eventually he came. A buck, six or so points on his antlers. He was meandering around them, and I assumed he intended to mate. He was hanging close to them, and as they relaxed there drinking he stayed close by. He was close to the rope, though. He was the only one with the potential to cross it, and I found myself holding my breath as they filled themselves on water. It was beautiful, seeing nature so close, hearing their throats gulping and seeing their delicate bodies enjoying themselves in the peaceful quiet of this misty night. I could smell them, the stink of wild animal on all of them--especially him. There were probably five does, and they all took their time at the creek before some of them began to cross. One by one, they passed through the water completely unaware I was only a few feet away from them. Then, he came. Right through the net.

His head passed through the triangle, and just as his first leg was about to step over it I yanked it down to me, pulling free the two bottom twigs as the rope slipped off the upper branch, tightening the noose around his neck. He would begin to pull back, but I was just lucky enough to snag it closed around his head, before his antlers. Had it been a doe, she would've broken free, but it was his prominant display of masculinity that sealed his fate. He did the extra work of tightening the noose as he struggled to pull away from me, the females scattering to the woods as I rose out of the mud, onto my knees, pulling back against him. He was strong, muscular, and I was fatigued and delirious, but his active effort of freeing himself served to my advantage as he started to choke himself with the rope. I was pulled forward, off my knees, onto my belly, but I managed to wrap my end of rope around my arm several times with the grip still in my hand to prevent me from losing my hold on him.

There was something in me that activated in this struggle, some feral, wild desire to live. I could feel my heart pounding in my head, my body was abruptly incredibly hot. I would dig my elbows into the dirt and rise up, using my weight to fall back and yank back the rope with me. The buck would stumble forward several steps, finding the mud at the creek's edge and slipping, losing his balance and toppling forward, almost falling facefirst into the water. At this moment I rose to my feet and lunged at him, throwing my weight against his side and tossing him to the dirt where he began to thrash around wildly. The antlers were my biggest threat, and I rolled onto my side with my legs wrapped around his neck as I grabbed ahold of them and attempted to hold him in control with them. He would wrestle against me, and I could feel him overpowering my weakened body. His head would crane suddenly and an antler would puncture me in the shoulder, almost goring open my upper right arm. I felt it immediately burn with pain, the blood running freely down my body as I lost control of his antlers and he attempted to rise again.

He would drag me forward a few feet, into the water, as I continued to struggle against his raw power and his equally desperate will to survive. I saw it in his eyes, they were wide and reflective, radiating peril. He made horrible, raspy cries for help through that strangled throat as he continued to choke himself, and I found myself beginning to scream back as well, crying out for him to give up, and just crying out at nothing. He pulled me several more feet and I was worried he was going to begin dragging me as I had firmly wrapped the rope around my arm, but just as I felt as if he was going to take control of me, I would a young tree to hook one of my arms around, yanking my body close to it and rising up so that my torso was slammed against the tree just as he had begun to run away with me.

I curved my arm around the tree and grabbed ahold of my forearm with my other hand, leaning back and using the tree as my bracing poing to prevent him from dragging me further. His force, though, made it feel as if he was going to snap my arm apart, and as I tugged back against him I would manage to get one moment of stumbling from him that allowed me to pull it around to my side of the tree. I held my arm close to my chest and struggled back against him, pulling him closer and coiling more rope around my arm, trying to reel him in. He was stumbling more, now, and I began to wonder if I had strangled him to a point of weakness. I let him get a bit of rope back on his side and suddenly yanked my body back, causing him to stumble forward and scrape his antlers against the trees. I would crawl around the tree several times and cause the rope that connected us to wrap around it, and then begin to pull, dragging him around the tree and further asphyxiating him as he began to lose his balance more and more often. At this point, I was screaming louder than him, and my throat was harsh as I cursed for him to die already.

He continued to fight, yanking his head back over and over again and causing himself to cough, rubbing raw rash on his neck in the process. Circling around the tree had given me the advantage, as the tree was now taking the brunt of his force. It also brought us closer together, and I would circle it a few more times when he would struggle. I managed to wrap the rope several times around the trunk. We were close, now, and it gave me the opportunity to once again seize him by the antlers. I grabbed him and threw his head against the tree, attempting to bash it several times but failed, as he struggled far too hard to guide his head in the way I wanted. I kept a firm hand on his antlers, though, and we had a moment where we were face to face. I could see the fear and desperation in his eyes, and I'm sure he could see it in mine as well. We were both in the most wild state a living creature could be in: the fight-or-flight, the pure adrenaline pumping deranged state that equalizes all living things. We were not an anthro and feral fighting for our survival, no, we were both wild animals. We were both reduced to the most primitive brain, the savage state.

I continued to struggle to slam his head against the tree, and finally would succeed. He was losing strength, but so was I. His head connected with the tree hard, though, and dazed him, allowing me to successfully bash him several more times against the trunk as he began to bleed. His eye was squinting, and I presumed I'd gouged it against the bark. His fight was leaving him fast, and after several more successful hits of his head against the tree trunk I found he was losing his balance. I was getting tired, though, heaving with exhaustion, and as I held his antlers I would rise up to my knees and shove his head downward, slamming his snout into the ground. His body staggered with it, and I reared up and swung his head downward several more times, brutalizing him against the forest floor. His face was reddening with every hit, and I could see several of his teeth were dislocated and only partially connected now. I was sobbing, screaming out for him to die, begging him. Please. Please give up. I want to stop. I was losing the will to do this, and as I brought him up for the next beating I could see he was looking at me. His eyes, they were no longer wild with the desire to live. They were fearful, confused. He looked at me as if he didn't understand what he'd done wrong, thick mucusy blood drooling from his mouth. I screamed in his face, spit flying from my moaning muzzle as I cursed at him.

"GODDAMN YOU! DON'T YOU SEE!?" I screamed until a pitch of my voice cracked.

"I NEED TO DO THIS! I HAVE TO DO THIS FOR HIM!"

My body was suddenly overcome with an intense sobbing that wracked it in a full-body shake. My head fell forward and I found my forehead resting against this concussed creature, my cries so loud and so intense they echoed in the forest, shrill like a chorus of cats all fighting in the night. I wailed out, begging him to please surrender, but he just continued to look at me. His eyes were domesticated now, defeated, weak. They no longer were pulled open, but rather looked sorrowful, as if he knew that there was no way out of his situation. Love had lead him into the jaws of death, and the forest had wrapped it's noose around his neck and beaten him broken and bloodied. He had cast aside his safety to follow his desires, and he was now facing the consequences of that curiosity.

I could not pull him to the earth again, I did not have it in me. My body was crying so hard I was heaving, hacking up phlegm and making myself hoarse. He gave only weak pulls back now, pulls that took no effort to overpower even in my hysterical state. One of his teeth would fall from his mouth, and I saw it hit the ground, connected momentarily by a string of that thick biley blood. His breathing was loud and ragged, and as he tugged a few more times I could feel his strength leaving him. I didn't know if I had successfully damaged him to the point of weakness or just tired him out, but I could feel his strength starting to fade. In that time of weakness, I unraveled the rope from my arm and knotted it around the tree, hitching him there as I scooted away, trying to collect myself. He just looked at me, confused, bleeding. He was breathing so loudly, it sounded as if he was whimpering. I couldn't bear to hear it.

My hands would grope around in the dark and find a stone, a large stone that required my fingers to be splayed out to grasp it. His breathing was so loud, his wailing, his begging to be freed. I cried for him to please stop, though he denied me the peace. His wailing felt as if it was in my own body, echoing outwards. I felt as if I was drowning in it, his pleas to be spared. I couldn't bear it. I struck him with the rock and he would thrash about, falling to his side and bleeding severely from the side of his head. I had fully blinded his other eye, and I reared back and struck him again, and again, and again. His wailing was loud but my screaming, my howling out into the unforgiving forest, was louder. I begged for God to let him rest as I struck him again, feeling the shape of his skull surrender to the stone. His body thrashed about violently, but after he was struck once more the struggle ceased. His wailing ceased, but mine only rose. I struck him repeatedly, connecting stone with splintering bone and emerging meat until it was no longer recognizable. I could feel warmth, suddenly, warmth all over my hand. His life was in my hands now, running down my wrists, saturating my fur.

I dropped the stone at my side and scrambled backward, feeling his life running down my arms as I rolled and began to crawl, crawl frantically toward the water. The woods were suddenly quiet again, entirely quiet, devoid of his life and I could not stomach it. I screamed to cover the sound of his lack of life and found that it spoke over me no matter how hard I tried. I could not live with this deafening silence, and I found myself rising to two legs only to fall to four again, crawling like the fucking animal I was to the water's edge and throwing myself facefirst in it. I dunked my head into the depth and wailed, my eyes shut and my mouth opened. I wanted to drown myself but I couldn't even find my limbs capable of guiding me into the water as they were entirely too focused on finding a stone to bash myself with, as I had him. I grabbed the nearest one and brought it to the side of my head, bashing myself several times until my blood emerged, as his had. I could barely hold the stone, toppling into the water and crying out into it. It filled my mouth and I inhaled, trying to breathe it, trying to let it fill me, to perhaps shut up my insufferable need to scream.

It was like every part of me was trying to end my own life in a different way, and I could not get those dreadful limbs to cooperate long enough to successfully destroy myself. Instead I just laid there, screaming into the water, inhaling and hacking it back up. My stupid, miserable will to survive continued to spit up water, and I finally managed to guide my body to the deeper parts, laying down in it. I was submerged, fully, belly down. I laid until my lungs hurt, and until my eyes began to burn. I laid until I could feel consciousness fading from my head, and I was losing the will to rise. I laid on the creekbed floor letting the water flow around me as I desired to let it consume me, let it erode me as it did the stones around me. I was so close to being free of this neverending nightmare, when I felt it. That hand, the unmistakeable hand, grabbing the back of my head.

I was yanked from the water and pulled above surface, where I began to shriek to be let go. The second hand would grab me by the muzzle, though, and hold it shut as I was dragged to my struggling feet, crying through my nose as the smell of soil filled my nostrils with every inhale, the smell of decay.

"Rise. Stand up. You have done it."

My feet refused to support my body, and as he stood there trying to hold me upright and found me flailing about defeated he would abruptly grab me, hoisting me up and throwing me over his shoulders as I began to scream again, begging for him to let me down. He was carrying me back to the deer.

"PLEASE, I CAN'T LOOK AT IT--"

"You will be fine"

"NO, NO, PLEASE, PLEASE NO KING--"

"Nico" he would speak through my screaming, far too loud for him to interrupt.

"Death is around us every day. This is what we do to survive. Your grandfather did it, and his father, and his father. Their brothers did it. Only recently has your kind become so spoiled that they have avoided hunting. Your father instilled that weakness in you, and you have freed yourself from it."

"That's DIFFERENT, King! They used guns and bows and things that made it humane! They didn't--THEY DIDN'T--KING NO I DON'T--I DON'T WANT TO SEE IT"

He had carried me to the deer now, and was staring down at it as I held my hands tight over my eyes and cried. I was facing away from it, so I didn't have to see it regardless, but I was so afraid he was going to turn around and make me look at it.

"Bludgeoned. That must've taken a lot of strength, especially since you haven't eaten in days. I'm amazed at how you achieved this."

"Please STOP talking about it, please--"

"The way you formed a noose for him and strangled him to weakness, wrapped yourself around the tree to divert his strength to the trunk, beat him senseless,"

"King PLEASE!! PLEASE STOP IT" I yelled, my palms pressed firmly against my eyes, my body trembling fully as I began to hyperventilate. I needed him to stop speaking, but he wouldn't.

"Nico, you are so incredibly strong. I am so proud of you. I am so...so incredibly proud of you. Your family would be proud of you, too."

"No they wouldn't!"

"Yes, yes they would. You've escaped the confines of your father's inadequacy and become someone totally your own. You are brave, you are strong, you are incredible. I am so honored to be able to say I love you."

At this point, I was crying so hard I couldn't easily form words, and hearing him say he loved me brought me no comfort. I could not find anything in my mind that brought me peace, and every time he stopped speaking my thoughts returned to the sound of skull shattering in my hands.

"I understand now, though, that you are inconsolable. You must rest. When you awake, you will have food prepared, and your life will begin a new chapter. I am so honored to be here with you, Nico. I am so lucky to have you."

His words felt like nothing. He held me over his shoulder with one hand and I could hear him grab the deer with the other hand, untying the knot and dragging it's body behind him as he made our way back to shelter.

Truthfully, I can't tell you any more about what happened that night. I remember hearing the deer's corpse drag over rocks and bump around against the forest floor, and I felt as if I left my own body. I can't recall anything after that, I'm sorry.