FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The rising sun hung low over the forested hills to the east, casting a pale yellow light upon the land from behind the obscuring tendrils of low clouds. Shielding her eyes with her paw, Sharra squinted up at the bringer of light and warmth through the intertwined branches of the surrounding trees. She stifled a yawn, and then turned her head to watch the human, John, who was crouched a span or so to her left. After a moment, he turned his face towards her and flashed her a tight smile before turning his attention back to the small clearing spread out before them. She sighed and flicked a chunk of ice from the log in front of her with a clawed finger. They'd been out here for at least a couple of hours and she was getting bored. She leaned back and stared up into the sky for a short moment, watching a few thin lines of cloud drift through the openings in the treetops. She twirled her spear between her finger tips for a moment, trying to keep herself occupied. Eventually, she just let her mind wander.

Hunting wasn't all that exciting, she knew. It was long hours of waiting or tracking followed by a short burst of intense action that more often than not ended in failure. If the hunt was successful, then the price of being able to eat was a whole lot of back breaking work. It was inevitable that the hunt would end in the thickest bush for miles around. Once the laborious and messy process of cleaning and dismembering the carcass was completed, the real work began. Eight times out of ten the long trek back to the cabin usually involved having to climb a small mountain or two.

She shifted position slowly, stretching muscles cramped from sitting motionless for too long. John glanced in her direction again. She raised her muzzle to scent the breeze that swirled up from the clearing to her waiting nose. Only the scent of melting snow and the all pervasive scent of the evergreens revealed themselves to her. She yawned and let her thoughts drift again. Hunting smaller game was a little easier but it meant having to spend far more time out wandering the forests in search of prey. She thought about it for a moment. Once all things were taken into account, going after larger animals seemed to be the best bet. The success rate was lower, but the payoffs were higher. There was definitely more work involved, but a deer sized animal could provide food for nearly a month, instead of a rabbit or grouse providing a single meal.

She smiled a bit as she looked over at John again. It also made things a lot easier having a hunting partner. She scratched the side of her muzzle in an absent minded fashion. Unfortunately it also meant that there was another mouth to feed, though she didn't know how anyone could call something that was cooked to the point of being charcoal, food. When she made herself a meal, she would thaw the meat out and warm it up. Whenever John cooked himself something, it tended to look like the ashes she scraped out of the bottom of the old stove once a month. She grimaced distastefully. What a way to ruin good meat.

She had been concerned about the food supply at first, as could be expected, but it wasn't turning out to be a problem. They weren't starving, but they weren't exactly well fed either. Their success rate hunting together was turning out to be a little better than hers when she hunted alone. She thought about that for a moment. John had nearly no sense of smell, and his hearing wasn't that great either, but he made up for it with eagle-like eyesight and nearly the strength of a bear. It was interesting to note that when they hunted together they made up for each others weaknesses. How many times had he spotted something in the distance that she had missed? How many times had she scented something nearby that John missed completely? Many times on both counts, that's for sure. She shook her head. She still couldn't believe how anyone one could go through life with almost no sense of smell. That human was a strange one alright, but she was slowly getting used to him.

How her life had changed over the past weeks! She had been pulled from the depths of depression into something that was so unfamiliar to her. She was smiling, talking, even laughing occasionally. The bleakness of the last six months seemed a world away all of a sudden. She realized with a start that she felt almost like her old self, and what a strange feeling that was. And stranger yet, she realized that John and the companionship he provided was in part responsible for her change in behaviour.

She had been a little bit scared of him at first but after the past two weeks the fear had died away and she had learned that there was much more to him than first met the eye. John too, had needed some time to sort out his new surroundings and let the fear die down. For that first week, he had been so quiet and so distant that she wondered if that was the way he would always be. He slowly came out of his shell though, and he was showing himself to be an interesting individual. Underneath that strange furless hide of his lurked a keen mind and an interesting sense of humour. He was quick to smile, just as quick to laugh and she was beginning to enjoy his company.

He had been incredibly helpful around the cabin. He helped with cutting up and storing meat, and prepared most of his own meals. He kept the firewood pile stocked and the fire in the stove going almost constantly, though she suspected that had much to do with his lack of insulating fur. Nearly every day he would gather up the old axe and go into the forest to gather more wood. Watching him drag impossibly large trees back to the cabin fascinated her, and when he began to chop them into smaller pieces with great swings of the rusty old axe, she realized that she would never want to see him angry. Fortunately, he seemed to possess a gentleness that belied his size and appearance.

When it came to hunting, she at first thought that John would be more of a hindrance than anything, but once again she was proven wrong. He had even devised his own weapons for hunting. After much experimenting with something he called a Bow, which resulted in a lot of broken sticks and one very frustrated human, he gave up on that idea and settled for a spear as long as he was tall. When paired with a specially carved stick which he told her added power to his throw, he could launch his projectiles out of sight. Unfortunately, his aim still needed a bit of work. Despite hours and hours of practice, he still had yet to hit anything on their hunting trips. The only kill they had managed so far had come courtesy of a lucky cast from her own paws.

They made an interesting pair, she thought as she watched John scan the trees and the clearing for any signs of life. One tall and nearly furless, clad in clothing from head to toe. The other, shorter and possessed of a thick fur coat and wearing nothing but a belt on which a long knife was sheathed. Both of them crouched in the melting snow behind the trunk of a fallen spruce, waiting for lunch to wander out in front of them. One who used sight and little else to understand the world around him. The other one relying on scent and sound to reveal that which was hidden. Two different ways of doing things. Two different ways of thinking. Two totally different people. It was amazing.

Sharra yawned again and decided that it was far too early in the morning to be awake. For some reason, she hadn't been sleeping well recently. Strange and terrifying dreams kept plaguing her every time she closed her eyes, disturbing her sleep and setting her mind racing. Memories of painful events from six months ago were the usual things that haunted her sleep, but over the past month the dreams had begun to change. They were becoming stranger, showing her things that her eyes had never seen before, things she had no understanding of. She shifted position and rested her shoulder against a convenient tree. What she really needed was the counsel of a Dreamspeaker, but there was little chance of that in these parts. She blinked lazily a few times and tried to shake off the fatigue that possessed her. Despite all attempts, she found herself nodding off and was soon fast asleep.

The dream that possessed her was one of unbelievable power. She struggled against it for a brief moment but it swept aside her defences as though they were some insignificant insect. She dreamt of towers of metal and glass that reached up to scrape the sky. She saw forests being cut and burned to the ground to make room for buildings of stone and wood. She dreamt of humans. They were everywhere, crawling over the land like maggots on a bloated corpse, billions of them, slashing, burning, ripping the land asunder while sun rose angry and red into a sky filled with smoke. Then she saw the humans dying. Great fires burned and the sun disappeared behind a heavy veil of pollution and soot as the humans fought amongst themselves. Explosions flashed and flared like lightning at night and screams of pain and agony rang out from the darkness. Rain began to fall, black and stinking, turning the scorched earth into a sea of mud. The towers crumbled and decayed to the ground and the wreckage was washed away in rivers flowing red with blood. Bones stuck up from the earth, human bones, and a skull glared up at her from the mud with a ghastly grin. Through empty eye sockets it passed to her a warning. It's ghostly voice forced her way into her mind. Do not make the same mistakes that we did... The skull crumbled into dust and was borne away on the wind. The darkness enveloped her, pressing down with unseen hands, forcing her into the mud.

"Sharra." The voice intruded on her dream, and a spark of light speared through the black.

"Sharra, you're dreaming. Wake up." A familiar deep voice, and the words were spoken softly. She concentrated on the gentle tone of the voice and used it to pull herself out of the dark depths of the dream. Higher and higher she rose, clawing her way towards the light. The darkness grasped at her with cold fingers but it grew weaker and fell away below her as she neared the surface. At length, she opened her eyes to see John looking at her with concerned expression creasing his face.

"Hmmmm...?" She asked groggily.

"You must have been having one hell of a vivid dream. I had to wake you up before you scared away every animal within hearing distance." He said with a smile, still speaking softly.

"Why did you let me fall asleep?" She said after a jaw breaking yawn.

He cast her a sidelong glance, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards. "You looked like you needed it. Besides, there wasn't anything interesting going on."

"You have not seen anything yet?" She inquired.

"Actually a herd of elk passed through about ten minutes ago but they all looked a little thin and underfed so I left them alone."

She stared at him. She opened her mouth to chastise him for not waking her up but something made her stop. She closed her mouth and glared at him.

After a moment he broke into a broad grin and he chuckled. "Just kidding Sharra. It's been pretty quiet."

She shifted, trying to stretch without making an undue amount of noise. "How long was I asleep?"

He scratched the copper tinged fur on his chin with long fingers for a moment before replying. "Oh..., 'bout fifteen or twenty minutes I would say." he paused for a moment and looked her directly in the eyes. "You haven't been sleeping very well recently. Is everything OK?"

So he did know. She lowered her head under his probing gaze and her ears folded back a bit. She couldn't tell him what haunted her dreams, not yet. "Yes, everything is fine. I have just been having a few bad dreams, that is all."

He looked at her with an understanding gaze for a moment longer. When he did speak again, his words had a sympathetic tone to them. "If you ever feel the need to talk about it Sharra, you know where to find me." He turned his eyes back to the clearing.

Sharra was about to say something but John stiffened suddenly and gestured with a hand for her to stay silent. He squinted into the distance. He was silent for a moment. Then without taking his eyes from the clearing, he spoke to her in a low voice. "There's a deer on the north edge of the clearing, maybe a couple hundred metres away."

Sharra raised her muzzle to sniff the wind. She still couldn't pick up anything but the scent of snow and trees. She looked out over the clearing. She couldn't see a thing. It had to be there though, She'd learned not to question John's eyesight. "Which way is it heading?" She asked quietly.

"East by the looks of it. I think it's following the trail that heads towards the creek." He picked up his spears and throwing stick. After thinking hard for a moment, he spoke again. "The wind's coming almost straight out of the north, though that might change when we get into the trees." He paused, chewing his lower lip as he formulated a plan of action. He drummed his fingers on the log in front of him. "Why don't you go and wait where that trail crosses the creek and I'll see if I can come around from behind. That way, the wind will be in your favour and you should be able to spear it near the crossing if I can't get it before it gets there."

After considering that plan of action for a moment, Sharra nodded her head. "That sounds like a good plan." She picked her spear from the snow and adjusted the knife on her belt. "Try not to miss this time." She said with smile and a quick wag of her tail before she turned and disappeared into the trees.

She snickered a bit when she heard his wry response from behind her.

"Try not to miss? Are you kidding? When it comes to hunting that seems to be the only thing I'm good at."

******************

Try not to miss, she says? Yeah right. I suspect that I stand as much chance of hitting what I'm aiming at as I do being spontaneously returned to the life that I used to live. For a moment I glared at her rapidly retreating form as she headed off through the trees to take up position on the other side of the creek. At least she was loosening up a bit and starting to joke around. For a while there I was beginning to wonder if her kind ever had any fun. Damn, I still couldn't believe I was living with a talking wolf, and I shook my head in wonder as I thought back over the past weeks. The memories were all there but there was a distant and dreamlike quality to them. Everything around me was still wrong but it seemed that I was finally getting used to it.

I took a quick glance at my watch. I figured that a ten minute start for Sharra would be enough for her to settled into a suitable hiding place before I headed out to track down the deer that I saw pass through the clearing a few minutes earlier. My thoughts drifted as I tried to keep myself occupied.

I knew my aim is terrible, but this was the first time in my life that I had had to rely on using a spear tipped with the rusty blade of an old knife to provide my meals. Sharra could joke about it all she wanted(at least I hoped she was joking!), but experience with stone age weapons is not exactly something I had in any quantity. I'd hunted before, a lifetime ago it seemed now that I thought about it, but that was always with a modern, scope sighted rifle. That technology was light years ahead of anything that I had found around me so far. Stone, wood, antler, leather, and bone were the raw materials available to my waiting hands. Metal was in limited supply and came in the form of various corroded fragments of tools, cooking utensils, and a few unidentifiable objects that I found lying about the cabin and the shed. All things considered I doubted it would be long before I had to figure out how to chip points from stone for my spears instead of trying to hammer a usable point from some of those random metal fragments. In a few weeks, there just wouldn't be any of them left. I grinned to myself. When it came to hunting, the only thing I was good at wass losing spears faster than I could make them. With my lousy aim it wass far too easy to lose my precious implements to the forest.

I took my weapons in hand. The rough feel of the wood was slightly reassuring against my cold fingers, and I gripped them tightly and closed my eyes, willing them to travel true when the time came. This time, I wouldn't miss. I couldn't. I'd never live it down if I did, and the last thing I needed was to give Sharra something else to tease me about. First it was my lack of fur, then it was something about my poor hearing and nearly non-existent sense of smell, and now it was my aim. I shook my head and smiled. It had to stop and what better way to do that than actually have a successful hunt. I focused my thoughts, trying to recall everything I'd learned over the last two weeks, forcing myself to remember the balance and the timing needed to throw my spear straight and accurately. The wind picked up a bit, shifting to come straight out of the north. The branches of the surrounding lodgepole pines swayed in the breeze and the wind bit right through my jacket and made me shiver involuntarily. I figured I'd waited long enough. It was time for me to get off my lazy arse and be on my way before I froze to the ground.

I stood up slowly, stretching cramped muscles and stifling a yawn. Once I was sure that my surroundings held no surprises I began my stalk through the trees, keeping the cool north wind blowing into my face. The wind tickled my two week old growth of beard and drove me into a furious itching fit. Damn, I needed a shave, but I doubted that I'd have the chance to experience that luxury anytime soon, if ever. A few months out here and I would really look the part of the insane mountain man. I chuckled to myself as I paused to consider that mental image for a moment. I wondered if I'd start acting the part as time went on.

I took three slow steps, stopped, then waited for several minutes, scanning my surroundings with a wary eye, searching for movement and the subtle forms of animals among the close knit trunks of the trees. I took another three slow steps, repeat, and so on. It may take me half an hour or so to move even a hundred metres, but there is no better way to move through the forest nearly undetected. It is amazing what reveals itself when you slow down and take the time to actually see the world around you instead of hurrying by, head down, oblivious to the lives that are intertwined with the natural world that most humans tend to distance themselves from. I smiled to myself and paused in a shaft of early morning sunlight that filtered through the trees. All it took was a few minutes of motionless silence to see a part of nature that many people didn't even know existed. Stay still for a few moments and mice and shrews will soon forget the noisemaker who wandered by. Within minutes the forest floor will come alive with their soft squeaks and rustlings as they search about underneath the snow and old leaves for food. Grouse will suddenly appear in the underbrush, moving stealthily about with only the faint sounds of crunching snow giving away their locations. Snowshoe hares may reveal themselves here and there, ghost-like among the snow and trees. Only their black ear tips and eyes give a hint as to their locations on the snow covered forest floor. Such things always brought a smile to my face. They were familiar sights that reassured me to some extent. The world I remembered may have been lost to me but there were some things that hadn't changed

I couldn't help but let my mind wander as I stalked through the bush. Itwa hard to believe that two weeks had passed me by already. I guess in some ways that was a good sign. But then again, I wasn't so sure. Adapting to a completely new lifestyle had been difficult to say the least. I would have traded my right arm for a steaming cup of coffee, a hot shower, a shave, and some indoor plumbing with real toilet paper. Such simple things that I used to take for granted, and it saddened me to know that I may never see them again. In a way, it was also a little amusing. I never once considered what my life would be like if such simple things were out of my reach. Let's just say that my twentieth century upbringing hadn't prepared me very well for such a predicament. I was having to relearn how to survive in ways I'd never considered before, and I was earning a healthy respect for those who lived their lives before technology took over the world.

You never know what you got until it's gone. I can't count how many times I've heard that saying over the years. It had taken on a special meaning in my case. In the blink of an eye, I'd gone from living a fairly normal twenty-first century life to struggling along in a Neanderthal sort of way in a battle just to survive. Gone were any sort of modern contrivances to make life easier. Food must be cooked over an open fire, or at best, the cast iron stove in the cabin, but first you had to hunt your food down and kill it, as I was attempting to do In order to keep from freezing to death, I had to keep the fire in the cabin going almost constantly, which was one hell of a lot more work than I first thought it would be. It took an unbelievable amount of wood to keep the cabin at a tolerable temperature, and I was completely paranoid that I'd forget to keep it fuelled and let it go out. Matches apparently didn't exist in this world and rubbing two sticks together with terminally numb fingers was not an activity I wanted to experience any time soon. Just to be on the safe side, nearly every day I went out and collected more wood and kept a rather large stack along the one wall inside the cabin. Better to be safe than sorry, especially when sorry can be fatal. Lucky for me I discovered a rather corroded axe out in the shed which simplified the wood gathering end of things a fair bit. I was sure going to be happy when summer finally arrived and I didn't have to worry about such trivial things like frostbite and hypothermia.

Hunting was another thing that had me worried over the past weeks. I'd been reduced to using weapons of the sort my ice age ancestors used, which was making gathering food difficult at best. I knew that Sharra used a spear to hunt and is even fairly successful when it comes to using it, but then her enhanced senses gave her a bit of an advantage when it comes to sneaking up on such wary critters like deer, elk and moose. Not to mention that she had far more experience at it than I do. She's designed to hunt, far more so than I am, and a lifetime of experience creeping about the forests in search of food had served her well. I had to rely on luck and on the random bits and pieces of stuff I'd learned over the years that were still floating around in my memory.

I am glad that I'm the sort that is good when it comes to designing and building anything mechanical in nature. It gave me an edge that could allow me to survive for some time in a wild setting like this. Once I was finally able to clear most of the emotional trauma from that had plugged up my mind concerning my arrival here, I settled down somewhat and tried to think up some weapons to make my attempts at collecting some food a little more effective. At first I figured my best odds on success were with a bow, but that plan soon failed. After an inordinate amount of time spent cutting and shaping a chunk of spruce, I discovered that the soft, resinous wood is crappy stuff for making a bow out of. The end result was a fractured bow on the first pull of the bowstring. I was understandably annoyed, but didn't give up. However, after having nearly every single bow I have constructed break on the first couple of shots, and those that didn't break hardly had the power to propel a crude arrow in a straight line more than ten metres, I've gotten a little disillusioned with my abilities as a bowmaker. That and the simple fact that trying to make arrows straight enough was a severe pain in the ass was enough to make me give up on the bow idea for the time being and turn my attentions to simpler things. From the dusty archives of things learned long ago and since forgotten, an idea wormed it's way up through the sediment and out into the light. Ice age humans, I remembered, used a long spear in conjunction with a curved stick that was used as a lever to add power to the throw. Much easier to construct, but, as I soon found out, a whole lot more difficult to use. My first attempts at using this combination yielded some interesting results and an outburst of suffocating laughter from Sharra. One thing's for sure, the next time I test out a new idea of mine, I'm going to make sure she's a long ways away.

The test run of the spear and throwing stick started out well enough. Sharra had settled down on the edge of the porch to watch the proceedings with something that was either ears-perked interest or possibly concern for the poor bald creature's sanity. My intended target was the side of the old shed, and with a superior sort of smirk towards my eager audience of one, I wandered away from the front of the cabin until I was perhaps twenty metres from the shed. I flattened out a small area of snow with my boots to make sure my footing would be good and then I nocked the end of one of my nearly six foot long spears into the curved, hooked end of the throwing stick. I drew my arm back, holding the stick hard against my palm with the last three fingers of my hand and the spear clamped between my thumb and index finger. I picked a spot on the side of the shed where I wanted the spear to hit and then launched my arm forward with everything I had, and quickly learned my first lesson when it comes to using one of those things.

There are many things I've learned about using the spear and throwing stick combination since that first botched attempt but I still have yet to master the two most important things. That thought loomed large in my mind as I neared the clearing in through which the deer passed through. I didn't need to make the same mistakes again. My survival was going to depend on how successful I became at using these new tools.

Balance and timing are the things to keep in mind when trying to accurately propel a spear using a throwing stick or atl-atl as I believe it is called. Balance is very important, but timing is extremely crucial. If you release the spear too late, you may be minus a toe or two. Release the thing to soon and hope that there are no low flying birds or aircraft in the vicinity. My very first throw resulted in a spear that stuck into the snow barely three metres in front of me. Behind me, Sharra did her best to stifle a laugh. My next attempt was not much better and the spear went nearly sideways and slid into the snow barely halfway to my intended target. I turned my head to glare at Sharra lest she burst out laughing. The look on her face told me that she was both surprised and amused and judging by the fact that she had one paw clamped around her muzzle, it looked as if one hell of a battle was going on as she tried to keep a lid on her amusement. I did my best to ignore her and turned my attention back to the task at hand. When I put everything I had into the last throw and nearly put the damned spear in orbit, it was too much for the furball sitting on the porch. She burst into suffocating laughter as I stood out front of the cabin with my face tilted skywards, trying to follow the high arc of my wayward projectile. It silently disappeared into the forest perhaps a hundred metres away, and I was at a total loss as to what to do next. Sharra's laughter was infectious, however, and soon I began to snicker, then chuckle and finally I was laughing as hard as she was. I went over and sat myself down beside her on the porch. Not a word passed between us, but the laughter didn't die down for almost half an hour. Now that I look back on it, I have to admit it was pretty funny. That was also the first time I heard Sharra laugh. Up until that point she had always been so quiet and so reserved and even sad at times. Hearing her laugh was like music to my ears and it seemed that her mood took a change for the better starting that day.

A smile was on my face as I finally came across the tracks from my prey. I paused for a long moment, scanning my surroundings before I turned to follow them. From there, it should be about three quarters of a kilometre or so until the trail reaches the creek. Hopefully Sharra was in position. As long as she was in the right place, we had a chance at making a kill. After hunting this area nearly every day for the past two weeks, I was beginning to know it fairly well. I tried to picture in my mind the place where the trail crossed the creek. I concentrated, forcing myself to recall the layout of that area. I must have walked by that spot a dozen times over the last weeks. I've always had an excellent memory and soon I'd pieced together a rough image of the location in my mind. Now where would Sharra be hiding? I said to myself. I thought hard for a minute. Then it happened. The strangest damn sensation I had ever experienced. Something in my head went 'pop' and all of a sudden I got a really clear picture in my mind's eye of the area I was thinking about. A first hand view in fact. I could see the trail and the creek through crisscrossing branches like I was standing there myself.

"What the...?" I said in surprise. The image quickly faded after barely a second. Just before it winked out, surprise and confusion that mirrored my own flooded into my mind, but it wasn't coming from me! Before I even realized who it was coming from, the sensation was gone and I was standing alone at the edge of the clearing.

Startled, I frantically looked around me. What the hell just happened? I was just thinking about Sharra and where she would be hiding and then..., then, it was like I knew exactly where she was. Stranger yet, it was as if I was seeing through her eyes for a split second.

It was damned weird if you ask me.

I muttered something about my apparent descent into the depths of insanity continuing at an unabated rate and tried to push this latest episode of strangeness as far out of my thoughts as I could. I'd deal with it later if I can. Right now there were matters of survival to tend to. Within half an hour, this hunt was going to resolve itself one way or another, hopefully with success on our part. She tried her best to hide it, but I knew that Sharra was worried about the food supply, especially with me around. I estimated that only about three days worth of food remained in the shed, and so far our hunting trips have been unsuccessful. Sharra had managed to kill a small mule deer buck on our second hunting expedition ten days ago, but every single hunt since then had sent us home empty handed. My missing two cow elk that were barely twenty metres away on two separate occasions hadn't helped matters much, but what could I say? I was still learning how to use those unwieldy weapons I created, and by the look of things, I was going to get another opportunity to learn very soon.

One thing that many people don't think about is that most animals, when they're not stressed or know they're being pursued, move through the forest quite slowly. Deer are a prime example of this sort of behavior. Most of the time they amble back and forth, searching the snow for anything edible, never in a hurry unless some sort of danger presents itself. A little over an hour had passed since I first spotted that deer moving through the clearing, yet when I finally tracked it down, it was within three hundred metres of where I first spotted it. I'd managed to sneak up within fifty metres of it and it still didn't have clue that I was there. So far so good. Now to see if I could get within spear range of the thing.

I crept through the trees and low bushes, heading in a wide arc, positioning myself downwind of the deer and taking care to keep myself hidden. From what I'd seen over the last couple of weeks, the animals around here didn't seem to have the instinctual fear of humans that they should have had. That was another disturbing discovery that I'd added to the growing list of things that I was going to have to deal with at some time whether I liked it or not. Even without the animal's instinctual fear of me, I wasn't going to take any chances. I was learning that taking chances with survival was a potentially lethal activity out here. I knew that the creek was somewhere off to my right. I could hear it, but I couldn't see it yet. The uneasy feeling returned when I realized that I knew exactly where Sharra was lurking across the creek, but I pushed it away. She was close to where the trail crossed over the ice-encrusted water. If I missed my chance, then hopefully she cold score a hit as the deer ran past her, but this time, I didn't intend to miss. My heart rate began to speed up in anticipation as I nocked a spear into my throwing stick. I positioned myself about fifteen metres from the trail where I had a clear lane to throw the spear when the deer came into range. Slowly, the animal worked its way down the trail, coming ever closer to my window through the bush. Exceedingly slowly, I balanced the spear in my hand and stood poised, arm back, muscles taut with anticipation.

The deer moved into my window, nose to the snow. I gritted my teeth and offered a silent prayer to whoever may be listening as I put all my weight into the throw. The spear sailed straight and true for once towards the deer. The animal started to react when it saw my movement but it was too late. The spear caught it in the dead centre of it's chest, just behind the shoulder. The deer jumped up and kicked, then took off at a dead run. The sounds of it crashing through the underbrush become more and more distant until silence settled over the forest once again.

I got it! The blood was pounding in my ears and I made a mad, adrenaline charged rush to the spot where the deer was standing when the spear hit it. Spots of blood littered the snow. Bright red blood, lung blood, full of froth and air bubbles. A broad grin split my face. The deer is probably dead already. I took off running, following the trail of blood in the snow. I jumped over the trickling creek and kept on going. My attention was so devoted to the trail that I nearly ran over Sharra as she stood on the opposite bank of the creek.

"I got it!" I let out a whoop of joy that reverberated through the trees. After so much work and so many missed attempts it was incredible to succeed for once.

Sharra had a soft smile on her muzzle and her tail was wagging gently. "That you did. And now we have food enough to last us for another few weeks." Her smile broadens. "I knew you would get this one."

I smiled at her. "It's about time I managed to hit something. I wasn't going to give you another chance to bug me about missing everything I shoot at."

She chuckled a bit and fixed me with and odd sort of look. Part of me wondered if she experienced the same little episode that I did. "I am glad you did not miss. I did not feel like going hungry just because your aim is terrible."

I shook my head. "You're not going to let that one go anytime soon are you?"

"Of course not. Someone has to make sure you have the incentive to improve your aim."

It was my turn to laugh now. "Just what I thought. Well, let's go find it before something else does."

I began walking down the trail again, Sharra leading the way. The blood trail got thicker the farther we went and after about a hundred and fifty metres we finally located the deer. Sharra cautiously approached it and poked it with the point of her spear to make sure it was dead. After she was satisfied that it wasn't going to get up and run away, she motioned me over with a paw. Now for the gory part.

Death is never pretty, no matter what the circumstances are. When it comes to food, I know that many humans distance themselves from the simple fact that they are consuming something that was once alive. Sure, it's not something that is nice to think about but it is the way things have been for untold millennia. Something must die, be it plant or animal, in order for another to survive. That's nature. There's no way around it. If I were at home, it would have been a cow, or perhaps a chicken that supplied my meat. It would have arrived in my hands packaged, wrapped, and ready to cook. All of the difficult and dirty work would have been done for me and I likely would never have given a thought to the life of the animal that supplied it. It's an eye opening experience to see how much more personal the food chain becomes when the barriers of modernity erected between yourself and the natural world are torn away.

I pulled my blood soaked spear from the deer's chest and leaned it up against a nearby tree. I drew my knife and knelt down to begin the gory task of cleaning out the carcass when Sharra motioned for me to stay still. What she did next is both amazing and inexplicable, but when I factor in all of the other stuff that I'd seen her do over the past two weeks that I thought was impossible, I guess it wasn't that surprising. Without a word, she placed both hands on the deer and motioned for me to do the same. She closed her eyes. I did the same. I couldn feel the rough hair of the deer warm under my palms. I heard the wind toy with the trees above, and I slowly became aware of something else. Emotions grew in my mind, brought in through a door that I never even knew existed. There was sadness over the death of the animal in front of me, yet there was joy at the life it would provide for Sharra and I. Through that joy and sadness came forward a feeling of gratitude to the forest for providing the necessities of life. Slowly the feelings subsided, leaving me feeling small and alone. My eyes snapped open and I recalled those words that lodged in my mind when Sharra healed my arm.

Everything is connected to everything else. I was beginning to understand...

"Sharra, What the hell was that?" I asked uneasily, even though I already knew the answer.

"I thanked the forest and the deer for giving us the means to survive for another few weeks." She was smiling, ears forward, her tail wagging gently. Me, on the other hand, I was stunned.

"I thought so..." My voice sounded a little strained for some reason.

She looked at me intently for a moment. "Come on, we have work to do. I will explain it later."

Sharra and I struggled to roll the heavy animal onto it's back so we could begin the gory task of cleaning out the carcass. Sharra drew her knife and with lightning speed she sliced through the skin and muscle of the deer's belly. She reached deep into the chest cavity of the deer and deftly sliced through the diaphragm. A few more short strokes of the razor sharp blade and she straightened up and turned to me. Blood had soaked into her grey fur right up to her elbows and there was a happy grin on her face.

"Because this is your first kill, tradition demands that you get the choicest pieces." Her tail wagged behind her.

I stood there, trying to digest that statement. The only thing I could think of was: 'uh oh...'

She bent down and reached into the chest cavity of the deer and pulled out the heart. She walked over to me and deposited it into my numb hands. I stared down at the heart that sat still warm and sticky in may hands. Blood dripped from it to stain the snow at my feet. I'd never been the queasy sort and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, but this was a little much. I swallowed, trying to fight back the nausea that welled up. I looked up at Sharra, trying to figure out whether this was some kind of joke or not..

"Eat up." She said in a cheerful tone, eyes bright.

I fixed her with a shocked stare. She stared back, waiting. She knews that I didn't eat raw meat but I was beginning to think that she really expected me to take a bite out of this thing.

"Umm..., don't I get to cook it first?"