Liam sat on the campsite, staring blankly at the spot Maridah had occupied a moment prior. The Goddess had vanished, and he could only assume it was to “prepare for the role” of being the predator in this lesson where starvation would be the punishment for failure. His mind ran through her words several times, and each reiteration gave him a sinking feeling of dread.

If it had been any other deity making the claim, he would have been nervous, but this was Maridah. Everything he knew about the Goddess pointed to a near-zealous approach to her work. She was a devout professional, and when she got it in her head to go at something, there would be no room for anything but the job itself.

Obviously, she wasn’t going to go all out; she was divinity, this was her domain, she could have squished him into paste if she wanted. What would she do here? Create some sort of avatar with extremely limited powers and perception? There were a dozen options the Goddess could take, even going so far as possessing one of the local animals for her goal.

Whatever she had done, this was at a stage higher of difficulty than Liam had expected.

Going over the two tools of choice, he moved on to prepare some more items to add to his repertoire. He started off by getting sticks to sharpen with the knife, then vines and long fibrous branches to braid into ropes, and finishing off by going to town on the not-deer’s carcass. The work was messy, with Liam needing both ample amounts of water from the spring and rest. But eventually, he had made himself some bone spikes, several pieces of badly cut fur that would need to dry out, and enough guts and “spare” things he couldn’t eat to make for bait. Or at least he hoped that could be useful as bait.

More importantly, he got himself a pretty nifty deer skull he left at the outskirts of the camp area for bugs to clean off. Hopefully, the thing would serve as a nifty helmet or mask once all the bits of… things were gone.

The remainder of his day was spent keeping the campfire fueled while he made use of his new array of tools to create sticks with spikes and braided string. The sticks weren’t meant to be weapons; the sticks he sought being springy and flexible and short. Meanwhile, the rope he created was meant to be thin but sturdy enough to hold at least half his weight.

By the time night came, Liam had made himself a whole arsenal of short flexible sticks with spikes, string, and a highly rudimentary basket.

All the while, his mind kept trying to go over how Maridah would hunt him.

Liam’s “win” condition was to get food. He held no illusions that he’d be able to fight anything; he just didn’t have the strength, speed, or endurance. This meant he was preparing to accomplish his goal through the best option given his circumstances: traps and foraging.

With his tools set out and ready, he went to sleep early after having drunk as much water as he could.

When sunrise came, he was awake and ready, setting out to the wider jungle, basket on his back, ready to scout out potential food sources. First things first, he avoided the area where the giant snake was (it still felt dangerous, and Liam wasn’t entirely sure if the serpent had stayed there because it was digesting some big meal or something), then proceeded further afield. There were several other areas that gave him that “off” feeling of being placed that Maridah would have put “surprises” into.

Unlike his previous exploration, he also sought out places where she might have put down good things. The first such discovery was of a tiny cache of eerily, violently purple berries, the sort that gave off all the vibes of “I’ll kill you if you don’t figure out how to consume me properly”.

It was a far harder process to follow. He could somewhat imagine where Maridah might have secreted away danger, but it mostly came out from an understanding of the sort of dangers she wanted him to face. But aid? What sort of help did she want to give him that she hadn’t already? Without figuring out the lesson, it would be way harder to figure out the locations of the breadcrumbs.

Not that he’d let that stop him.

Yet the more he moved about, the more dangers he sensed around him, their numbers increasing directly with how far from camp he got. Soon enough, the dangers outnumbered the safe areas, and Liam was walking on a tightrope to avoid them. More and more, he grew certain that the only food was behind the dangers put in the jungle.

And that felt just a bit too straightforward for Maridah, but the other option relied on him starting to eat random pieces of vegetation until he found one that was edible. But he’d hold off on that until he was truly desperate.

Liam’s gut kept telling him there was a secret she’d put down somewhere that would be obvious the moment he changed the way he looked at the jungle. But if that was indeed the goal for her lesson, then he’d failed miserably that day. After too many hours either walking or skulking about in search of anything, he’d only gotten his hands on a few dozen of those suspicious berries.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

There hadn’t even been any area worth laying traps in, at least not that he’d recognized signs of smaller animals the trap would have been effective against.

Exhausted, he made his way back to try and gather his thoughts.

It came as a bit of a surprise that his basket was empty of berries. For a full second, he just stared at the basket that only contained the pieces for the traps, but not one berry.

“What the fuck?”

There were no holes in the basket, and they clearly couldn’t have fallen off; otherwise, his tools would also have been missing. The only conclusion to be had was that either the berries could vanish on their own, or he’d been robbed. Liam was betting on the latter.

“Problem?” Maridah appeared as a wolf once more, seated next to the ashes of the campfire and staring at him with fire-eyes that twinkled in mischief.

“Nope.” He immediately replied, now absolutely certain the Goddess had done something to rob him of the berries. He made a shooing motion as he sat down to light the fire. “Scram, I’m busy.”

She obliged, letting out a dark chuckle.

Liam knew she hadn’t just teleported the berries away but also wasn’t sure what method she’d used. Whatever the case was, he would assume she wasn’t cheating too badly, so as soon as the fire was made, he began weaving a second smaller basket.

The project took him the whole night to finish.

But he was proud of his little creation. It was a basket small enough to fit inside the first one, with its walls being thicker and sturdier than the larger one, and with a lid that could be strung closed with knots. The thing was tied to the bottom of the first larger basket to ensure it couldn’t be yanked away.

It left him no room to take the trap parts, but now Liam had a goal.

With some nice cool spring water and charred flesh to start his day off, he immediately set out to gather more of those berries. It was a different section of the jungle, so he had to tread a little more carefully, but eventually he found the first clump of berries.

Carefully storing them into the smaller basket and tying the proper fastening knots, he set out for the next bush.

First one, then two, then four. By the time the smaller basket had reached capacity, half a day had gone by, and Liam was presented with a decision: Either keep wandering the jungle in wait for the thief, or head back and hope the thief would see that as its chance to act.

He opted to go back to camp (after checking he still had all the berries), better not be completely exhausted. Besides, maybe the thief was camping his camp as a way to save themselves the energy of following him throughout the day?

Walking through the foliage, carefully identifying the traits of the various trees, Liam was a bit surprised at how easily he could orient himself. There was this mild feeling of… comprehension about the landscape, the trees, the jungle itself. Some parts had thicker growths that were nigh impossible to walk through without getting your face slapped by foliage. And other areas were suspiciously devoid of bushes, only having trees and saplings. And even though Liam couldn’t identify the specific tree species, he could still recognize which tree he’d seen before.

This felt off in its own way, Liam didn’t remember his time before meeting Umira, but he was absolutely certain he’d never ventured into a jungle. Yet it was almost as if he was starting to understand the…

“No, that can’t be right.” He cocked his head. “There’s no such thing as ‘language of nature’… is there?”

“You tell me, little human.”

The voice whispered into his ear.

Liam jumped, spinning around.

In that split second, something tugged at his basket with enough force to lift him further off the ground. There was an immediate shriek as the pulling force let go, and Liam was allowed to fall back down to the ground. The human already had brought out his knife as he stared up at the attacker, ready to defend himself.

It was an orangutan of some kind, except this one’s arms were twice as long and far thinner, its fur made entirely out of shadows, its eyes fiery embers. Gray blood dripped from the ape’s wounded palm, its hand had fingers a little over twice the length of a human’s.

“That was a nice secret.” Maridah commended, licking her wounds, closing each of them with slow carefulness while she used her other hand to hang from the tree. “Nasty little surprise.”

Liam eyed his basket, the smaller one had been squeezed tight enough to reveal the sharpened bones he’d hidden underneath. The construction was, in fact, two baskets, one covered in spikes, while the other remained loose around it, meant to easily give way if someone tried to grab it.

“What was that about languages?” Liam asked, recovering his footing.

“Though plants, animals, and monsters do not use words or concepts like you sentients do, they still communicate in their own way.” Maridah swung herself up to her branch, staring at him. “Not that you’d try to understand, after all, the gift I gave you was a ‘pathetic’ blessing, no?”

He rolled his eyes. “You probably cheated and upgraded it while I was asleep.”

The Goddess hastily looked away.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” He teased, grinning a little as he hastily checked that nothing had escaped the confines of the smaller basket.

“Let us see whether you get to safety with the loot you’ve stolen from this Goddess’ most sacred ground.” As she said this, Liam spotted other eyes looking down at him. There had to be at least a dozen shadow-apes, and their numbers were increasing. “I think a minute should be enough of a head, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Of course.” A fellow Maridah-ape agreed. “We are so generous.”

“And smart.”

“And vain.” Liam whispered under his breath.

“Make it thirty seconds.” The Goddess narrowed her eyes at him. “Twenty-nine…”

With a silent curse, he broke into a full sprint.

The troop of apes howled, counting down the seconds before the chase began.