“Why is everything so dirty?” Victori complained moments after they stepped off the paved road.
“Because… it is dirt…” Drim did his best to sound as uncondescending as possible, but she wasn’t making it easy.
Surprisingly, she complained very little for the rest of their brief walk, but that was because she was so out of breath that she could barely form words. An athlete, she was not.
“Alright, take a rest,” Drim suggested once they’d made it deep enough into the woods that he could start scouting. But first, it seemed he had to attend to her a bit longer as her eyes struggled to find somewhere to sit. Really, anywhere on the ground or up against a tree would be fine, but he guessed that was the problem.
Assuming that her issue was not wanting to get some light dirt on her clothes, Drim undid his cloak and set it down on the ground as a blanket. Victori promptly planted her butt down on it with a thump.
“That’s a bow, right?” she inquired once she regained some breath and Drim had assembled his weapon. “Can I try it?”
Another short laugh that Drim couldn’t help escaped his lips. “If you can pull it back, sure.” He handed the weapon over to Victori. The fact that she struggled to even hold it upright without her limbs shaking didn’t bolster confidence in her capability. She tugged on the bowstring made of vines with all her might, but the bow’s limbs didn’t even budge.
Drim had assumed her interest would have died there, but her face was more distraught and upset than he expected. “Tell you what. I can use my power to handle the strength part. You just have to aim and release.”
“Power? Oh, you’re one of those Fiend things, right?” Victori’s lack of awareness for world events was getting a bit disheartening. “I ran into a Fiend once when father took us with him on a business trip. What was his name? The Monk? He was acting as a guard for some Central Peace representatives. I don’t think he was taking his job very seriously, but his outfit was interesting at least. Father even had one of his traditional dress imported for me afterwards.”
An odd boon of this trip; a new Fiend that Drim had never heard of. He’d have to look into them later.
For now, he watched Victori struggle to aim at all. Drim had used his Curse to pull back the bowstring most of the way, still requiring Victori to put in at least some effort. Drim slipped an arrow onto the string between her fingertips, but since Victori’s arms were so wobbly, the arrow kept bouncing away from the grip.
Finally, she managed to get it under control and at least hold it steady enough that she could point it in a direction. Drim made sure to stay behind her at all times, not letting a wildly inaccurate girl be the death of him.
“Try to aim for that tree straight in front of us,” Drim gave her guidance. Victori let the arrow loose and it went flying. The added strength of Drim’s Curse meant it had enough velocity to properly soar through the air, and to her credit, she did hit a tree. It just wasn’t the tree Drim had pointed at, or even one remotely close to it.
Still, it was a problem that could hopefully be corrected. He’d let her aim this first shot entirely on her own so that Drim could watch her form, and then help her adjust where needed. Once the next arrow was nocked, Drim grabbed Victori’s arms from behind and helped her position them appropriately. He then pressed a bit into her back to straighten her posture since she’d been twisted and slouching.
The next arrow didn’t hit anything, but it was actually pretty close to the target. It only took a few more tries before Victori actually hit the tree with a decently impressive shot. While pretty average for someone experienced, she was still overwhelmed with joy—so much so that she ended up dropping the bow in her excitement.
Drim quickly grabbed her and spun her away from the sharp piece of metal. “Sorry about that,” he apologized after seeing her confusion. “The limbs of the bow are actually made of very sharp blades. I didn’t want you to get hurt.” ‘Getting hurt’ would have been putting it lightly, since it was falling straight towards cutting her foot right off.
“Okay, so Drim, what are we hunting?” Victori asked once the panic had settled.
“Well, we’ve probably scared away just about everything with all of our commotion,” he explained. “Our best bet at this point would probably be a bird.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“What, like shoot one out of the sky? You’re joking right?”
Drim didn’t answer, and instead scaled the nearby tree in seconds. His clambering had caused enough of a ruckus for the few remaining birds to take flight. He fired five shots, but sadly only hit four birds. Not his best, but he was a little out of practice since he hadn’t been hunting as often. In the past, he’d been able to not only hit every shot, but occasionally, hit multiple with a single arrow.
As the arrows descended with their spoils, Drim did his best to alter their trajectory with his Curse to make them easier to retrieve. It was a bit harder than normal because of the added weight, but he still managed to get them all near where Victori was sitting. It made her jump, not expecting bird-skewered arrows to start raining from the sky.
“Okay, can we head back now?” Victori asked, the novelty of the great outdoors already wearing thin.
“Uhh, not quite yet,” Drim disappointed her. “If we were to just cook these, they’d be exceedingly bland. I’m fine with it, but your refined palate may not be able to get it down. We should find some herbs if we can, and maybe some vegetables to stuff them with.”
Drim trounced around the area for a while, seeing what he could forage. It didn’t take him long to find some berries and a few herbs. Victori sat watching for a while longer before she decided to try some foraging of her own. He doubted she’d find anything of worth, but didn’t want to discourage her as long as she stayed in the vicinity.
She, of course, blew away his expectations entirely, returning with an arm full of mushrooms. There was a smug look on her face as if she was saying ‘I thought this was supposed to be hard.’
More than one mushroom she was carrying drew Drim’s eyes for a variety of different reasons. Without explanation, he grabbed her by the sleeve and forcefully tugged her away, causing her to drop all those hard-found mushrooms on the ground.
He pulled her all the way to the closest creek he could find, and forced her arms down into the water. Minutes of scrubbing later, Drim applied some disinfectant he carried around in his quiver for exactly this kind of emergency. It wasn’t the first time he came across someone who had touched something they shouldn’t have in the wilds, or they had an infected injury, so it was always good to have on hand.
“Poisonous, poisonous, poisonous,” Drim listed off the mushrooms as he went through them when they made it back to the pile. He absorbed each of them as he went so that they couldn’t do further harm.
“I get it, okay,” Victori griped, not even looking at him as she rubbed her still red and irritated arms.
“Sorry, it’s my fault,” Drim couldn’t help but admit. “I shouldn’t have left you unsupervised. Not going to let you out of my sight again. Oh, this one will only cause you horrible and relentless diarrhea. These four however, are edible, and two of them are actually quite delicious. Good find.”
That bit of praise was enough for Victori to continue her now-supervised foraging without complaint. They found some good leaves they could use for prep and serving as well as a few nuts that would be good roasted or ground into paste. Drim also picked some nettles they could use to make tea, the stinging not bothering his bare hands.
Victori’s eyes grew wide when she saw Drim grow a small tree right in front of her, only now actually seeing the full potential of his Curse. “What are you doing?!” she inquired as Drim started to break the tree apart into perfectly sized logs.
“Making firewood,” Drim answered casually as he continued his work. “It’s easier for me to just make these than to try to find good, dry wood.”
“No! I mean if you could make plants the whole damn time, then why did we just go through all that trouble to scrounge for scrap!”
“Oh, uhh,” Drim struggled to think of how to explain it while still keeping it simple. “My Curse can replicate some parts of plants like spiciness, texture, and medicinal properties, but so far I haven’t been able to properly recreate taste and nutrition. Anything we ate would basically be tasteless mush. It’d make you less hungry, but you’d still need to eat something else to live.”
“Why do we need firewood, though?” she dropped her earlier complaint after a proper explanation. “We have a kitchen back home.”
“An empty kitchen.”
“No! It’s not empty,” Victori corrected. “We may not have any food, but my father keeps all our houses stocked with any amenities needed to live comfortably, in case we need to move there suddenly. So all the appliances will work, and we have utensils and pans and stuff.”
“Okay, I guess,” Drim thought about it. “This food would certainly taste better roasted over a fire, though.”
“I don’t care anymore!” Victori was at her wits end. “I’m so hungry right now, I’ll eat literally anything. I want to be indoors, and I want a bath!” Her patience had run out as she smacked a bug that landed on her. Maybe she wouldn’t be having such a tough time if she’d put on the bug-repellent lotion that Drim had offered. But, she’d refused because she thought it smelled bad.
Still, he agreed to her request and escorted her back to the mansion. Her suffering only increased when she collapsed a shortways into the walk, and embarrassment only furthered when Drim had to carry her the rest of the way on his back.