Chapter 2

As the sun rises, Eli opens his eyes to the cave mouth with the suns shining down on him. He gets to his feet, slinging his backpack with some fruits, strangely still ripe, around his shoulders as he grabs his stave. As he treks through the forest, he notices that everything seems a bit louder than before. “Should I stay in the area or explore more?” He says to himself “No we should explore, see if we can find some civilization. Maybe then we could figure out where we’re at.” Walking through the forest while keeping eyes on his surroundings he fails to notice the presence watching him from the trees. Hours pass as he walks towards the forest, taking breaks from walking and eating more fruit while getting more from the sparse shrubs. Coming upon two clearings separated by some trees he makes it about halfway until he hears some rustling to his left. Turning quickly and getting his at the ready, his eyes widen as what looks like a boar about his height and but far wider steps into the clearing. With tusks an ivory color, a gray bristly coat but with dark maroon streaks, and a long tail swinging about with a round piece of bone at the end of it. As the two stare each other down the boars scuffs his foot and with wide eyes Eli recognizes that it’s about to charge. Moving with reaction times and speed unfamiliar to him he dashes to the side at the last second as he narrowly avoids the boars first charge it circles around quiet quickly and charges again. Unable to move out of the way Eli can only prepare to endure the charge, narrowly avoids getting gored by the tusks. As it pushes him backward with its greater mass it bites down on most of his stave with a jaw that expands greater than it should be able to. As they come to a standstill Eli leaves the staff in the boar's mouth and dives to its side, which the boar crunches with some difficulty as two little pieces fall to the ground to the sides of the boar. With his back to a particularly large tree at the edge of the clearing the boar turns and charges him again after shaking its head. Diving with even greater urgency before Eli only dodging due to the boar's charge being slower than the last. Seeing the boar has one of its tusks stuck in the tree he makes to run only to hear a snap and then a squeal as the boar rips part of its tusk clean off,unable to free it completely from the tree. As it stumbles away from him, Eli seeing the weapon dashes to the tusks and pulls with all his strength ripping it free. With a roar of anger, he rushes at the boar still recovering from its self-inflicted injury and plunges the tip of the tusk into the boar's neck. Over and over, lost in his rage, he stabs the boar with its former weapon. Collapsing in exhaustion next to the boar, Eli lays there for a few minutes and then pushes himself to his feet. He lays against the recently dead boar and opens his pack to find some squished but still edible fruit. As he eats, he starts to feel better, clarity coming to his mind and realizing he could be attacked again picks up the tusk and looks around the clearing only to find it empty. Seeing that it’s going to be dark soon he grabs some of the fallen branches and carefully picked leaves to make a makeshift fire despite having no flint. As he sits there for an hour trying to light a fire with friction at the center of the clearing, he finally gets a spark and the fire steadily grows as the branches finally light. Pulling out some meat he had ripped from the hole in the boar,he uses the tusk as a skewer cooking the meat. Pulling the slightly charred meat from the boar he devours the meat, feeling even better after the hearty meal. After repeating the process with other misshapen pieces of meat, Eli lays down by the fire as it slowly dies down. Shaking despite being warmed from the fire, he sobs for a bit before suddenly steading himself. “Calm down, yes we almost died but didn’t it feel exhilarating triumphing over that beast?” he whispers to himself “Yeah but how did we do all that stuff anyway? There’s no way we should’ve been strong enough to not get trampled much less stop the boar. And don’t even get me started on how we started the fire, what the hell is happening?” With a snort he laughs “Who even cares, what matters is that we did it, we’re amazing who cares.” Laying down he closes his eyes, drifting off into a light sleep.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Later that night while Eli is sleeping, the previous presence in the tree continues to watch him. Stealthily climbing down, he gets close to Eli without waking him. He stands there for a few moments, just observing the young mans troubled sleep. Climbing back to the trees he turns and lets out a barely visible pulse before he departs into the shadows.