Twelve was that age. Too independent, but yet dependent, and there's no need to elaborate it for those we have been that age. Your maturity really starts around that age, it blossoms or wilts like a flower. Unlike a flower ones maturity doesn't die if it wilts some, and just because it blooms some doesn't mean it comes to life.

You find that out all the hard ways when your maturity starts at that stage of mental development. You have started learning you have to begin treating your life like you may have to life it on your own, and for your self. Maturity can't be summed up as indepence alone, not correctly.

At that stage it is only an 'awareness' you're not supposed to be 'aware' of at all. You're a child still, with all the benefits and ailments of a child. The independence is indeed indicative and causal towards your maturity, it is the waking towards it, those first blind steps in dark you will turn to light when you have built maturity. Over time, life, experiences, accidents, decisions.

Children may be mature for their age, but, no child may be wise for their age. Brains are developing, constantly promoting them to take-risks, try-alternatives, solve-problems, and one thing too abstract on a childs flowering mind was to come close to quantifying wisdom. They might give a few good, choice examples. They might be able to innovate many similar good ones when you've taught them a few.

They are in the age of building the divested-pieces of their minds, however. The invested-sum of those pieces they were developing, unrelated to maturity, was what they would one day turn into wisdom. The wisdom of elders above children, that was what focused childrens maturity and directed their development.

Even 'maturity' like 'wisdom', when you think about yourself at that age after being twelve yourself yourself, you can only look back and call these things fallacies. Only children who were by virtue of childhood want to be called wise, or mature, we would only call them such and mean it for their steps towards success.

Because, one day, they would be those same things. Maturity is the most confusing, it suggests adulthood and stability, yet reality isn't nearly that clean. Was it mature for fifteen year olds to go to war? Sure, but, they were not filled with a magical maturity by proxy of it. They would find maturity fast, or they would die, because their environment would demand that and nothing less.

It's 'mature' to birth, to drink, to smoke, to war, to whore, to gamble, to kill, to fight, to steal, to work for another grown person with more who wanted to make more-yet off of your every effort. We find very quickly that mature is actually, in reality as much as practice, is all of the childish things that an adult does as well.

The word 'maturity' was the first one that I saw and realized, 'Words made any meaningful communication between human beings impossible. Not merely flawed, but insanity, and vexation, vane.', and understood it was because every person had a different logical and empathetic emotion attatched to even the simplest word.

There was not just a few miniscule variations in a single word, and that between two people each with their own view of one-word, so how did we ever make sense of something as simple as a sentence? Even a short sentence by that logic would be far more complex and incalculable to be spoken aloud, without thinking it through. We did it by wisdom.

Context and judgement, but far more too. A twelve year old should not be wise, they should not be mature, and they shouldn't be near the things I was. But I wasn't a normal kid, I'd been reincarnated and Isekai'ed, and I was what I was. The things I could remember and knew by then were more than wearying.

Family. I'd started to realize they might already be gone, for having remembered some passing by now in my other life. Which were even alive? Were any? My world, it's differences, the increased everything by comparing here to there. Much was better and worse, just also all the same at-once. All I felt was the insanity of these thoughts.

How could anything exist at all if everything was so conflicted? I was aware of almost infinite-contention, not a healthy mental concept healthy for a young minds entertaining. Words wouldn't do any good to try and be understood, and I don't just mean because nobody else would have the perspective, even different perspectives wouldn't. Many different ones might.

If they reached a central idea about it, one with truth all could understand, then people would want to because it was relatable. I didn't choose to 'start' being quiet and alone. I already had been, had felt that way, becoming those things more only over time due to my overall state. Being isolated by myself, and others, that was my one harmony.

Solitude is not a sad song. It's a song of strengthening, a tune a heart plays when the mind between it and the head meets by the throat, whereby ones own comfort begins becoming the only comfort required. That was true-maturity, the kind that only blooms for the wisest elders. Independence, dependence, grace, the individual, and the world, all in unity.

We'd gone out hunting, following the squires orders who were over us, at least hundreds of times to various efforts. I can't say they never warned us, though I want to, because they'd been clearly preparing us for the day we eventually were sent out alone on our twelth-birthday. Nobody had spoken about it, sometimes a kid went missing a day.

Other times, the next time we saw the boy, he wouldn't talk to anyone and would evade us when we went to the city. Eventually there were only half of us left. Being born very late in the year meant I would be one of the last to face the 'Weaning', and be subjected to a winter hunt alone, one coming back empty-handed meant losing more than face. I'd lose my fragile position here.

I might have wondered whether it was me or the world that was crazy, and found solace in that there was some center somewhere I might find yet, but I had no designs on self-sabotage. Any idea of trying to take the easy path and be rid of Hailey was another insane bout with 'maturity' as I had seen it before.

Now, instead, I was starved for else. I'd hungered not to be looked down on, even if I spoke little at all, those others around me were as good a gauge as to how I would be seen and treated as any. Watching how those who failed had treated themselves after was a pretty good indicator, and hunger deepened to starvation.

That was a good feeling to get motivated behind, when it was winter, and you were a boy who was about to be facing forward into a dream future or falling backward within a nightmarish reality. On one hand, some day soon, I would be squired. The other held being left a commoner forever.

It would leave that feeling of dreading futures and pasts for them now, and in the future they would do the same and wish to go back then. People couldn't have a better future for theirself if they could, in fact, control time. They would never have had the potential in them to be 'more' or 'different'.

You couldn't argue that having outside 'perspective' changed that much either, in such a matter, it would only leave the option for diverging from the best self you could be into devolution. Why? Because we are all always trying to be our best self. And because outside perspective, simply, is perspective outside the self.

Trying to call it 'outside-perspective' like if you could see and comprehend it fully, you might make use of any of it, is utter denial. True insanity. Even the words implications clearly suggest it. Now, outside-direction, the source occurs from outside bounds. The result, however, is within them.

I was well down along the side of a crunchy streams bank when the 'outside-perspective' I seemed to be perceiving hit, and was in fact my memory fully realized, before I could see the difference and that it had been 'outside-directed' by the types of strings no man will ever pull at. I was made whole of mind by something that 'that god' had prepared, or acted to do.

I was more confused by the serene peace than anything, as that was the most immediate sense that I felt, and it was an inside-perspective within me I had never felt so pervasively. It fluctuated towards anxiety almost at once, but my minds own slightly anxious state from 'then' and 'now' found a decent medium quickly.

I didn't stay on the stream long. Winter animals are more clever animals, and predators instinctively know where their odds were best, that wasn't trying to camp waterholes in the winter. Carnivores could track, too, and they didn't need to look at impressions on the ground. Their senses were intuitive things, they'd follow sound and smell.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

As a human my senses were greater. We made use of even the most simple, and though we might have been limited to tracking manually, that was because the double-edge of stronger senses were greater weaknesses. Hear too well? Sounds are deafening. Smell too well? Odors overwhelm. Balance is key.

I could follow tracks, or listen to the cold I felt. Common sense tells you if you are cold wearing animal furs, they probably aren't faring much better. It was time to find someplace lower, warmer, sheltered, all the same things anyone or anything was looking about now. There'd be game there.

A deer, a wolf, a lion, an elk, bear, moose, big-game. Alyseus then may have thought he would get away with any game like most, I wasn't so sure now. A Paladin would have to be able to be able enough for at least two. For two, a deer would be too little for a winter. A moose, or a bear.

Spear. The shortbow would never kill more than a deer clean and that at a modest range, in the best conditions. If a man was using it, his longer limbs and more developed muscles, the bow might have been useful for killing a deer within reason. I'd never get that close stalking in these conditions to a deer.

But bear aren't quite as skittish as deer. Bear are even less intimidated by twelve year olds, far less than adults. Pretty stupid on the bears part, let's be honest, adults tend to be more forgiving. Adults can control their fear better, especially if they understand what they're getting into, and respond more rationally.

And the antithesis was similar to how our ancestors hunted mammoth. They ran them to death. Not off a cliff, they just ran them til' they dropped, and that was probably when the bulk of the wounding it occurred. Who knows how long this took, probably similar to modern hunts, between hours and days between spotting it and its killing or finding after it bled out.

It wasn't just normal for a twelve year old or younger to kill a bear. It was natural, genetic, instinct, just basic. Our ancestors ran mammoths into states so exhausted they were too weak to fight being gang-shanked to death, comparatively feeble and tiny, they'd have balanced their pace and pressure on it to do it safely.

I nearly made to a limb set over a pond to make my move, as the pond was deep and unfrozen, fed by a spring so only the near edges were frozen this early in winter. If I fell, I'd be in less trouble than it seemed, because the water beneath wasn't nearly as cold. The bear would leave. It could climb tree trunks faster than you, far faster, but an adult bear didn't walk out on limbs you barely could.

They'd never support their full weight, true, but a bear can't get enough of its surface area down to displace its mass across enough of the surface area of the branch to break it. If it tries, it senses it can not put down even one paw, because that paw will slip in pursuit of purchase to balance. The bear can bite and claw at the branch, it's highly intelligent, but it is only frustrated at the branch.

It doesn't realize it can worry enough of the branch to break it, but it will, and a bear climbs trees far faster than you can because of its meat-hooks on all fours. Outclimbing the bear when it sees you is foolish. They run fast, weigh plenty, and can sprint like a vehicle accelerating from a stop. Hunting bear from a tree is practical. You leave off the pressure of its potential for near-immediate contact.

The same type of people tell people, 'Oh don't climb trees from a b-b-b-b-big bad bear!', 'uninformed-people' who never hunted a bear. If they did, they used a gun, or they used a bow. Most probably shot it downwind from the sight of a scope. They at least understand it's best not to be close to one, but that's fear, not intelligence.

When you're armed on a hardwood branch, up twenty feet in a hardwood tree, out on a limb as big around as your calf, things change. The bear can't charge you, so it's most devestating advantages are completely neutered. They are pretty poor at jumping vertical if not too shabby forwards. Out of distance of reach of claws, you can safely spear a bear.

It is now a bear-in-a-barrel. The only reason I can think that experts advise against it, is wildlife-conservation attempts, although to be fair too much can go wrong for casual-use. What sport would there be bear-hunting that way? It's not hunting, it's murdering at that point. Every hunter who wanted a large game animal full of fat could have one, using themself and a tree as bait.

There was no anger between me or bear, but it took several moments for this bear to lower an arm, which moved his shoulder bone out of the way. It only took one stout stab of less than half of the spearheads length to collapse its lung, and instantly it had collapsed with it to the ground, and I'd already prepared for the follow up.

While it was falling, though not far, I was placing the easy downward heave with spear towards it again, though its distractive influnces on the limb from contact as it had fallen made me more or less impulsively throw towards its center as soon as it landed. Guts. As soon as it had taken off, the worse part was the sounds it made, though it did not go far.

In those few moments, the spilled guts, its groans, the human in me sharing the pain of the animal sympathetically were enough to overwhelm me. More than how big he was, I was impressed by the bears fragility. Dead in less than a minute, barely conscious the first few seconds, the former told by heart and the latter eyes. Not a dozen feet from the trees trunk.

'No more hunting bear like this, I'll wait until I can hunt one fair again if ever, and I will never share their secret weakness. I'll just tell people not to climb trees from bears, like everyone else. This is more cheat-codes than mules.' The thought made me think of Molly, and that led me to Kate. I'd lost all my close family, younger brother, father, mother. I did have a mother here, and a father who was a sailor.

Making neat of the mess that I'd made, I found butchering a bear with only a hunting-knife difficult. If not for the leverage of being able to flip it by the legs, to get access to the side it died on, the weight of the rest would have been too much for me to get at for butchering. All the meat and choice organs I left in the hide as I trimmed sections, leaving the hide as the last major part I cut free.

Its bladder, and stomach, I kept to make good waterskins later on. The guts, I'd busted some, and frustratedly sat with other refuse and contents. Heart, liver, lungs, tongue, I had been trimming the last of what meat I could get off of bones, when I heard an approach. First thought was it was another bear. Meat-and-fat are all the same to bears, really. Second, cubs, but this had been a male. The parts were in the hide.

"You want a hand with- oh. Oh, well, you really will want a hand with carrying it out. You skinned it and everythin', at that. Let's lug out some, at a time, only not too much at once. I'll come back with other squires, and get the rest." I nodded, and we started a cache to hide the meat. It took an hour to stash away the bulk.

Digging, first. We lowered hide and contents down painstakingly, over a few of those minutes, to a depressed area nearby where there were less roots from the tree to obstruct digging. Then, we'd spent about half that time gathering snow over on it, and cut thin tree branches. A couple hefty layers of each, for good measure. Gathering still powdery snow took the longest.

"Still had a few days. Coulda' took it easy." The squire said suggestively. "No. I won't say I could not have, but this is how long it ended up taking. I had started for the forrests and following along the Silt, first. I realized it would be better to go down into the low hills, the streams hunting isn't as good in winter with water everywhere.

"I came across where this one was getting ready to hibernate, just before I started to part from the Silts path, and I ambushed him from a tree limb where I was too close to his cave to be missed." He nodded, looked thoughtful, then skeptical. "A tree, you say? Hm. I guess that would be better than facing it up close. You're too young.

"Well, anyway, I'm out here to find a page. He is not going to be joining you in victory, but he will be joining you in caliber. Boy or two, every year, gets it in his head to try his hand at poaching. There's a tiny goat herd, it's actually an imperial owned flock, just regular goats mind, but for all appearances the few goats an old herder has.

"If you think that's a nasty trick, it ain't. Boys gotta test his chivalry and ability. If he fails his test at ability, he still leaves with his chivalry intact. Pride-sore, but he might make a squire or knight yet anyway, someday. If he'd poach at your age, with nothing but pride on the line, his chances are almost naught."

He inhaled, and exhaled both looking a bit sad and pained for the boy. "Not that they can't still become one, but, few ever do. Those types always fear humility the most, so they lose their chance forever. It only seems a thing some of us can't seem to help, it's really a position any can find themself in.

"So they make examples." He told it true. We had to leave the meat we carried with the old goat herd, who had a smoker for curing the goat and bear meat, while the squire and I dragged the boy. He'd known he was in trouble when the squire came into sight, like he'd known when the goat herder had sent out his pigeon what was coming.

And like I knew he wasn't to be called a page anymore, even in my head. "I'd say I wish I could let him take credit for the bear, that I had more time to still hunt, but it wouldn't do any good for either. They'd gladly let me take the trial for his humility so I could find it a lesson in folly." I told the squire, sore, and more than a bit annoyed.

The little bastard had fought us both so hard the squire had finally threatened him with his stave, and still the squire had to push him along some. "Probably would. Takes a lot of courage, but it would indeed be foolish. I say you should try it, if your heart compels you." "It does. But my head says its foolish. What'll they do to him? Or me?"

"A mock trial, hanging, and funeral. The crowd won't include the other pages, but, kids from around. After though, they ask you what you were guilty of." "I see. That is another lesson too, then. Are there others who will be recieving the same lesson as I will, then? If there aren't it wouldn't have the same impact."

"Fred. You?" "Alyseus." "Hope you make it a good lesson. You'll still have a trial tasked to you after, for redemption, otherwise."