I awoke the next morning, to find a very disturbing scene. The tree that I was to be my sleeping shade, was now covered in plenty of holes. It was as if someone had carved a perfect hole into it or someone grabbed a lightsaber, just to carve a circle and leave. Parts of the holes were charred and the place where I would have laid was now a crater in the ground.

"Arf!" The dog said, still excited as always, my teeth were now getting used to not being brushed everyday and felt dry.

I picked up a berry and took a bite, the sweetness was now slightly getting to me. Don't take me wrong, I'm grateful to the berries, I wouldn't have been able to survive this long without water otherwise.

But the flavour, which was once flavourful, was getting bland, even though it’s been two maybe three days since I awoke, depending on whether I slept through an entire day, and I was already at the point of eating that spicy berry, to feel something, anything.

Maybe that's why people eat spicy food?

I looked over to the pup, he was dragging along three of the spicy berries, by our sleeping area, clearly happy with itself, I decided to ask.

“Hey,” he turned to look at me. “I was just wondering, if you’d be willing to share some?” I said the last part hastily.

“Rar?” The pup, for his part, tilted his head in confusion as he stared at me, it was most definitely cute.

“Well I was wondering if you’d be willing to trade some berries with me”

“Rawr” in a high pitch the pup barked out, obviously denying my request,

“Oh c’mon, you know what they say, ‘a happy dog is as happy as a log’, I’m the dog in this saying, they don’t say that, I am the one who says that. Now. Just then. I said that.”

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“Arf!” turning his head away he started to walk away from me.

I can always try to find food, how hard could it be?

Food, in fact, was very difficult difficult to locate, I had been in the forest for a little over two hours and hadn't found a single thing.

I had first tried to pick up some wild mushrooms that I found, but as I went to pick them up, some powder was flung into my eyes, I distinctly remember hearing, “Foon!” and when I was able to open my eyes again, they were gone.

Foon? Mushrooms didn't make Foon sounds

That wasn’t the only weird thing to happen to me, I tried to pick up some banana-like things growing in bundles of three, but animals would always grab it before me. At first it was a bird or two, then a round monkey who just gave me death stares, then a yellow mouse thing with a pointy tail.

At this point I had given up entirely on finding edible vegetation and went to the river, since the water went up to my waist I was able to see most fishes swimming through the stream. No matter what fish I tried to catch, it just slipped out of my hands.

I then tried to resort to a spear, but the thing was too slow in my hands to catch anything. Anything I did end up catching ended up jumping out of my hands and slapped me across the face with its fins.

Dejected, I fell on my face, to a pup whose face looked on the border of disappointment and sadness as he stared at me.

Resigned, he took a berry from a newly made leaf pouch and handed me one.

When had he made that?

I wondered, on the pup’s back was now a backpack created from green leaves and collar, no not a dog collar, but one that looked like something that a nineteenth century vampire would wear.

That obnoxious vampire’s collar, which was way too large, but this one was dog sized and made out of a leaf.

Grrrgh

My stomach rumbling, I took the berry and ate it, my pride diminished.