Blessedly, the water pump isn’t too far from the entrance, so I run in and give it a try. Sky walks up beside me and looks rather curious about what I am doing, pumping a handle up and down like a maniac.

She tilts her head and watches me work until some dirty water comes spilling out of the spicket, startling her. The water soon starts to clear as I keep pumping, running the dirt out of the system.

Gathering a handful of water, I run it through my hair and scrub at my scalp. Without my pumping it the water soon stops flowing. Gesturing to the pump, I ask Sky to pump it for me. She looks excited, happy to get to play with the devise that seemingly makes water.

With her pumping and looking absolutely amazed, I kneel down and stick my head under the flowing water. Ripping off the remain scraps of clothing on my body, I wash myself down and scrub until I am no longer died red.

Switching places with Sky, I direct her to get under the water. She got some blood on her when she was holding onto me, so I need to get her clean.

Removing her loincloth half skirt thing that she wears, she does as she is told and squeaks happily as the water runs over her head and down her body. Once I no longer see any red on her, I stop the water.

Since she isn’t wearing it anymore, curiosity compels me to look, but honestly, I don’t see anything down there. It’s all covered in fur and hidden away. Would I be able to see anything if she was a boy? Honestly, I have no idea. Kobolds don’t wear much of anything except for a loincloth, maybe a sash or some simple robes and sometimes some looted human clothes, but that’s it.

She doesn’t even wear anything on her chest, but I’ve never seen a Kobold with breasts, so I guess they just have no reason to? Really, besides having a bit of feminine vibe to her, it's pretty hard to tell if a Kobold is male or female, so I am still mostly just assuming that she is a girl.

Deciding that it is not important enough for me to worry about, and that I am certainly not about to go sticking my hand between her legs just to satisfy my curiosity, I disregard that line of thought. Heading over to my bag I dig out my bath towel; second rule of the hitchhiker’s guide, always carry a towel.

Getting to work on drying myself off, I watch as Sky shakes herself, droplets of water flying off of her in every direction. She looks really funny with all of her fur damp, and I can’t help but giggle a bit at it. I don’t laugh because that damn migraine is still kicking around in the back of my head.

Finishing drying myself off, I call Sky over to me. She runs over and I hold out the towel to help dry her off. Understanding what it is I want to do; she lets me wrap her up in the towel to rub her down and work some more of the water out of her fur.

Once I have her good and fluffed, I leave the towel wrapped around Sky so she can keep drying herself. Digging into my bag again, I fish out my brush and get to work on sorting out my hair before it finishes drying into a tangled mess. With that sorted out, I take the towel from sky and lay it on my lap. Directing her to sit, I use the brush and run it through her fur.

At first, she is really shy about it, but eventually she is leaning back against me and letting me groom her with a satisfied look on her face. I’m glad that I can help her relax a bit, I imagine that she was under a lot of stress today. She must have had a real fright, being attacked by a freaking bear kaiju of all things.

Once I’ve got her looking all fluffy and brushed, I sit up and get some clothes out. Getting dressed into fresh underwear, jeans, and a low-hanging long-sleeved sweater. Finally dressed and not feeling exposed anymore, I call for Sky to come and follow me. Walking over she quickly gets her loincloth and puts it back on before following me to the door.

I look down at her and think. She is basically just running around naked, isn’t she? Although, I don’t think she really cares, probably just a difference in culture. Still, maybe I should try and find some clothes for her, at the very least some shorts for her to wear instead of a loincloth…

A thought popping into my head I stop where I am and shrug off my bag. Looking through it, I dig out a t-shirt with the logo for a heavy metal band on it. It’s covered in skulls and crosses and the writing for the band’s name is barely legible.

Handing the shirt to sky, I tell her it’s a gift and then I watch to see what she does with it. She stares at the shirt before looking back to me. I nod my head because I feel like she is asking for permission. Her tail starts wagging and she hugs the shirt to her body. Quickly she slips it on and squeezes her head out through the top.

The shirt, being my size, falls to be a bit below her waist, hiding most of the loincloth except for the parts that are folded to hang like a half-skirt. She looks down at herself and marvels at her new clothes, her tail wags happily behind her, moving the hem of her shirt with every pass.

“You like it?” I ask her.

She looks up at me and runs over to give me a hug.

Patting her on the head, I say, “I’m glad you like it. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for any clothes I can find for you. I’m sure you’ll look cute wearing some shorts and a tank top…”

Imagining my little friend wearing some different outfits, I hold her hand and walk us back towards the road. Are business isn’t concluded over there yet.

Making it back to the road, I stop by the large carcass of the bear. It’s not a pretty sight…

It’s soaked in blood, its chest looks like a wild animal had tried to claw it way through it, parts of the bear’s ribcage is peaking through torn flesh and muscle. While in many areas, its body is missing large patches of fur. Moving up to its head, I take in what is left of its face. Which isn’t saying much as a lot of it is simply missing. One side of its face was already burned away when I first saw it but now it is barely recognizable.

Large sections of its flesh are simply gone, showing nothing but the exposed bone of its gargantuan skull. Both of its eyes are gone, the inside of its mouth looks like it tried to make out with a woodchipper, and its entire tongue is just plain missing. The back of its throat is so torn apart that I can see the pool of blood that had collected back there even while standing from the road. Even now a small trinkle of the stuff slowly drips out of its mouth on the ground into an ever-growing pool of blood.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I reach down and pick up one of its canines that are laying scattered on the ground, it’s about the same size as my knife, which if I remember correctly, is probably still buried in its ear… Gross.

Handing the tooth to Sky, I stand up, while nursing my head. “What the hell did I do to this thing!? It was me that did this right? I mean it’s just Sky and me here and I doubt that Sky could do this. Maybe a monster came passing though?”

I shake my head, “No, that would just be stupid. If a monster did come through here and kill the bear, why would it leave Sky and me alive?”

Looking over the wounds I have to ask myself, “But… How the hell did I kill it? I’m guessing that I lost my shit and rampaged, the last thing I remember is everything going red after Sky screamed… But that doesn’t explain how?”

I just keep looking at the damage, many parts of it simply look like they were deleted or put through a shredder and I have a hard time believing that I could do any of that with just my claws and teeth.

I look over at the only witness of today’s events. Sky is busy happily gathering up the bears dropped teeth, wiping them off in the grass, and then collecting them in her little basket pack that somehow survived all of this. “I could ask Sky what happened but, I doubt I would be able to get a clear answer…”

Deciding that something is better than nothing, I call her over. She happily runs over and give me a little chirp, probably asking what I need. I point to the bear, first telling her that it is a bear, so she can learn the word, and then doing my best to ask her how I killed it.

At first she looks understandably confused, after all, I killed it, shouldn’t I already know how I did it? But then she relents and tries her best to tell me. Without much of a vocabulary to fall back on, her explanation ends up turning into a bit of a dance with her wiggling around and waving her arms about.

I put my hand to my chin and nod my head as she explains, “I see, I see. MhMh, yes… Ya, I didn’t understand any of that…” Besides being really cute, her little dance wasn’t of much help.

Scratching my head, I turn back to the bear and stare at it in confusion. Sky, realizing that I don’t need help anymore goes running off to continue collecting teeth. Maybe if we meets another Kobold tribe, she can use them for trades. I doubt it’s every day that they can get their hands on materials that good.

Letting out a huff, I give up, “Screw it, it’s not like I’m going to learn anything by staring at it all day and we only have so much sunlight left.”

Deciding to get to work, I move away a bit before setting my bag on the ground. Taking off my sweater, I set it on top of my bag and then approach the bear. I gotta get my knife back and I don’t want to get blood on my sweater. Besides, I’m still wearing a bra, so it’s not as if I am indecent.

Digging the claws on my hands and feet into it to hide, I climb up the bear. Wait, my feet? Looking down I shake one of my feet around. Oh, I completely forgot to put on my spare sandals. I didn’t even notice… Ehh, don’t care, not important.

Quickly, I make my way up on to the beast and walk across it until I reach its ear. Grimacing a bit, I reach my arm into its ear canal and pry out my blood covered knife. My arm comes out covered in blood, which at this point doesn’t so much as faze me as much as it just makes me feel a bit more exhausted with this whole situation. Going to have to wash again after I’m done with this…

Walking on its body, I navigate my way over its shoulder and then walk down its arm until I am back on the road. Resolving myself to my gruesome work, I get to it.

I spend the next couple of hours carving away at the bear, removing its claws, the last of its teeth for Sky to sort through, as well as a large section of hide off its back which I clean and then fold and rollup before tying it to my bag with the bear claws. And finally, a bunch of cuts of meat that I take from different areas around its body. I have no idea where the best cuts of a bear is to take from so I just take anything that looks good enough.

Taking more strips of hide off of the bear, I salt the meat and the inside of the hide, add a sprinkle of some spices and then wrap them and tie them up with some string.

Sky, who had finished her own work, is looking like she wants to dig into the bear right as it is, but I stop her and have her help me seasoning and wrapping up the meat like a good girl.

Even after all this time that damn migraine doesn’t want to go away. I had to keep myself working while plowing through the pain.

Satisfied with the amount that I collected, I pack half of the pile into my bag and then tell Sky that the other half is for her. The moment when she figures out that the small mountain of meat is in fact for her to keep, I see her legs start to shake as she has to fight to keep herself from collapsing.

Wrestling back control over herself, she sprints to grab her basket and then works on diligently organizing its contents and carefully packing away each block of wrapped meat as if they were bars of gold.

I take a peek inside as she works and I smile as I see how full her once empty pack is getting. It is almost filled to the brim with her meat and the teeth she collected, off to the side I can see the bags of jerky and her water bottles. Her old spear is tied to the side of her basket and sitting next to her is the knife she found back in the Humvee.

Fighting to get everything packed away, I help her out by giving her some string so she can tie her water bottles to the side of her basket and free up some space. As she works on that, I head back to the bear and cut off a square of its hide. Bringing it back over her, I sit down next to her and work on scraping the back of the hide clean.

Punching some hole in it at the corners with my claws, I run some paracord through them and then give the whole thing to her to tie onto the top of her basket as a makeshift cover. Her basket is practically overflowing, and I don’t want any of her stuff to fall out while we travel.

While the hide probably isn’t going to dry properly, being untreated, it can at the very least act as a temporary lid until we find her a better bag.

Sky, looking like the happiest Kobold in the world, quickly works on getting her basket all tied up and secured. When she is all done, she simply stands there and gazes at the basket like a mother lovingly watching her newborn child.

Understanding how important this must be for her, I stand quietly off to the side and respectfully give her some space and silence. Soon she manages to collect herself and turns her attention back to me. I simply point back towards the barn. “Come on Sky, we’ll be camping out there tonight.” Helping Sky put on her basket pack as she struggles a bit with its new heavy weight. Then we walk back over to the barn.

Reentering the building, I find a good spot inside and we drop off our stuff. After washing the blood off both our hands, I finally put my sweater back on.

Heading back outside I collect up a bunch of sticks and tear apart a small tree that was growing out in the field. There's something really gratifying about being able to turn a tree into firewood with your bare hands. Dragging the wood back into the barn, I make sure that the windows are open inside and then get to work on building a campfire.

Sky is a bit further into the barn and looking around. When I check on her, she is busy examining a pitchfork, but I think she decides that it is too big for her, so she leaves it where it is. With the fire now burning to a good point, I take out a package of bear meat and use my knife to cut it into strips, setting them up by the fire to cook.

After some time, Sky come wondering over, drawn in by the scent of cooking meats. Her eyes shine as she watches bits of fatty grease boil off of the meat and fall to the floor with a sizzle.

We enjoy a meal of very greasy bear meat and soon the sun is setting outside. Sky gathers herself up a pile of straw and makes a nest close to the crackling fire where she sits and watches the flames.

Getting up from the fire, I head over to the door; I sort of broke it when I kicked it in. Forcing it back into its frame, I drag over a nearby worktable and use it to barricade the door. Just in case anything tries to enter during the night.

As we relax, the day soon comes to an end and the outside world becomes dark.

Sky, who has understandably had a very long day, quickly grows tired and curls up in her nest, before long she is deep asleep. Getting up, I lightly cover her in a blanket and then take my spot next to fire.

I spend the rest of the night working on my sewing and keeping the warm embers of the fire alive. As the night passes I listen to the sounds of nature as not to far away, the creatures of the night fight over and tear apart the massive carcass of the bear we left on the highway.

In the morning, I doubt there will very much of it left.