The sun’s energy bled into Lilau, bringing her out of her rest and into her new reality. She opened her eyes and took in her handiwork. Triangular walls stretched a short way above her, the woven branches allowing her enough room to sit up, but not enough to make it difficult to keep warm. Once she had established all the necessities she required, she would consider expanding her simple shelter. Right now, all she needed from it was a warm and dry place to sleep. It fulfilled that task well.

She gnawed on a strip of dried meat as she considered her next move. With her shelter, water and fire taken care of, food was her next top priority. She brought enough supplies for a few days, but after that, it would be up to her ability to hunt and gather. Good thing Raval had been a thorough teacher.

After a quick scrounge for supplies, she had what she needed to get started. It would take her a bit to assemble a decent bow and arrows, and figure out the schedules and habits of all the larger game. Smaller game was usually more predictable.

She returned to the edge of the stream and hunkered down to examine the growing number of tracks and trails that littered the area. The soft, moist ground was already a mess of prints. Four berry-shaped toes of a fox, the pincers of deer hooves, the nearly human-looking prints of a raccoon. She made a mental note of that one. On the odd chance it left her alone, she would do the same, but it was far more likely that it would see her as an easy mark. Raccoons were too smart for many small game traps. However, if you knew what was getting in to your stuff, a specialized trap wasn’t difficult to make.

Lilau put the information away for if she needed it, then padded over to a new patch where she noted a sinewy whip that marked the passage of a snake and, finally, what she wanted. The telltale prints of a rabbit, its long feet making indents that mirrored its long ears, marching towards the water’s edge, then back out again.

She stayed low, following the tracks out into the underbrush. As the soil lost its ability to keep paw prints, Lilau shifted her focus to the plants that surrounded her. Each one held subtle clues to the passage and actions of woodland creatures. Small bits of hair, residual odor, shifts in direction of growth, scuffled leaves. All whispered their stories in a language she knew well.

Before long, she had found the perfect spot for her first snare. She assembled the noose of woven cord, suspending it a little over two hands over the forest floor with two sticks driven into the earth. It looked harmless enough, but the mundane looking circle would collapse as soon as her prey bumbled into it, strangling it in an inescapable grip. Her mouth watered at the thought of fresh meat. For now, all she could do was wait and hope her training had paid off. No, her training would pay off. She knew it. She would survive out here and she would thrive.

She repeated her mantra as she turned back towards her shelter and her next task. While she waited for the rabbit’s demise, she would look for food at another excellent source — the stream.

A large shadow passed over her. She dove instinctively to the side, peering up through the cover of branches. Three large carrion birds flew in a lazy oval above. Their sluggish pattern meant one of two things: that there was a dead creature or there soon would be. Since her nose had picked up no scent of decay beyond the mulch atop the soil, she decided it must be the latter. She estimated the distance between her current location and her camp. It wasn’t side-by-side, but it wasn’t as far away as she would have preferred.

Carrion birds were harmless to her as long as she wasn’t dying, by which point she figured it didn’t matter. However, she wouldn’t be the only thing to notice their sudden interest in the area, nor would she be the only to notice the smell when whatever they were circling died. A sufficiently large creature would draw in larger predators who, after having their fill of the scavenge, would then seek other potential meals in the area.

She could track and kill it herself, giving her the opportunity to clear the carcass before others took note. Or at least she could if she had any hunting tools other than her knife. A knife could end many things. But she didn’t fancy getting up close and personal with anything larger than a medium-sized rabbit, and with no way to determine what was on its last leg, she had to prepare for everything. Looked like her plans for making a bow and spear just got moved up to today. That gave her a lot less time for fishing and making nets, but the threat of encroaching predators held priority.

*****

Cold shocked through her core, icy tendrils reaching up toward her heart. Air sucked into her chest as she gasped, her lungs complaining heartily when she forced it back out again in a smooth, controlled motion. The sun was at its peak, its warmth falling on her face more than a welcome contrast to the chill in her feet. A fervent hope filled her mind that her quarry would cooperate before numbness set in.

Fish, which seconds before had been dancing around with abandon, were nowhere to be seen. Willing her body still, she stood in the center of the stream and waited. After a few minutes, the fish made a few cautious darts in and out of cover, their tiny brains unable to connect the large, rock-still object now taking up their space with the same threat that had frightened them into hiding mere moments ago. She ignored the tingle of excitement as she waited and watched. Growing bolder, they moved further out. One brown fingerling, barely the length of her hand, brushed against her leg. She didn’t twitch. As though the others had been watching, more followed when the little one survived its encounter with the new scenery.

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Suddenly, glittering fish surrounded her, looping around without a care. Not daring to move even her head, she shifted her eyes downward, filtering through the mass of aquatic forms until she settled on a suitable mark. This fish was a gray color, with orange-brown speckled down its sides. More importantly, it was big enough to be worth the effort while not being so large she couldn’t get a good grip on it.

She struck like lightning, her hands squeezing her prey in a vise before any of its comrades could react. With a heave, it left the water, its scales setting off a dazzling display as it sailed through the air. It slapped the ground with sufficient force to weaken its vain attempts to return to its watery home. Lilau shook off all attempts at stealth as she launched herself from the stream, grabbed a rock and brought it down on the stranded fish’s skull. It gave off one last, feeble flop, then lay still.

Lilau drew her knife, and set to work. Slitting the fish from tail to jaw, she spilled the slippery insides to the dirt. The simple incision had also let its smell escape, which wasted no time in wafting up in the unmistakable cloud of piscine. She sifted through the mess, checking for any signs of worms or illness. Each part held a healthy sheen and proper color.

She gathered up her meal and its offal and set off. Its demise meant its comrades would be on edge for a while, making further fishing attempts pointless. Besides, she had plenty of other things to do before the sun set. For starters, getting her fire going so she could start on her dinner, then she would have to finish sharpening and fastening all of her rock heads for her spear and arrows. Being so short on time, a simple spear and a couple of arrows were all she could accomplish. She just hoped it would be enough to end whatever was attracting the carrion birds. Of course, there was always the possibility that it would die before she got there, but survival depended more on being prepared than hopeful.

*****

She rose with the first hint of daybreak, her skin tingling with the promise of a new day even as her heart sped up in anticipation of what she must do. With her bow in hand and her spear stuck flimsily to her back with a woven plant-fiber rope, she picked her way towards the area where she had seen the carrion birds acting out their dance of imminent death.

She crouched low as she entered, shifting the arrows in her belt. The carrion birds no longer circled, which meant either they were all resting or the doomed creature had already met its fate. She tested the air. Sharp scents of the forest mingled with a stronger than usual layer of wet detritus thanks to the heavy dew settled on it. Not dead yet then, or not dead long. Either way, she needed to confirm it with her own eyes.

Her ears strained in the early quiet, trying to pick up on the sounds of an injured animal as her soft-leather shod feet sank silently into the earth. The area the birds had staked out wasn’t large and an animal on its last leg wouldn’t wander far, yet she was having trouble finding anything.

A low growl emanated from her left. With a flick of her wrist, she freed an arrow, nocking it with the point angled towards the sound. A cluster of thick, bushy plants — sparrow-fruit bushes, her memory told her — obscured the cause of the noise. Another rumble escaped the bushes, no louder or closer than the first. Perhaps it was all the owner could muster. It sounded young, its growls almost high-pitched.

With no immediate danger, she placed her bow on the ground, standing as she pulled her spear free. If it wasn’t coming to her, she would have to go to it.

The rumbles continued as she drew near, allowing her to pinpoint the creature’s exact hiding spot. She inched forward, raised her spear, aimed, and hesitated.

A bedraggled looking, yet somehow still fluffy, little black tail with white on the ends, stuck out the back of its hiding place, disappearing into an equally small, mostly hidden black body. She knew what the creature was and why it was dying. It was a wolf pup, its tiny size alluding to the likelihood that it was a runt and therefore abandoned, just like her.

She stumbled back a few steps, dropping in front of the underbrush. An outcast, a reject, left to die to not be a burden to its caretakers. The Elders had told her the story of how the hunters had found her, that image now replaying itself repeatedly in her mind. Left on its own, this pup would die just as she would have. But what if she saved it like the Elders had saved her? Her brief life bloomed in her thoughts. Unwanted, hated for the simple fact that she was still alive. Perhaps returning to the land was better after all. Yet....

The growling from the bushes had subsided, the pup deciding its ineffective threats were no longer worth the effort. Lilau shifted up onto the balls of her feet, rocking back and forth in contemplation. Wasn’t she out here to escape that hatred? Couldn’t she do the same for this wolf, born to a misfortune it had no choice in? Her breath caught in her throat. A choice! It wasn’t her place to decide its fate, was it? If it wished her help, let it show so.

She dipped into her food pouch and drew out a chunk of dried meat, offering it to the still silent pup. Just when she figured it had refused her offer, a tiny, white speckled, black snout wormed its way out of cover.

It stopped, a low whine escaping it as it realized the offer required it to leave what little refuge it had established. She kept her distance. A head followed the snout, amber eyes dull, but interested. A body, belly flat to the dirt, scooted out as well, letting her get a good look at it. As she expected, it looked to be just weaned. Unlike human babies, who were abandoned at the first sign of defect or being unthrifty, wolf mothers would defend their young with ferocity until weaning, making earlier culling hazardous.

Like her, it showed no sign of physical deformity, including a fully formed set of needle-like puppy teeth that flashed as it snatched the meat from her hand and gobbled it down without chewing. It eyed her as she reached for another piece, but she could tell its apprehension of her had faded somewhat. She offered the second piece of jerky as she eased her other hand around to feel down its ribs. They sank further into its knotted black fur than she thought they would, their pronounced state telling her it had trouble feeding well before its abandonment. Typical for a runt, she mused, and she would know.

Its fringed tail made a feeble attempt to wag as she ran her hand between its ears. It had several cuts and scrapes, likely gained by its frightened flight through the forest, but its main problem seemed to be dehydration and malnutrition. That she could remedy. First, however, she had to get it back to her shelter. It was quite small for a weaned wolf pup and stick-thin to boot, but that still meant its shoulder would almost come to her waist when it stood. Such a burden would be awkward to carry any appreciable distance, even if the pup allowed it. What she needed was a simple sled to pull it behind her. That would let her move it while letting her respond to any threats that might arise. Sure of her next step, she walked away to fashion her plan together, amber eyes watching her every move.