In the forest proper, Cuppy cupped a hand to his ear, listening for chirping birds. "There." he pointed up at a tall tree. "Gimme a boost." Cuppy requested a piggyback to get into grabbing range of the lower branches.
The boy was fairly light, certainly not the hardest thing Richie had to lift, but he recoiled from the indignity of someone standing on his back, hunched over with his ass stuck out like he had just dropped the soap in prison.
"Hurry and get your scrawny ass up there, I'm attached to this jacket, not happy about your dainty little footprints in it." Richie grunted.
"Stand up straighter, I've almost got it." Cuppy said, balancing himself like a surfer with spread arms as they adjusted.
Once Cuppy actually caught hold of a branch to get a solid grip on, he practically scrambled up the tree like a spider monkey.
"Damn, dude can climb." Richie whistled as he looked up.
Cuppy stood at the top rungs of the tree, having located a blue jay nest.
"Hi there!" Cuppy greeted the birds, and was met with aggravated pecks to the face in quick succession. "Ow! Hey! I just need to borrow your unborn!"
Cuppy's negotiations drifted down to Richie. "They're very reassured, I'm sure." he rolled his eyes.
"Heads up!" Cuppy shouted down.
"Huh?" Richie looked up to see the nest, and a dozen eggs, falling down to him. "What the shit?!?"
He deftly snatched the nest out of the air, noticed in an instant that it was upside down, flipped it over, then raced back and forth in a panic catching each of the eggs neatly in the nest, and breathed a sigh of relief on the tail of his ragged panting.
"Eggs - check!" Cuppy announced.
They dug in damp soil for worms to throw on Cuppy's hooks, and cast their lines into the reservoir, where Cuppy sat with his short legs dangling over the concrete lip.
"You think we'll catch anything in a man-made lake?" Richie asked.
"I saw some splashing around, I think they were fish jumps. It's not unlikely this could have been something like a seafood farm." Cuppy answered.
Richie threw off his clothes save for his boxers, and kicked off his shoes. "I'll take a look then. Watch my pole for me."
He lugged a heavy rock to the edge of the reservoir, where an outcropping of stone sloped into stairs leading under the waterline. He psyched himself up for the cold plunge, took a deep breath, and dropped off the side. The cool water was an instant shock to the system, but refreshing, bringing clarity. He forced his eyes open against the murk as the rock he carried sunk him deeper and deeper. He popped his ears a bit to offset the unpleasant pressure beginning to build with the depth. It was getting darker and colder, and he doubted he'd be able to see anything. The moment his feet touched bottom and sank into soft mud though, his dragon tattoos began to glow their intense azure light again, illuminating the lakebed in a large radius around him. He saw weeds amidst the mud, buried shells and rocks, and fish swimming about - mostly trout and sturgeon.
There are fish alright. Well that's one less thing to worry about. Oh, what have we here? Richie eyed a suspicious-looking mudhole shrouded in strands of freshwater kelp. That's a catfish den, no doubt about it. Richie walked himself to the aquatic den with his weight grounding him against his body's natural buoyancy. Hugging the mouth of the mudhole, he shoved his hand and arm inside up to his shoulder. He'd seen noodling before, and the concept wasn't exactly difficult to grasp. The glow of his arm acted like the bioluminescent lure of an anglerfish or other deep sea predator, and he felt a gaping set of fish jaws clamp down around his arm almost up to the elbow in seconds.
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He's a hefty one! Richie thought, pressing his feet against the wall to gain leverage as he tried to tug his prey out of its hole. He strained and began to feel his chest burn as his held breath ran low. With a spurt of help from his dragons, Richie yanked the specimen - a four-footer beast with whiskers trailing like a long wispy mustache - free of the den in a final surge of strength. Richie retracted his arm a bit and forced his fingers through the catfish's gills, then began dragging it back toward the surface, his rock weight turned over in the mud where it lay abandoned.
He's a fighter too, just give it up, you big bastard! Richie cursed the fish in his head as it tried its best to stall long enough for Richie's breath to give out, while Richie waited for the fish to fatigue instead. It was a battle of endurance, and either side of the lake's surface was an instant win condition in either party's favor.
Not getting anywhere trying to lug the large catfish straight up, kicking his legs fruitlessly under him against the weight, Richie instead felt his dragons pull him in the direction of Cuppy's fishing line. Seeing the silvery flash of the line in his range, Richie grasped at the line and gave it a few solid tugs.
When Richie finally broke the surface, it was with a pained gasp, and a huge, desperate lungful of air. "Fucker damn-near drowned me. Here," he slammed the fish overhead and onto a flattened rockslab, dazing it and finally breaking free of its jaws. Richie shook out his arm, grimacing distastefully at the bleeding marks left by needle-like teeth. "Fish - check."
Beside Cuppy was a small pile of trout and other smaller fish he had caught in the meantime. "And check!"
His marionette was propped up against a rock, a fishing pole of its own tied to its hands.
In the last of the fading light, they foraged for last-minute ingredients, finding rosemary, wild garlic, nuts and legumes.
"Don't pick those mushrooms, they're poisonous." Cuppy cautioned Richie.
"Yikes, close call." Richie grit his teeth.
"Indeed. These ones are edible." Cuppy indicated a group of button mushrooms, and began plucking them from the ground.
"What about these ones?" Richie asked, indicating another circle of fruiting bodies.
"Oh, those are 'wheeee!' mushrooms." Cuppy said.
"Wheee?" Richie asked, scratching his head again.
"You know, like on a roller coaster." Cuppy explained.
Richie looked at the shrooms a moment, then scooped them up. "Substance abuse - check." Richie smiled.
When they had finally returned to base, and Richie had finished drying himself off, Cuppy emptied cooking implements including a crockpot and a frying pan from his backpack.
"Only one problem, we don't have any electricity." Richie said.
"No big deal, I've got tinder." Cuppy said, rifling through his bag some more.
They stewed their vegetables and carbs, and set to work frying the fish in an herbed coating made with the blue jay eggs. Cuppy had some breadcrumbs on hand in his survival kit leftover, and they coated the fish thoroughly, setting it to turn a beautiful golden-brown in the sizzling skillet.
"We made good time hauling all this in before nightfall." Richie said, amazed.
"Many hands make light work." Cuppy replied.
After they had satisfied their stomachs and chased dinner down with crisp, clean water collected from an unspoiled creak, they passed the time with calligraphy by lantern-light.
"Kanji require a delicate touch, it ain't like abstract paint lines going scattershot. Trace every line with focus and intent." Richie advised, touching up the details on 'sea'.
"Like this?" Cuppy asked, showing his work on 'bird'.
The huge meal they had eaten, and the digestion that followed, ensured both would become sleepy before long. In that time before they turned in, they had sketched out a few dozen different kanji.
'Pride', 'mountain', 'dog', 'virtue' - by the end of it, Cuppy's final rendering of 'pure' was almost passable. Richie, for his part, was at first content to finish with 'dragon'. As yawns began to escape him, however, he thought of the black wolf he had seen in the tunnel, and in his visions. In a moment of loose association, he wrote 'moonlight', and stared at it a few silent moments.
Wherever you are, I hope you're ok. Richie spared a thought toward his recurring visitor.
"You sure you've got first watch?" Richie asked Cuppy with a hint of concern in his voice.
"Yeah, get some shut-eye." Cuppy gave him a thumbs up.
Richie shrugged, placed his finished sheets in a loose pile beside his bedroom, and went down like a brick.