Two

I spent an hour or so propped up against this creature, recovering and trying to calm myself. Most of my bleeding had stopped, even my ribs, and after some careful prodding and examination, I figured most of my wounds were only superficial. There was still a sharp pain whenever I took too deep a breath, so I figured I really had cracked a rib, but besides that, I seemed to be alright.

My leg seemed alright, though it was still a little weak when I tried to put weight on it. I probably just twisted it or nearly pulled a muscle when I was bent awkwardly under the boar. But I could walk, even if I had to take it easy, so I was thankful that it wasn’t bad. I was just going to have to be careful for a while.

As I was walking around in circles to work my leg, I took another look at the corpse lying in the dirt. It certainly did seem similar to a boar, or maybe a warthog? It was all muscles and sharp angles, with sharp little bones sticking out of all its joints, the vertebrae of its spine, pretty much any point that bent or had any significant angle had little white bits poking out.

The body was large, broad, and muscular. It actually sort of reminded me of a bulldog’s build, the ones that have their front legs really wide and a massive chest? Only this one had so much more muscle it was only a few shades shy of looking comical. As it was now, it just looked like some sadistic creation optimized to inflict suffering.

Its head was broad and angular, with a collection of horns and tusks that reminded me of antlers. It had sharp teeth, all of them pointed, and that made me cringe. A carnivore, then. Shuddering at the thought of how well evolved this thing was for defense and offense, I idly wondered what it could possibly eat, or have to defend itself from, that required quite so much evolutionary effort to be badass.

As I was staring down at it, a cold thought slide through my mind, giving me chills. I had gotten extremely lucky. If I hadn’t made the split-second decision to switch from running to defense and brace my spear, things probably would have gone very differently. I honestly think the only reason I was able to hurt it at all was that I had used its own power against it. I hadn’t even planned on it, I was just panicked that I had fallen, and thought I couldn’t outrun it.

After a deep exhale and a light slap on my face, I decided to move on with things. I had spent a while checking myself over and figured I was good to go. Frowning at the Bushlands just a few feet away, I wondered about what else might be in there. It seemed pretty dry, and most of the plants I could see didn’t have any sort of greenery on them.

Now that I thought about it, when the boar had run through one of the bushes it had pretty much exploded into bits. Checking where the boar had crashed through the hedge, there were branches scattered all on the ground. Picking one up and rolling it in my fingers, it felt dry, but it wasn’t brittle. I could snap it if I took two hands to it, but it didn’t take a lot of effort. This stuff might actually burn pretty well. I gathered up a little stack of it and went back to the pig.

Yep. There was no way I was moving this entire thing myself. I had no idea how much it weighed, but I had to put my back into it to even roll it over. I’ll have to cut it up here and carry the meat in my arms to somewhere safer. That didn’t really sound too appealing.

Looking back over the Grasslands, I saw a cluster of trees in a dip about ten minutes walk away and hoped it would have some water. I didn’t know how things worked here, but if there wasn’t water there, I’d just have to walk to the next spot. Thankfully, I had seen plenty of those places from afar when I was exploring earlier. There seemed to be groupings of trees at the base of converging hills every quarter mile or so, consistently enough to make me think I’d find water without searching all day.

Alright, a vague goal was established, so I had to see what could be done about this animal. I had no real means of salvaging the whole thing, so I was going to do my best just to get a couple of pieces of meat if I could.

The spearhead was sticking out of the pig’s back about halfway, and it took a couple of minutes and some aching fingers, but I managed to pull it out. It was detached from the stick, but it seemed mostly intact, and it still had a nice sharp edge.

It had some thick, tough skin. Trying to cut through it was a chore, like taking a dull knife to leather. But, once I had gotten through the tough outer skin, the rock slid pretty easily through the rest of it. Getting under the skin and peeling it back was easier than I expected, as was getting through the muscley meat and pulling a few slabs off of it. I was done in twenty minutes.

Since it was so easy, I decided to take the whole hide, which I laid out and put chunks of meat onto. Getting through the joint cartilage and detaching the legs was also easy, which was a relief. I could find uses for straight lengths of bone and even the hooves, after a bit of cleaning up. I even found a section of horn under the body, which I assume had snapped off in the struggle earlier.

I got a few days of food quite easily off this thing, and even some potential tools. My mood drastically improved as I stared down at my haul. All that’s left is to take it back to a safer place, like one of those little pond areas, and figure out how to start a fire.

It was all pretty easy to carry, the hide let me just sling most of it over my shoulder in a bag, and the sticks tucked easily under an arm and weren’t awkward to walk with at all. I made sure I had pretty much everything I could carry, and set off.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes later I was at a strikingly similar pond to the one I had stayed at the night before. There were several more trees, and the source of the water seemed to bubble up from one of the corners of the water itself, but beyond that, it looked nearly identical. There were even three slimes bobbing along in the water.

Dropping everything a little way uphill, I found a good-sized flat rock and dug out a little pit next to the water. It was easy work, and clear water seeped into it, filling it in minutes. I washed myself off, cleaned my wounds as best I could, and just hoped I wasn’t going to get an infection. The gash in my side didn’t seem that deep, and it didn’t even start bleeding again when I cleaned it out. It would probably leave a nasty scar, but at least it wasn’t serious. The rest were just scratches and bruises.

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A while later, I was spinning a stick in my palms against a larger stick I had split with a sharp rock, using little shredded bits of sticks as kindling. I was really going at it and thought I even saw a wisp of smoke once or twice, but my shoulders and ribs were aching something fierce. Friction was a difficult mistress.

I was starting to get frustrated because I knew it was going to work, but I was too tired, battered, and in general physically unfit to make it work in these conditions. I was never one for exercising, and it was coming back to bite me in the ass. I was exhausted. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get this fire started at all, and the sun was just barely still visible above the top of the hill. Nighttime was still a few hours off, but it would be dark in this dip within the hour.

I dropped the stick, lowered my face towards the kindling, and tried to see if I had been making any progress. It really didn’t seem like anything was happening, and I slumped. I would eat that meat raw if I had to, but that’s a huge no-no, and it would as likely kill me as not.

Groaning, feeling anger sidling right up alongside frustration, I planted my hands on either side of the kindling and glared at it. I curled my hands around the mass of wood, fighting back the urge to smash it in my grip and throw it as hard as I could. “Why won’t you burn?” I whispered at it.

After a few seconds of silence, I became more agitated and started squeezing the wood in my shaking fists. “I’m hungry! I hurt! I’m tired! I’m frightened! This is all shit and I can’t believe this is happening to me! What even is the point of all of this?” I slammed my fists into the ground and growled at them. “I’ve been rubbing sticks together for hours and nothing is happening!” I focused my anger on the wood that refused to cooperate and give me what I needed. “And you! Why. Won’t. You. BURN?!”

In that second, while I was yelling at an inanimate object in a childish tantrum, I felt something move inside of me. It felt like something slid from deep inside of me and pushed its way to the entire surface area of my skin. Like a wave of heat you get sometimes when you’re sick, it feels like it runs from your toes to the tips of your hair in a sweeping wave, an uncomfortable experience that made my entire body shiver and made me gasp out loud with the sudden intensity of it.

The feeling spread down my arms as fast as an electric shock, all the way to my palms and fingertips. The wood in my hands burst into flame as if I had just lit a match. I yelped in surprise and dropped it, smacked my hands against the grass to remove the little burning bits still stuck to my palms. The little mass of wood burned in front of me, quickly working its way through the little bit of fuel it had. What in the world had just happened?

Shaking off my shock, I quickly added more wood to the flames, slowly building it up to a respectable little fire. Once I was sure it would burn for a while without supervision, I sat next to it and stared at my palms. They were burned slightly, but only enough that the skin was red and felt dried out. There were no blisters, so it wasn’t bad at all, and would not be an issue.

What was that? Was there an ember or spark in there that I had not noticed, and it had just finally caught? But the wood in both hands had caught on fire simultaneously, and what was that sensation that went along with it, like something had been taken out of me? I was chewing on my lip, running through idea after idea in my head, when my stomach rumbled.

It had been about two days since I had eaten, so food had to come first. I took some sticks, speared some meat, and propped it up over the edge of the fire. I kept thinking while I tended the meat and fire, but there was only one thought that I kept circling back to. I mean, I had been joking about it before, but after everything I have seen, it really did appear to be quite within the realm of possibility. At least, it wasn’t quite as ridiculous a notion anymore.

It couldn’t be, right? Well, there really was no reason not to explore it, as I apparently had all the time in the world. It’s a bit embarrassing, entertaining the notion of magic, but the excitable teenage boy in me perked right up and urged me on.

I put my hand out, palm facing the fire, and focused on the flames. I watched them dance, held the image I was seeing in my mind as well. I felt stupid, but I tried to shrug it off and imagine the flames getting bigger, burning hotter. After a few seconds of watching the fire, listening to the popping and sizzling, I felt myself relax a little. I always enjoyed campfires, and staring into them was hypnotic and soothing.

Just as the last doubt melted away into the comfortable heat bathing me, and I forgot all about how ridiculous it was to try and control the flame, my thoughts were only of the fire in front of me. A light breeze blew across me, bringing in some cooler air and making me shiver. In that one second, I thought of how nice it would be to have a bigger fire to keep me warm.

I felt that same strange rushing sensation from the core of my body out to my size and down my arm, though it wasn’t as strong and overwhelming as before. I thought I noticed some kind of shimmering in the air between the fire and my palm, like the heat making the air above the fire shimmer. The fire then leaped upwards, expanding up into a gout of flame several feet tall, with an audible roaring sound accompanied by loud popping and cracking.

I fell backward away from it in shock, falling onto my elbows and staring at the massive flame coming off the small pile of sticks. It lasted for several seconds, slowly burning down as it ate through what little fuel there was. The flame was much too big for this dinky little source, even if it did flare up like that. It left very little room for doubt that it wasn’t just a freak incident.

That, and, when the fire was dying down back to its original size after ten or so seconds, exhaustion swept over me. I felt drained and was breathing more heavily even though I had been just sitting here for a while. I slumped down onto my back and closed my heavy eyelids.

“Right. That’s either extremely damned coincidental, or..” I trailed off muttering to myself. I raised my hand over myself as I lay on my back, staring at my hand. I imagined heat in the air against my palm, focused on seeing a little lighter-sized flame hovering just above the skin.

After a few seconds, a little gout of flame appeared, fitfully guttered, and dispersed between my fingers as it dissipated upwards. I felt the heat accompany the fire, felt it move through the air and slide around my hand.

I gulped slowly, dropping my hand down to my side. “Okay,” I muttered, closing my eyes, feeling a smaller wave of tiredness being layered on top of me. I was starting to feel a little sleepy.

I opened my eyes, staring at the night sky. “Magic it is,” I whispered quietly.

The smell of burning meat tickled my nose, and I bolted upright. “The meat!” I exclaimed out loud before crawling over on hands and knees to check it. The fire had almost died, most of the fuel being burned by the excess flame, and the pieces of meat were a little charred on one side.

That’s just great. It wasn’t that bad, but it was going to taste like ass now. I threw some more wood on the fire, built it back up, and finished cooking. After eating, which was not enjoyable at all because the meat was pretty gamey and unappetizing, I lay staring at the sky as I prepared to sleep.

I held my hand up again, spread wide towards the sky, and stared at it absent-mindedly. After flexing it a few times, clenching and unclenching a fist, I dropped it back to my side.

“Magic, huh?” I spoke under my breath. “This place is wild.” My eyes started drooping, now that I had some food in me, and I could feel myself nodding off. My last thought before sleep overtook me, was that maybe I could make this work out all right after all.