William did as he was told and for the first time, he really smelled dirt. The earth was rich and cool. He could smell a slight hint of tree sap, which he assumed was from pine needles that had fallen on it. He could smell the trace aroma of worms. There must have been one that had passed through this earth recently. But overshadowing all those scents was the musky scent of Ares. He could smell the werewolf as plainly on this handful of dirt as he could when they were standing right next to each other. William could not really believe that he could smell all of that in just one handful of dirt. What else was his nose capable of?
Ares interrupted his explorations. “My scent that you were following was what the earth had absorbed from me as I passed over it. That being said, why did my scent get weaker all of sudden?”
William, still entranced by the discoveries in the handful of dirt, was only half worried about how Ares had doubled back on him. William heard the question and tried to figure out what had happened. I was following Ares’ residual scent from the earth, what would have caused it to weaken? William dropped the handful of dirt and stood up. He was missing something. The earth is a sponge of scents, but Ares’ had gotten weaker very suddenly. Could Ares have not touched the ground? Ares had said something about him learning to feel nature around him and that included how the air moved. Ares’ scent got weaker because he wasn’t on the ground.
“You jumped up into the trees, didn’t you?”
Ares smiled at his students thought process. “You are correct, William. I jumped off the earth and was in the trees. So that being said, how did I get behind you?”
William had all the pieces to this particular puzzle and he knew how his teacher had done it. “You jumped off the ground. From there you jumped from tree trunk to tree trunk. Then you came back directly along the path you just went and somehow jumped over to another tree off to the side and dropped back to the earth, far enough away from your scent trail to not give yourself away. Once back on the ground all you had to do was wait for me to show up so you could trip me.”
Ares listened, a smile spreading across his face. When William was finished, he laughed. “Yes, yes, that’s it exactly.” He gripped William’s shoulders in his claws and squeezed. “Now that you understand what I did can you take what you learned and not make a similar mistake? Understanding the concept of scents and hunting is one thing, but putting it into practice is another thing entirely. Are you ready to try again?”
William looked at his teacher and nodded his head.
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Ares turned around and with one hand still on William’s shoulder he pointed out to the surrounding forest. “William, as you probably have guessed from our meal last night, we do have a lot of wildlife in this forest. Mostly our meals consist of rabbits and other small animals that we farm and breed. There is a large family of rabbits near here. I want you to find them.” Ares jumped up into the trees and was gone.
William was left alone in the forest to hunt his rabbits. At first, he thought that the idea of hunting rabbits was a little bit beneath him, but then again, he was finding out all sorts of things that he just didn’t know. He scooped up another handful of dirt and inhaled. He never thought that dirt could be so rich in smells. Dirt had always been just dirt, but now dirt was a road map to anything he could possibly want to find. He let the earth fall back down to the ground.
He stood up and looked around the immediate vicinity of his surroundings. He looked around himself and stopped. Hadn’t he learned anything? He might be a werewolf, but Ares had read him like a book. He lowered himself on all fours and took in long slow breaths with his nose only inches from the ground. The rich musky scent of Ares was still there as well as his own lighter scent. But underneath the smell of werewolf was the world of the forest. He could smell the pine needles and the scent that the earth was soaking up from them. He could smell the sugar from the long-dried sap that dripped from the overhead branches. The surrounding forest seemed to all at once become alive with smells that even though he had the ability to smell them until this moment he had ignored.
He lifted his nose up into the air and inhaled. Another layer to the forest that was cleaner and lighter than the forest floor awakened to him. He could smell the air around him. The slight movement of air that had marked Ares’ and his passing was as clear to him now as the earth was. He could smell, not just the forest, but the air as well, and he could tell where things were. If the earth was a record of what had passed before, then the air was a telegraph of where things are. He closed his eyes and inhaled once more. In the darkness of his mind the forest, through scent, took shape around him. He could visualize where trees were. He started walking and moved through the trees with his eyes closed letting the scents of the earth and air around him guide his steps.
So lost in his personal rediscovery of scent was he, that he almost missed the slight change in the air and what that change was telling him. The scent was warm, almost humid, and rank. He scrunched up his nose at the new scent and marveled at how he could have missed it before. The smell was strong, and it permeated the whole of his nose, masking all the other smells of the forest. Now that he had smelled it, he couldn’t ignore it and he had trouble concentrating on the rest of the forest. He had never thought about it before but if lust and sex had a smell, then this was it. He only hoped that this particular smell of sex was unique to whatever animal was producing it. Otherwise, he would never want to mate, ever. He was shocked to understand that a physical act could even have a smell, much less one so apparent. Without thinking too much about it he was certain that this new scent was the rabbits that Ares was talking about.