• Graded • [Bailey Peninsula] Deliverance II

[Quio]

unknown date
unknown place and time

Quio woke up.

He smelled smoke.

For a moment he thought he was still on the ship. There was fire in his mouth and smoke in his throat and he was burning, burning. No, he thought. No. His body locked tight in pain and fear and memory. But he didn't say it aloud, didn't scream or beg or speak at all because he had been told not to and because the men only laughed when he tried to resist them. He'd stopped saying no long ago.

Then he remembered where he was.

He had escaped. He had jumped off the ship and lost himself to the sea. He was on the shore somewhere, though where he was he didn't know. He wasn't with the men.

With this realization his body unlocked itself and he sagged into relief where he lay on the hard ground. Suddenly he could breathe again, and his breath whistled through his burnt mouth and throat and that hurt. Tears sprang to his eyes and he thought --he expected-- that they would stop. But then they kept coming.

Wiping the tears away with the back of his good hand, knowing he was crying from something other than pain, Quio sat up.

Stop crying, he thought, and still breathing hard he looked around.

That was right. He was alright. He really was on the shore. He had washed up from the sea after he'd jumped ship. He'd seen the men's ship, the one he'd jumped from, followed by what looked like a ship from a navy sailing south along the coast, though where to he didn't know. He'd thought maybe they might have seen him on the shore but if they had they hadn't come. Thank U'frek. Thank Qylios. Thank all the gods and all the seas.

He had been cold before, so cold, and the air was still slightly chill, and so he had made a fire. That's why he had woken to the smell of smoke. He glanced over and the fire burned low now. Just embers. He still had the bow drill --a set of simple tools used to make friction-- that he'd made last night, along with the tiny stone knife he'd also made. Fireboard, bearing block, drill, bow. He could use those to make another fire if he needed. And another and another if he had to.

Why he needed a fire at all when he thought it was still Saun he didn't know. He didn't know what was happening with the air. The air around him felt wrong, somehow, like cold air that wanted to be hot or vice versa, and had instead become both humid and chill. It didn't make any sense. He could still see his breath.

And he still had a lot to do.

He needed to dry his clothes and find food and water and figure out where he was and check his wounds and there were a million other things he needed in order to keep himself alive. He was so hungry. There was no use being confused.

Quio focused on what he could do.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

First, his clothes.

Getting undressed was harder than it should have been. The pants were simple enough. Quio got some sticks from a nearby fallen tree and propped them up in the dirt. He used one to stoke the fire, added a few more pieces of wood to help it along, and hung his pants to dry of seawater in front of the flames. The boots were a bit harder to pull off but he managed.

The shirt was impossible.

His left shoulder was injured badly. It was near useless. He could barely lift his arm, and it hurt, and so he only had the one good hand.

And good, in this case, was a relative term. His other hand, his right hand, was missing two fingers, the ring and pinky. The men had taken those. That meant it wasn't so easy for him to use that hand to grip.

Quio struggled for a while with the shirt. He tried to use his right hand to pull on his left sleeve and yank the shirt off, but it jostled his bad arm and almost at once more tears sprang to his eyes. With the tears came vitriol.

Stop it! he snarled at himself, feeling his face get hot with anger and with an indescribable frustration. Frustration at himself, at how terrible he felt, at his situation. He pulled harder, trying to lift his arm by reflex, and cried out in pain. Okay stop, stop, he thought, and sat panting, heaving heavy breaths that were already a little too close to sobs. He tried to get himself under control, not knowing what the hell was wrong.

But the anger was still there even when the tears had settled, and it pushed him, and he thought fuck it, and got the makeshift knife he'd made from stone trial-last and used it to tear through the shirt.

That, at least, was easy.

The cloth had already been torn where his collarbone had been severed, and he took the knife in his right hand and encouraged the tear, ripping downward until his shirt hung open in the front like a vest. Then he shrugged out of it, wincing.

He didn't need a shirt. Not out here. It was Saun --he thought-- and this odd chill would leave and then it would be hot. And besides. He needed the shirt for other things. Like bandages.

Speaking of.

He hung the mangled shirt on its own stick by the fire and turned to the thick bandages that covered the left side of his chest.

The bandages, a mixture of cotton cloth and gauze, were damp and dirty, stained with mud and sand and blood, and he didn't think that was good for an injury to heal, even a Yludih one, especially not the dampness. And so carefully, carefully he began peeling the bandages off. Layer by layer. As slowly as he could.

It took a while. There were a lot of layers. The men had simply added a new one anytime they had seen his lifelight --his true Yludih blood-- bleeding through.

They had packed the wound with cloth and then tied bandages round and round his shoulder to put pressure on it and hold it in place. The more he peeled the bandages away, the more blood he saw, matting through. The wetted cloth stuck to his skin and he hissed in pain pulling it away. Eventually he pulled enough of the cloth away to begin to reveal the wet ragged outline of the wound. It was deep and painful and still raw, and he was squeamish to Yludih blood, and he looked at it and thought oh no and everything rotated a little around him and he thought he might faint. Quio looked quickly away.

After a bit or two he looked back, trying not to see, trying to keep calm, and began to pry the blood-soaked bandages from the inside of the wound. Ouch, ouch, ouch and he pulled as hard as he dared but they would not unstick. Blood stained his fingertips, the false blood of his biqaj form, and as he shifted the knot of bandages he thought he saw bright light.

Wooziness hit him, his mind spun, and again he looked away.

He couldn't remove the bandages. He couldn't. He didn't want to start the wound bleeding again. Out here, without help, he could easily bleed out. He had already lost so much blood. He was already so weak. And besides. He couldn't.

He couldn't.

Sweating and feeling somehow pressed thin, he wiped away the fresh blood on his fingers and focused on something, anything else.

He was dizzy. Dizzy and squeamish and despite that he was-- he was so hungry. When had he last eaten?

He didn't know, and okay, okay. Think about that. Deal with that instead.

He knew there was no food around. No good food anyway. Then again, Yludih could eat almost anything.

Mindlessly, Quio looked around, focused on the first thing he saw that might be edible, and started plucking leaves from the ground. He grimaced, and then put the leaves in his mouth.

The leaves, well, they tasted like leaves, earthy and somewhat bitter and green, and that was not great. It hurt his mouth and throat to eat. He could feel the leaves scratching at his burns as he chewed. He ignored the discomfort and plucked and ate some more.

It gave him something to do. He would eat and then stop. Eat and then stop. When a while had passed, perhaps twenty, thirty bits, he turned and poked at the clothes hanging by the fire to test if they were dry. He turned them on their sticks and left the other side to dry. Ate some more leaves, getting sick of the flavor fast. Thought about what he was supposed to do.

Leaves or not he needed food. Real food. Yludih were all about calories just like anything else, and leaves alone would not help him much. Carbs and alcohol were the best, but he doubted he could forage a lot of those out here. Booze was completely out of the question. The forest didn't have much scrub which meant no berries. A quick check of the trees around and none of them were fruiting. And he doubted he would find wild grain at this time of year. Assuming it was Saun after all.

Meat would be the best thing out in the wild and he could try fishing. The beach was probably a hundred yards to the west. But he would have to get out of the forest and find whatever it was he would need to make a net. Tall grass? He wasn't sure what he needed for that. He'd never done it before. He had the stone knife but there was no way he would have the stamina for spearfishing. That was hard, much harder than using a net to fish, and he doubted he would be able to spearfish at all.

He didn't even know if he could stand, really, he hadn't been able to yesterday. He'd had to crawl from the beach to the trees.

Now was as good a time as any to find out. Quio stopped plucking the leaves, got onto his good hand and knees, and tried to stand.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

To his immense relief he was able to get his feet under him. But standing on his own was difficult. Quio wobbled to a nearby tree and leaned against it.

After only a bit or so his knees started to shake and already he felt the strain in his legs and stomach. He took a few little steps and nearly fell and hobbled back to the tree. He shook his head, waited a moment, and tried again. This time he made it perhaps twenty feet before his legs gave out and he fell.

Still, it was better than trial-last. The sleep must have helped him. Food would help a lot more. So would getting used to walking around again.

Until now he hadn't really thought about it but --and he almost couldn't believe it-- he hadn't walked, save to get off that ship, since some time in late--

--in late Ashan.

The thought struck him, hard.

Since Ashan he had been captured, since Ashan. He had been held. Beaten. Tortured. Starved. By people who hated him. Since Ashan. All the way through Ymiden. And into Saun.

He remembered all the marks on the walls in Uleuda. All the tally marks he'd made on the walls in his despair. How many marks had there been that day? 80-something marks. 80-something plus days being hurt and-- and chained and locked up in a cage. And that was then, and it was more now. Eighty, ninety days.

Quio sat where he had fallen, his mind still trying to go over it. He curled in somewhat as if having taken a punch to the gut, and thought don't do this. He mechanically began to pick some more leaves. Just pick the leaves. Just pick them.

Don't think about it. Just don't think.

He could-- he could do that.

Time passed and Quio picked a leaf and ate it. Picked a leaf and ate it. When enough time had gone by he crawled over and checked his clothes again. They weren't yet fully dried and he was tired of eating leaves. He needed something-- needed to think of something else to do. Anything else to do. After a moment he went to the dead tree and found a couple more sticks, thick sturdy sticks this time, and tested his weight upon them. Threw out the ones he thought would break or snap. Tried to find one that was straight and tall.

A walking stick. He took it up and used it to get to his feet. Stood leaning hard against it, and took a few labored steps. Then a few more. It was hard to grasp onto, hard to grip with only three fingers and not enough support, and he shook his head and sank back down to the ground. He sat for a moment unmoving, unthinking. Then measured the stick against the length of his body and got his makeshift stone knife and began to hack and cut.

The top of the walking stick he cut off, then stood and held it to his side, measured, and sat and cut again. When it was the right length he took one of the pieces he had cut off the top and held it like a T at the top of the stick. He reached for his pants which were now fully dry and took the makeshift knife and once more began to cut into his clothing.

His pants were in the biqaj style, flared at the knee, and he cut the legs off at the end of the flare so they were more like shorts. Then he cut down the length of the cut leg til each leg was a square. He then cut each square into lengthwise strips.

Using the strips he tied the extra piece of wood onto the top of the stick and began to pad it with any material he had left. When he was finished he tested the strength of the ties. They weren't too bad. Not the best but they would hold. He stood again and pulled on his pants --now shorts-- careful not to fall, and took the stick which he'd altered into a makeshift crutch.

He'd measured twice, something he'd learned from his brief, brief stint in shipbuilding, and the crutch fit comfortably into his armpit on his right side. He tried walking and quickly his armpit began to hurt. Not enough padding, but he couldn't sacrifice the rest of his pants and he needed his shirt for the bandages. This would have to do.

The good news was it seemed steady enough to walk on and it helped a lot. He limped around the fire a couple times before his legs grew tired and he sat again to rest. He set the crutch aside.

His shirt now dry, Quio reached and began to cut that, too, into lengthwise strips.

It was a lot of material but not a lot for what he was doing. A couple of strips of the shirt he had the foresight to save. The rest went into bandaging his wounds.

He wasn't skilled in medicine, he didn't truly know anything about it apart from basic first aid and the things his mother had taught him about Yludih as a boy. He had to put pressure on the wound. That was the main thing. For Yludih that meant wrapping the wound as tightly as possible. Yludih didn't have to worry about wrapping too tight; their blood was made of energy and light, and light could not so easily be cut off from circulation.

Now he just had to be able to do it. With a bad shoulder and a three-fingered hand.

Don't think about it. Don't think about how hard it is. Just do.

But it was hard, slinging the strips of cloth over and around his shoulder. Hard to reach, and it didn't help that he had to bend and twist. All the while his hurt arm tried to lift and move and help him, a reflex he couldn't seem to stop though he tried very hard to hold it as still as he could. Each time this happened his entire shoulder lit up in pain, from the wound up into his neck and down into his chest and back, even down into his arm. More than once Quio let out a short shout when this happened, unable to stop the sound. To move that arm was agony. The pain ripped through him.

Eventually he was done.

He knew he'd done shoddy work. That almost didn't matter; it was the best he could do with what he had and right now, after that, he was in too much pain to care. His whole body felt tense with it, and he laid himself down on the ground on his right side and put his bad arm against his stomach, the only position that helped a little with the unbearable sting. As he lay there his face felt hot again, his eyes growing wet though the tears did not yet fall, and he took a while to try to contain what felt to him like pure misery. He hated it. Nobody liked being hurt but Quio hated it now; he'd endured too much and he hated being in pain.

Maybe he fell asleep or maybe he was just there, lying on the ground and not thinking and staring at the fire. He thought he tried to go to the Uleuda, but something inside him was holding him back. He couldn't focus; it was too far away. Maybe it was the anger blocking him. How was it he was more angry now than when the men had been cutting into him on that ship?

They were going to sell me, he thought out of nowhere, and took a shuddering breath. He hadn't been like this yesterday. He didn't know why he was like this now. Don't cry. Don't cry again.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

The tears were a cause to do something and so when the pain had faded as much as it would Quio wiped his face and got back up. Now that he knew how poorly the bandages had gone on he thought he might have been better served to use the shirt to try to make a sling, but it was too late now. He was not going to go through that again to take them off.

But he did need a sling, he decided. He could use something else to make it. All he needed was something to hold his arm in place. He looked around, and then got his crutch and got up and made his way slowly on trembling legs to a thicket of young trees.

Quio dropped to his knees and cut down three of the trees, which were about as thick around as a nel and about as tall as he was. He looked for trees that were straight and didn't have many branches, if any. Then he took them in his left hand, bad for most anything but at least it could still be used to grip, and gritted his teeth and made his way through the forest, past the little fire and his things, to the edge of the treeline. There he took a break, gave himself ten bits, and then got up and crutched across the small field of grass over to the beach.

At the beach the bottom of the crutch kept getting caught in the sand and tripping him up. After trying and failing several times he gave up and resigned himself to crawl. He left the crutch well up from the tide and crawled to the water. Stripped his clothes off again til he was naked, telling himself he would not get the bandages on his shoulder wet, and made his way out into the water, just deep enough to sit in up to the waist, to soak the small trees.

He sat and tried to enjoy the smell and sound of the beach. The beach was familiar, the sand and waves like a balm to one who was not born a biqaj but who, through life, had become one. He was in his biqaj form now and he felt right in the water in a way he didn't feel on land.

He let that soothe him, and when the trees were well and soaked he crawled back up to where the water couldn't reach him and sat on the beach to dry before putting his clothes back on. Then he took the soaked trees and began to strip them of bark.

Like all things, this was not as easy as it should have been thanks to his one hand.

The bark of saplings was best for making rope. If he pulled on the bark at the bottom of the tree, especially bark that had been soaked, it came up off the full length of the tree in long, thin strings. These strings could be used to braid and twist into cord.

By the time he had peeled the trees of strings and corded them together he had a fine little rope. It was remarkably strong for what it was, and he tied the cord at both ends and then into a simple loop. Then carefully put his injured arm through it.

It wasn't near as good as a proper sling but he could rest his arm on the loop and that helped a lot with the pain. With his shoulder relaxed it didn't hurt near as much as before. Quio let out a slow breath and rested some more on the beach.

It seemed to be getting warmer now, the chill of the last day or so beginning to dissipate, and maybe it was truly Saun still. He tilted his face up towards the sky.

When he was ready Quio got his crutch and walked back to his campfire. He'd been thinking as he rested, and he had an idea of where he might get food. It involved hunting, in a way. Though in his shape he couldn't hunt for himself.

So he would steal.

Trial-last there had been a coyote that had stalked him in the night. He had thought it would try to kill him, he'd been so weak, but it hadn't had the chance-- he'd made a fire and that had scared it off. If he could find the coyote he was almost certain he could find food.

So he packed up his stuff, what little he had, and got to tracking. He raked out the fire to spread the coals and put them out in the dirt. Then pulled on his boots which were at this point mostly dry --though the leather was stained with sea salt-- and took the couple extra strips of cloth he'd thought to save from his shirt, which he hadn't used for bandages.

The strips he used to tie the pieces of his bow drill together. Apart he couldn't carry them; in a bundle it was much easier.

He made sure he had everything, bow drill, clothes, crutch, knife, and then went on his way.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

Quio had had a lot of experience tracking as a child with his mother when he'd lived in the woods. Not so much in later years, which he'd spent at sea. So the tracking was not as easy as he remembered. It seemed nothing was.

He looked for prints. He knew whereabouts the coyote had been yesterday, and he went to that spot and began searching. In Ashan, before he'd been captured, he'd done a little bit of tracking out in the Willow Woods of Ne'haer, following wolf prints and human prints and horses. So he knew approximately what a coyote track should look like. He just had to find them.

Tracking was like a lot of things. Could be hard or could be simple. Quio tried to take it as simply as he could.

He found what he thought was a paw print in some loose dirt, fine dirt like dust that had been somewhat kicked up. He noted the direction of the print and went that way. Taking it slow, mostly, because it wasn't like he could go fast. He took breaks when he had to, which was often.

He crutched his way through the forest back towards the field, then along the edge of the field til he saw what looked like an animal trail in the grass. Animals, like people, used trails; they walked where it was easiest to walk. He turned south and followed that.

The trail led him along the field and then across the field to the beach, and he lost it there, but continued on and picked it up again perhaps half a mile down the beach to the south. Already he was out of shape from walking so much more than he had grown used to and his armpit felt rubbed raw from the crutch. But he knew he could have a lot longer to go. He resigned himself to it.

Failing all else, like an obvious sign of where the coyote might have gone, his best bet would be to find a river or source of water where animals, predator and prey, would tend to congregate. Fresh water. Not the sea.

Quio tried to think, though he was tired. Keep it simple. Water ran downhill. It would collect at the lowest point of the land. The only problem was the lowest point around here was the beach, and he did not think he would find the coyote if he followed the beach. The sand made it harder to track; there was no telling which animals had come and gone. He also didn't know how long it might take to trek along the beachside until he found an estuary, where river met sea. It could take days. Longer, even.

Okay, well, a river came from higher land. He wasn't certain if it made sense to walk in the direction that the land sloped up. But it might be his best bet. There had to be a creek or something around here somewhere.

After a moment longer of hesitation, he decided to do that.

Obviously the land went uphill away from the beach, so he turned and went eastward, inland.

Here there were fields of grass which sprouted into small forests. None of the forests here seemed all that big, or too dense. Not like some of the forests Quio had seen before, which could stretch for miles upon miles upon miles and never stop. Here if he walked for ten minutes it seemed he would lose the trees in favor of a clearing or bit of grassland. He continued walking, trying to aim uphill, though it was hard on his legs and hard to tell at all if he was heading the right way. The forests weren't large but they were numerous, and from where he was he didn't often see the horizon. At least not for long.

Every once and a while he saw marks of passage by some animal. Scratches on stones or bark rubbed from trees. Once he thought he saw another coyote track, a lucky find, and he kept his eyes peeled for any sign, small or big, that might help him.

And then he found the scat.

The scat wasn't from a coyote, it wasn't right for that. It was shaped in little balls and he thought he remembered-- it was deer scat. It was not too old because it wasn't yet fully dry, and Quio walked from where he had found the scat in a widening circle, checking the ground, and found a little more further on. Okay. He went that way, towards what looked to be a bigger forest. The deer might lead him to water where it had collected amongst the trees. And where there were deer there would be predators. He only had to find the deer.

Perhaps because deer were so much bigger and heavier than coyotes, he found them much easier to track. Plus he could tell from the tracks that there were many of them, a herd. It looked like the deer tended to stay close together when they moved. This meant he could see where their legs had snapped through the low grass and branches, and where they had turned the dirt as they stepped.

Quio followed the trail.

When the suns had passed the mark of noon he stopped.

He thought the deer were close but, at least for now, Quio couldn't go on. He'd pushed too far and his body was giving out.

His bad shoulder was aching, his armpit felt bruised, and his legs kept trying to buckle. His head hurt and his hearstone felt like it was beating too fast. His stomach hurt. Everything hurt.

Quio found a place and sat down, his back propped up against a tree. He leaned back and closed his eyes and rested, really rested, not the half-assed ten-bit breaks he'd been taking throughout the day, but a proper rest. He let his head roll down to his shoulder, curled up a little against the tree, and tried to sleep.

He was out like a light.

When he woke he looked blearily at the sky and saw that an hour or two had passed. Dusk came at 20th break. It was probably 14th break now. He still had plenty of time, he thought, and he huddled back down and closed his eyes again.

Another hour or so passed in restful, dreamless sleep.

This time when Quio woke he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stretched, wincing at the full-body ache which extended from feet to head. He got up and looked around a while, found more leaves to eat and some mushrooms which he also ate, no matter what they were or regardless of how they tasted. Yludih didn't have to worry about poison or even getting sick, really. Yludih didn't have to worry about infection either, so he knew if he didn't aggravate the wound, his shoulder would probably be okay. And after eating even such a meager meal his stomach felt a little better.

For a while longer he went back to the tree and sat. Trying to spot game trails from where he was, or other signs of the deer.

But from where he was there wasn't much to see. Quio moved onto other things.

The stone knife he'd made trial-last he took out of his pocket to inspect. He looked it over and then found another stone, and tried to use it to sharpen the knife. The rock he'd used to make the knife wasn't flint; he thought it was some type of quartz. Flint would have been better, easier to refine, but he did what he could, first breaking the second rock to the proper shape and then using that to bring the knife he had to as fine and sharp a point he could make.

He paused what he was doing. Sharpened it a little more. He tested the knife against the pad of his finger. Though it didn't cut he thought it was sharp enough. Quio made a face.

Then, holding his breath, he took the knife to the black stitches still in his wounds.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

Quio couldn't get to the stitches on his right hand with the knife, so he brought the point of it to the ones in his side and back on the left where he'd been shot through with arrows. He had a wound back as far as he could reach on that side, and one closer to the front where the arrow had shot through. And then one more wound in the side where the second arrow had hit and stuck.

One of the wounds had been torn at when the men had yanked at the arrows to hurt him and later, when he was unconscious, to pull them out. But for the most part the arrow wounds were healed. They were still sore and tender and quite ugly, and they still hurt pretty bad when he stretched, but they weren't open. They had been stitched, pretty thoroughly.

The only problem was that stitches didn't help Yludih. Yludih were stone. He thought the men must have known the stitches would not help him. They'd stitched his wounds and done other things to them, sometimes tearing the previous stitching out and redoing it, to keep him bleeding. To keep him weak and in pain and less able or inclined to fight back.

If he wanted to heal properly he needed those stitches out.

It was not easy cutting the thin black strings with such a shitty knife. The knife was hardly sharp enough to cut his skin, better for brute force applications, which meant he didn't have to worry about slicing himself too much by accident; that was why he'd tested it against the pad of his finger. But it was hard to get at the stitches. Especially where he couldn't see.

And of course it hurt.

Everything always hurt.

Quio sawed at the strings. He sawed and then stopped, eyes squeezed shut, and felt with his fingers. There was blood but not much, and he sawed some more, trying to get at the whole of the wound and being as gentle as he could. He dropped the knife and felt around again, looking for loose strings with his hands, and started trying to grab them and pull them out of his flesh. The pain became more acute then and he clenched his teeth hard as he pulled. He got a couple of the strings free and went back to cutting. Then pulling. Cut then pull. First the wound on his back then the ones closer to his front on his side.

When he was done he wiped sweat from his forehead and felt around some more. He didn't feel the stitches anymore, though there might have been some that he'd missed which he couldn't feel, but that was the best he could do. He allowed himself to relax again with his back to the tree and let himself try to get control of the pain and discomfort he felt. He wiped the knife of whatever blood was on it and his fingers too.

Then he took his teeth to the strings in his hand.

Biting the strings free was somehow worse. His blood phobia rejected the taste of dirt and blood and string and he gripped his other hand tight into a fist, trying to hold on. By the time he was finished pulling the strings with his teeth he leaned over, groaning, head rolling, and tried not to pass out or be sick.

His hands were shaking and after his stomach settled he inspected the damage. Not so bad, he thought faintly. His skin was hardly torn at all. He wasn't bleeding too badly, just a few drips welling along the length of the cut. And it was good to have the stitches out. Not so bad, not so bad. He repeated it to himself, spitting the taste of blood from his mouth.

And then, across the little clearing nearby, he saw a deer.

Despite himself, Quio gave a wavering smile.

Qylios' light, he thought. He collected himself, making sure he was okay to stand, and when he could got back up on his feet.

He startled the deer but it had left fresh tracks, and he followed those for some time.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

He was following the deer when he came across the carcass.

There was a small break in the forest. A dead animal lay in the midst of fallen leaves. It looked to be some sort of small goat. Quio approached and crouched down next to it.

Though the animal's body had been savaged it hadn't totally been picked clean. The teeth marks upon it were sharp and stripping and it looked like the goat had been tugged around some. He guessed it had been taken down by coyote or mountain lion or wolf.

He hoped coyote. The blood was still wet and if he had to pick a time Quio supposed it had been killed a couple hours ago.

There was still meat.

For a long, long time he knelt where he was and stared at the goat. Thinking. Deciding. It was a domesticated animal gone feral. Probably escaped from a pen. That was a good sign. He didn't think it would have wandered too far from wherever it had come from; maybe a few days' walk. There might be a homestead somewhere around here, or a small village. He stopped his staring to look around for tracks again, coyote or other, just in case, and didn't find anything distinct. He looked back.

Then he shook his head and went looking for sticks.

This time it was easier to make a fire. Last night he had still been half-drowned. He had been harried by the coyote and much too wet and cold and barely able to stay awake. Today he had eaten something at least, even if it was mushrooms and leaves, and he had slept well the night before. He took the bow drill, made a new indent on the fireboard where he would create the ember, and got to sawing with the bow.

He collected dried sticks and leaves and grass and made the fire and fed it to the ember when it began to smoke and soon enough had a flame. He was in the forest again so there was plenty of wood. Not as dry as the stuff he'd had yesterday, but it would work. He set the fire to burning with a log and found a stick and put that down for later use.

Then he went back to the goat corpse.

He tried to remind himself that stealing food from the coyotes had been his plan all along. He had been planning to steal fresher meat, admittedly, but he was starving, he would die soon if he did not get food, and he told himself he couldn't be picky. This was the reality of the wilds, of survival. He had to do whatever he needed to survive. And so he took his knife and cut into the carcass, strip by strip prying off the meat. It didn't smell and even if it had he thought he could have eaten it and been okay. Not that that would have been the happiest meal.

When he had sliced off all the meat he could he went looking around for a nice, flat rock. The first one he found that was big enough he took and set immediately next to the fire, brushing it clean of dirt. He waited, letting the rock heat. When it was hot, he put the meat on that to cook.

When the meat had browned he cut it into pieces, checking the color of the inside, and let it cook a while longer.

He didn't have any salt or seasoning but when it was finished cooking and cooling he ate.

Almost immediately Quio felt better. His stomach stopped hurting so much. He had eaten all he could, and he got up and dragged the carcass a bit further away in case it started to attract other animals or bugs. Then returned to the fire and sat and watched the flames.

He wasn't happy but it hadn't been terrible. He'd had to eat the meat cold because the heat hurt the burns in his mouth. He tried to remember if it was the worst thing he'd ever eaten.

Almost certainly, no.

Quio had been stuck out in the woods when he was a boy, much like this. Back then he hadn't known a lot about surviving at all. His mother had taught him some, before she was killed. Mostly, though, it had been trial and error. He had eaten plenty of meat that had not cooked right, either had been cooked too short or too long, or had begun to go bad. His memories were not the clearest from that time, he had tried to forget it, forget especially the terror and grief and being alone. But he thought he must have eaten some things that he shouldn't have, through desperation, perhaps even meat that had been totally raw.

That was where he'd learned to take what food he could from predators, small predators especially like coyotes who could be frightened off, and scavenge the rest.

Then again, as a boy he had nearly starved.

For now, at least, he felt full. Almost too full; he had not been fed well in captivity. Just as he hadn't walked in so long, he hadn't been given solid food, nor nearly enough to last him through each day. Many days he had gone hungry. Sometimes they had used hunger as a punishment; they had tried to starve him out when he had been hiding from them in his mind, in the Uleuda. And starving him had had other uses. Not feeding him well was another way the men had kept him weak.

But he didn't want to think too hard about any of that, either.

Quio added another log to the fire. The fire was warm and it made him hazy, along with his full belly, and after a while he laid down for the night to sleep.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

Quio slept through the whole of the evening and through night into the morning, and woke feeling stiff on the ground. The fire had mostly gone out and as Quio sat up gracelessly, whimpering once more at the full-body ache, he was content to let the fire die. He was trying to remember what it was about wood ashes --something about soap?-- when he thought he heard something behind him in the woods.

Quio turned, but there was nothing there.

Nonetheless, neck pricking, he took the stone knife from his pocket. Quickly he tied up the bow drill and set it and his crutch where they could be easily grabbed.

He waited, almost unable to think he was so frightened, scared that it would be the men. That somehow they had come back to find him. He would not go down without a fight. He would rather die than be taken again.

But nothing happened. No other movement, or sound. He waited another ten bits to be sure.

Nothing, and nervously Quio got to his feet.

Miraculously, he felt better this morning.

The food had really, really helped, and he realized now how terrible he had felt without even noticing before. His arms and legs felt stronger and he was no longer low-key nauseous and headachy all the time. He didn't feel like there was an empty hole clawed into in his chest where his stomach should have been. He didn't feel so scared his body might just give up and die.

The only problem was that eating seemed to have woken his body instead. Pain felt sharper, if possible, maybe because his mind was now clear. And he felt much, much hungrier than he had before as his body clamored to be fed. The hunger nagged at him and he thought if he could he would try hunting soon.

Then he thought he heard something in the forest again and he turned and nothing was there.

He held the stone knife tight in his hand and faced the woods where he thought the noise had come from, shifting from foot to foot.

"Come out," Quio croaked, his voice damaged by the burns in his throat, but there was no answer. It was probably not a person then. And it wasn't the men. The men would have already tried to capture or kill him. They would have already shot him through.

He put the knife down slightly and noticed the gleam of something, eyes, from deeper in.

He almost couldn't believe it.

It was a coyote.

He held still, thinking, thinking hard, and then saw another pair of eyes. And another. And another.

Five? Six? Seven? Eight?

Yes, eight in total.

For a moment he doubted himself. What if he was wrong? What if they were not coyotes, but wolves. Wolves, and they would attack and kill him.

Then he looked harder, squinting, and no, that couldn't be, because they were too small to be wolves. But coyotes, in a pack? Not totally unheard of, he knew that. Just not usual. Usually they banded up in a group this large to hunt and that was all.

Oh, he thought as the animals stared at him, and made sure he was turned to face them, that none were sneaking around to get at his back. One of them darted out of the trees to tug at what was left of the goat carcass, and began dragging it further away, towards the treeline. Most of the others went over and they picked for a while at the guts.

Then they turned back to him.

Quio had observed coyotes, well, a lot of woodland animals as a boy. It had been part of his training as the Eloquoi, a family inheritance, of sorts. He knew the coyotes' body language and how they thought. If these ones were thinking of attacking him, he didn't think it would be too hard to scare them off.

He just needed to show them he wasn't afraid.

Quio glanced at the crutch on the ground, gripped the stone knife in his hands, and tested the strength of his legs by bouncing from one foot to the next. Okay, he thought. Okay.

This was so stupid.

Go!

He ran screaming at the coyotes, into the forest.

Quio picked one of the animals and ran straight for it. When the coyote bounded up and away, almost comically startled, he chased it. He ran as long as he could, dashing to chase another if he spotted one or if one got too near, waving his one good arm, and hollered at them as best he could. His throat didn't let him, turning his screams into hoarse shrieks and barks, but he did what he could for as long as he dared.

When he stopped the coyotes had backed off considerably. Quio, exhausted, fell to his knees. Even after he finished the running and screaming he continued to cough and whoop, as if in a fit. His throat flared with pain anew. Eventually he was able to stop the coughing and he put a hand to his throat, temporarily unable to swallow from the pain. Sitting there, recuperating, he tried to speak and discovered his voice was now completely gone. Just gone. In that respect he was worse off than before.

But the coyotes stayed back from him, and that was all he needed, and that made it worth it. When he was ready he got back up and stumbled back to the fire, got his things, and put his back once more to a tree. He sat facing the coyotes, in case they tried to get closer.

Then Quio had another idea. He was full of ideas of late.

He gathered a handful of nearby stones and sticks to throw at the coyotes, in case any of them came too close.

Then he sat and watched.

That was his idea. To watch.

He thought it was a better idea than running around like a madman.

He watched the coyotes and they watched him.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

Coyotes were funny creatures. They were adaptable and they were smart. But their smartness made them silly sometimes. They were sort of like small children or intelligent birds. Curious about things they shouldn't be curious about.

They were curious about Quio, for instance.

Though they could have moved on and probably should have the coyotes lingered, just out of the sight in the trees. Quio could tell they were there still because every once and a while he'd see a pair of eyes peeking through. He also knew that they were there because most of the prey animals, like the squirrels, had gone up into the trees or hidden out of sight like the rabbits. The birds tittered angrily in the air.

Quio sat and watched.

Time passed and the coyotes crept closer. Closer. Never coming close enough to threaten him, but close enough to look.

More time went on and they seemed to acclimate to his presence. Soon enough they seemed to grow disinterested. Though maybe disinterested wasn't the word.

They still watched him, yes, but they started doing other things.

Like eating.

A few of the coyotes returned to the carcass. They gnawed at the bones and tore at each other over each tiny parcel of meat. They fought over their food til a new coyote approached and then they backed off, letting that one have its fill. Then, when that one was finished --and one other, which had joined
it-- the others came and scarfed down what they could, biting and snapping at one another again.

And just like that the coyotes were ready to ignore him.

When they were done eating the coyotes divided into little groups. Some of them went off into the woods, not to be seen again for breaks. Some of them, the pair he thought of as the alphas, lay down and took a rest, snoozing in the sun. Others ran in circles and snapped some more at each other, though this time in play. They bowed and leapt and wrestled, chewing on one another's ears, and all so close that if Quio wanted he could have run forward and had them quickly in reach.

One of them, braver than the rest, seemed to take more notice of him, and circled around the trees to sneak closer.

Quio let it.

Perhaps a break passed.

The coyote went in circles around and around him. It did not get near all at once; rather, it came step by step. Sometimes it stopped its circling and headed towards him more directly. When that happened Quio would fix it with a hard stare, and the coyote would step back and dance and prance away and soon begin its circling again, mouth hanging open as if in glee.

Curious himself Quio rubbed a stick on his clothing and then tossed it, and the coyote crossed to the stick and sniffed at it to catch his scent. Its ears twitched and he could almost see it thinking. It went back to its circling and another one joined the game but soon gave up, not showing nearly as much interest.

Quio watched.

The day passed slowly.

He watched, and like the coyotes he did other things as well.

Every once and a while Quio got up with his crutch to go looking for food. The forests were a bit thicker here, he had come further inland than he'd been before, and he ate leaves from the bushes and went hunting for berries. He didn't find any but he found some flowers and acorns and nuts and shoved the flowers in his mouth and started gathering the nuts to crack. Later he found some wild onions, and he chewed on them as he watched the lone coyote follow him wherever he went.

If he turned his head and looked at it the coyote dropped back. If he turned his back it grew bold, and hurried close enough that he could hear its feet as it stepped.

Quio let it stalk him and, sometime in the afternoon, he practiced walking.

Earlier he had been able to run without the crutch, though only for a short while. Now he felt confident enough to leave it behind. He thought he would still need it for long distances, but he felt strong enough to wander around in short bursts.

The coyote seemed particularly interested in the crutch when he left it, and would go over to the wood and sniff at it. Once Quio caught it chewing on the crutch, trying to drag it away, and he had to go after it and take the crutch back. Luckily the coyote dropped it. From then on Quio took the crutch with him whenever he walked. When he didn't use it as intended he used it as a walking stick instead.

The coyote seemed more wary of him when he had the crutch with him, and wouldn't dare come as close even when he turned his back. It probably thought Quio would use the crutch like a staff to hit it.

And if it came to it, he would.

Later he caught the coyote trying to chew at his bow drill too, and then had to carry the bow drill around in the crook of his left arm where it hung in the sling.

As the suns moved slowly overhead in the sky the day got first warm, then hot. The rest of that strange chill from the last couple of trials had burned off, and Quio and the coyote settled back down again under the trees.

The other coyotes had come close enough for him to see though they still kept well back, and had come out of the sunlight and now lay panting in the shade. Some of them rolled in the grass or dirt. They seemed to be in good humor, despite the heat. One groomed another, especially around the face and neck, chewing off what were probably ticks.

Like many things, Yludih had an advantage in that. Yludih didn't have the right sort of blood; they didn't get ticks. Mosquitos also didn't bother them much.

Throughout the day Quio learned; he learned the coyotes. Not only the one that was always following him, whose personality he thought he had figured out pretty well, but the others also and how they interacted with one another. He thought that the two coyotes that had eaten first, the alphas, were a male and female, though it was hard to tell at this distance. A mated pair. If he remembered his lessons correctly, the rest would be younger than them, likely the alphas' kids.

All of the coyotes looked grown up. If he guessed at ages, he thought most of them would be two or three years old. The mated pair were perhaps a little older than that. None of them looked particularly old, though, and none of them looked sick or frail or were missing hair. They seemed healthy enough.

There was a heirarchy in how they interacted with one another. The mated pair seemed to make the decisions and many of the others copied what they did. If the mated pair left to go off, either to hunt or for some other reason, most of the others followed, walking around or behind. If one of the mated pair snapped the others bowed back or showed their necks or bellies. If the mated pair groomed one of the subordinates then that coyote held very still and patient, and waited for the grooming to end.

The rest were a wash of ranks. It was like a puzzle, watching them, and Quio began to be able to tell which were higher up and which were lower based on how they behaved.

The one that had followed him around was rather high, he thought, the third in command as it were; a couple of the others always seemed interested in what it was doing and where it went. The higher ups tended to mark territory more often, one growing so daring as to piss in Quio's direction, though it wasn't near close enough to mark him in itself. They also were lazier; it seemed they lounged around more while the others were up and about. This might have been because he suspected the higher ones were also the eldest, and were less fidgety. They behaved less like pups.

One he pinpointed to be the youngest and lowest in the heirarchy. That one did act more like a puppy; she --he thought it was a she-- rolled more often and used placating gestures, and initiated play the most. She also, curiously, seemed closer to the alphas and they more tolerant of her. She got groomed the most often as well, and sometimes followed some of the older ones around trying to groom them in turn. It was a tossup whether or not they would hold still and allow her to. If they didn't, though, it didn't seem to matter. She would chase them and try to chew on their tails.

Another he thought had been injured at some point. That coyote was the second-lowest, laid around more than it should have, and seemed skinnier and less groomed than the rest. Quio guessed it would not be with the pack for much longer. Not because it would die, but because members who weren't useful would be kicked out. If it was strong enough on its own it might find a mate and try to make its own pack.

That, or it would live solitarily for the rest of its life, transient, traveling from place to place with no territory of its own.

Halfway through the day Quio had realized he must be in the pack's territory. Otherwise they would not have stuck around so long.

Despite him having impinged on their area --and likely having taken their food-- they seemed, for the most part, to humor him. Except for that one, they all left him alone. They seemed to pay little attention to him, though every once and a while he would feel eyes watching and look up. After he looked at them they often didn't stare for long. None of them challenged him, none of them growled or put their ears back or lowered their heads. Only once throughout the entire day did he have to throw a rock and that was at the one that kept trying to steal his bow drill to chew on.

This gave him the opportunity to really watch them. Besides learning their social cues, he looked at the way they walked and held themselves. He tried to figure out their body mechanics, which foot went first when they stepped, how their legs looked when they leapt and run. Their posture when they stood, how they held their weight, and other such intricacies of form.

If he was to become one of them, after all, he needed to learn them.

So Quio watched.

He watched.

He learned.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Quio]

When evening came Quio finally got up from where he sat. He had stopped foraging for food when his legs had grown tired, and had been resting the last couple hours or so. The coyotes had begun drifting further away from him, out once more where he couldn't see, but he knew they were still there. There was something about the silence of the trees. Except for the birds. The birds were loud. They were always mad.

He didn't think it a coincidence that the coyotes had vanished right before the suns began to set. They had been unconcerned with him during the day. Some of them had turned their backs on him and slept. Now they were all up and he could feel them watching him. They were waiting for dark.

Waiting for him to be vulnerable, but he wouldn't give that to them.

Before night fell Quio started up another fire. It was getting easier each time he used the bow drill as he grew accustomed to the work of it, though it still hurt like hell to use his left hand to hold it in place. The new bandages and sling didn't help with that.

Away from me, devil, he remembered suddenly, another thought out of the blue, and sawed the bow and gathered kindling, waiting for the fire to bloom.

When it did he added two logs he had left out drying in the sun all day.

This fire he placed closer to the tree he had been sitting at. Close enough to feel its light and heat but not so close as to catch anything, the grass or tree itself, alight. He kept his back to the tree, resigned to sit there awake if he had to the whole night. He'd slept longer than usual last night so he should be okay. If he had to he would sleep in snatches sitting upright.

The crutch he kept across his lap, remembering how the one coyote had seemed afraid of it when he held it. And the stone dagger he held ready in one fist.

Darkness fell and the mark of Qylios glittered around his arm. Brightly, as if on display. He could see the coyotes' eyes like glowing disks as they continued to watch from the dark.

He had plenty of firewood. Enough, he thought, to last the night.

Away from him in the trees there was movement. One of the coyotes stepped out, came close. Close enough that it must have felt the heat of the fire on its fur. Perhaps twenty feet away. It stood across the flame from him, and Quio looked at it and it looked at him. It put its ears down and showed its teeth, front feet spread wide and head low as if to lunge, though it did not move. After a few minutes, five or ten, it slowly backed up and went away.

For a while there was silence. Silence in the night was an uneasy thing.

Then the coyotes began yipping and laughing and yowling, first one and then the rest. It was eerie and chilling and somehow thrilling, that noise, a noise which seemed to call to the blood and defied direction, sounding as if it came from all around. Quio, for the first time, realized there might be more of them in the pack. Ones he had not seen. He got up to a crouch, stone knife in hand, with the tree still at his back.

"Don't," he tried to warn them, but his voice wouldn't come.

Quio stayed crouched like that for what must have been an hour, leaning slightly back against the tree. The coyotes' cackling grew close at first and then far away, then farther, and then was gone. He still crouched after that, all the hair on his body standing up.

When they didn't come to kill him he sat down and listened. Really listened. There was no longer that sense of being watched. And he could hear the crickets chirping again.

A while longer after that he thought it was okay to sleep.

Quio slept with certain precautions in place.

He only slept an hour or so at a time. This was easier for him than for most; he had trained his body throughout the past season or so to sleep on command. Before that, he'd lived on a ship where people commonly slept in shifts. This was something he was used to.

He also slept sitting up with his back to the tree. Each time he woke he looked and listened. Made sure he heard the crickets or cicadas or night birds, who were shier and more cautious than the birds in the day.

Quio slept more soundly come morning's light.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"