Ashan 69th of Arc 711
“Are you done yet? I’ve got to go too! Sooner rather than later! I might wet myself!”
Yana sat crouched behind a bush, knees as far apart as anatomically possible with her pants around her ankles, pointedly ignoring the pleas to hurry up. She took her time despite feeling –and being—quite exposed. The neat parts of being a Yludih were often offset by the need to pretend to be something else. Which lead to situations like these. Half-naked in a thicket, fooling a fellow soldier into thinking she was peeing. Which, naturally, she didn’t. Her asterism –heart, stomach, and possibly information processing organ—broke everything edible down into energy. Completely.
Yana didn’t know how it functioned, only that it did. The complete conversion resulted into zero waste products, which, of course, meant there was no need to purge waste from the body. Or, according to her second theory, the waste was stored and later used as fake blood and sweat. After all, those liquids had to be produced one way or another. Obviously, the Yludih did not have veins or sweat glands, so conversion of waste into a mimicry of fleshling body fluids wasn’t that far-fetched, Yana thought.
When a couple minutes had passed, the Yludih pulled her underwear and pants back over her hips, and rose from her position.
“Ready? Good, good! My turn, keep an eye out for me, okay?” Nicole blabbered immediately, bouncing from one leg to the other. She rushed to a different bush, practically diving behind it. The necessary parts of her armor, along with her blade had already been thrown off beforehand, lying at the base of a mossy tree. So much for vigilance. Well, not that the Yludih had expected much from the girl, but still.
A frantic sounding fiddling filled the quiet, followed by a relieved “Oh, phew. Just in time!”
Shaking her head, Yana reached the branch where she’d hung her gear on. Unlike her unwanted companion, she had opted not to throw it on the muddy forest floor. For one, she’d been able to prevent falling in the mud until now, and preferred to not get any of the goop on her gear. Secondly, you never knew what to find on the forest floor. A lot of animal droppings hid underneath fallen leaves and rotting branches, and Yana definitely did not want that on her sword and armor.
Now Nicole didn’t need to focus on keeping her bladder closed, she began talking again. Yana blocked it out to the best of her ability, which was easier since the talkative cadet wasn’t blathering right next to her.
She finished reattaching the removed pieces of armor, buckling the last belt, and made sure it wouldn’t come loose. Nicole was still behind the bush, so Yana shrugged and began heading back to the group. After two or three steps she stopped though. Something had caught her attention, something she’d missed on the way here. Not exactly surprising, with Nicole’s constant tongue wagging distracting her.
The underbrush diagonally in front of her had been disturbed. It was parted, with broken twigs and stems. Wide too, wider than a person. Something large had come through, trampling the knee-high greenery. There were some prints in the mud too, though mud had already filled parts of it, distorting the shape. It made her think they were fairly recent, though she couldn’t tell what kind of animal had created them. They didn’t look like hooves, so probably not any kind of deer or pig. Maybe a large canine or feline. Or a bear.
“Rayna? Rayna—oh! There you are! What are you doing? Is there something there?” The cheerful cadet approached, curiosity piqued.
Sighing, the Yludih was about to double her efforts to shut the girl out, but changed her mind. The chances were slim, but maybe…
“Would you be able to tell what made these?” she pointed at the prints.
Nicole bent over slightly to get a better view, a frown on her face. She mumbled while she stared at the prints for half a minute, rubbing her cheek with a finger. Then she straightened, and shrugged. “Nope. Not a clue. Something big, I guess?” The girl scratched her scalp. “I don’t really know what’s in these woods anyway. Wolves, bears, foxes? Bunnies… It’s probably not bunnies.” She furrowed her brow. “Bears are large, aren’t they? Maybe a bear? But don’t bears have claws? Shouldn’t there be claws on those prints too? Maybe it’s a particularly large wolf.”
“Maybe it’s a particularly large and carnivorous rabbit,” Yana remarked in response.
Shock spread across Nicole’s face, eyes wide and lips frozen for just a moment. “You think so? There’s flesh-eating rabbits? Do those even exist? No, you’re joking! Haha! Very funny! … Right?”
Yana responded with a shrug. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of monsters in the world. It’s always a good idea to consider all possibilities.”
Her fellow cadet swallowed hard, eyes darting to and fro. “Man-eating bunnies. That’s not cute at all. With those teeth of theirs, they probably could easily chew through bone… I better get my weapons!”
She rushed over to the small pile of gear lying in the mud in a zigzag, avoiding the multitude of bushes in her path. Before she even reached her destination, she suddenly began to jump on one leg, to watch the sole of her boot. About as quickly as it had been raised, Nicole brought it down again, and frantically began sliding her foot through the mud. “Ew! Ew! Ewwww! I stepped in something! Fuck, it’s not coming off!”
Against her better judgement, Yana came to take a look. Behind the bush, where Nicole was still trying to scrape the poop off her boot without touching, was a rather large heap of animal scat. Brownish black in color, with a distinct boot print splitting it in two halves. Even with the drizzle muting the smell some, the stink was very noticeable. Her nose wrinkled in disgust, but Yana did not turn away. Perhaps the droppings could help in identifying the tracks she’d found. If they were made by the same creature, of course.
Upon closer inspection, crouching next to it, the Yludih noted the shape was vaguely cylindrical. Not a nondescript heap like she’d thought. The color was mostly uniform. Brown with darker and lighter patches, some approaching black. As far as she could tell, the surface hadn’t dried out yet. There were no cracks, and when studying the imprint of Nicole’s boot, Yana did not see any layers of a darker coloration than the middle. Poking it with a stick revealed that it was mostly soft. The stick wasn’t met with more or less resistance at the surface or the middle.
It likely meant the droppings were recent. She didn’t know how long it took for a turd to begin dehydrating to the point of the surface hardening into a crust. It likely depended on the weather conditions. In full sun during Saun, it probably took a lot less time than in Zi’da. Did rain undo it, or simply stall the process for a while? Uncertainty about the different factors made it difficult to date the droppings. However, Yana was pretty sure that the smell and freshness existed in linear correlation with each other. The older the poop, the lesser the stink. With its pungency being rather strong, it seemed likely the shit was freshly produced. Maybe a day at most.
Feeling the temperature might help in narrowing down exactly how recent the beast took this shit. However, Yana refused to stick any part of her body into that disgusting heap. Knowing the animal had passed through fairly recently should be good enough.
“Rayna! I got it off! I had to use the bark of a tree-- What are you doing? Oh, can you tell what animal shat this out? I think you need to look for bits of food in the poop to do that.” She crouched down beside the Yludih, and grabbed a stick of her own, which she used to promptly break one of the cylindrical pieces in half. “It’s so soft! Gross!” She stuck out her tongue and immediately regretted it, violently spitting and rasping her throat. “Eww! Bah! I think I tasted the smell! Shit, it’s disgusting! I need water!”
While Nicole rinsed her tongue, Yana ignored her and focused on the contents of the droppings. The suggestion from the unfortunate cadet to look at the undigested pieces was not a bad one. Yana identified a myriad of seeds, but also what seemed to be shards of bone. Also bits of fur. She shared the findings with Nicole when the girl asked.
“Well, then we can rule out the man-eating bunny, since bunnies eat roots, not meat!” she beamed. Yana raised an eyebrow, waiting for the smile to fade. It did, gradually, as it dawned on Nicole. “Oh no. It’s a carnivorous bunny, so it DOES eat meat!”
“It’s probably not one of those,” Yana stated.
“How can you tell?” Nicole looked at her suspiciously, scanning for lies.
“Rabbits have different poop. Loads of pellets. And they have large hind feet, so the tracks would be different.”
“You’re right!” she sounded relieved. “Good. I’d probably have nightmares if I ever saw one. But, what kind of animal took that dump then?”
“Not sure. An omnivorous one. Large, quadrupedal.” She shrugged. “I’m not a huntress.”
“There’s bears in these woods,” Nicole suggested. “They eat everything. Maybe it’s a bear?”
“Plausible,” Yana agreed, standing. “It might be still in the area, so we better let Jeesa know.”
