Sorry for not updating much lately. My usual time that I spent working on critiquing and writing was taken up from GRE studies. Now that the class is over, I should be able to be back in the game.
Except... last night, my computer went on the fritz. Suffice it to say, the power supply is probably dead and my hard drive may be corrupt, taking with it a fairly sizable chunk of backstory writing. (Nothing else though. I keep multiple backups on several hard drives.)
In the meantime, that has sort of disrupted my process for the moment (I hate breaking habit), so I've been sort of slow on getting responses and stuff out. I should hopefully be starting writing on my next piece soon, so I'm going to try to finish up what is left quickly, so you might get a few sizable chunks.
Aryel left her home, heading for shelter at a nearby town, after finding her family gone.
Her stomach still gurgled in response to the meager food, and she continued looking for more bushes. After a few more minutes—it had to have only been a few more minutes—she found another bush, and ate all the berries off that that one as well. Time ticked by and she found a half dozen more.
As she feasted, a rustling of trees towards the far side of the forest caught her attention and she drew up her gun in response. Is the keyl back? Had the animal bothered to slip out in the bushes while stalking her, inadvertently revealing its presence? As she watched in the direction the noise had come from, the rustling started again. Aryel slightly relaxed as the sound continued. An animal that made such obvious sounds either was big or not hunting.
She took several steps towards the spot where the rustling had occurred from while cautiously remaining crouched and low to the ground to make herself seem as unimposing as possible. A low deep base rumbling shook through the trees in front of her. A moment later those rumbling coming evenly spaced every few seconds confirmed her suspicious as origination from the deep exhalations of an adult aegysback. This animal was probably the same one that had stepped through the area leaving the trail behind that she had spied earlier. She cautiously followed in after the animal, making sure she didn’t get too close. These animals were a peculiar sort and were either incredibly aggressive during their mating season or completely placid during the rest of the year. Unless you got one upset. Then you’d best climb the tallest tree you could find and hope the animal couldn’t break it down.
She peeled the foliage back and looked into a large meadow with a stream running through it. Large grasses grew out of the barren parts of the meadow while the stream dribbled and burbled on its slow winding course. The aegysback slowly plodded along into the field as she had expected it would.
The beast was a very large animal, most likely a female in the prime of her life. She was built slightly similar to the keyl or a maky, but with some obvious differences. The aegysback was huge for starters, standing probably four or five times as tall as Aryel was. While she was maybe only five and a half feet tall or so, this animal would have almost reached the roof of their cabin.
The aegysback’s massive half-circle head swept back and forth guided by a massive bulky neck that had to be three or so feet thick. The rounded and smooth head was scarred slightly, probably from predator attacks that she had faced when younger. Each of her massive four legs were shaped slightly like a keyl’s, but where a keyl was light and wiry, this animal’s limbs were massive tree-trunks probably two feet wide, ending to two large nail like toes. She had a short stubby tale that was only slightly flat, that looked comically like someone had taken the tail off of a young keyl and stuck it onto the back of this large animal.
As she came out to the clearing, the animal somehow sensing her presence, turned towards her with that large sightless head peering down at her, trying to decide what Aryel was there to do. For a moment Aryel stood wary but apprehensive at the sight. As long as she made no outwardly aggressive moves, she would be fine. Then she saw the reason for the females concern. A young calf scuttled between its mothers legs, stumbling at one point and face planting into the ground before managing to right itself. This infant was small and young, possibly only a month or so old. The light leathery skin on its back that had yet to harden to the great shells spoke of just how young the animal was. Keyls and makys preyed on young aegysbacks like that one, or on the old and decrepit. They wouldn’t have a reasonable chance to make a play on a healthy adult.
The massive rumbling echoed through as the aegysback, apparently satisfied she wasn’t after its baby, turned and continued its constant foraging through vegetation as it sucked the plants on the ground up into her narrow mouth, without stopping to munch. The infant scuttled after her, not even looking to Aryel.
Aryel watched the two animals recede into the field for a moment longer before turning back towards where she had come from. She grabbed a few more berries off of the plants, and even found an irregular lionweed, whose golden stems could be sucked dry of the nutritious sap that they contained within. It was a surprisingly sweet taste when Aryel took a drink off of it.
She reached the furrows created by the cart a moment later, and found she had gotten back onto the trail almost at the exact same point she had left. Momentary glance towards the ground found her attention being caught by several pugmarks she had not noticed before. A quick survey of the area found her at least two pugmarks from a keyl, and a rapid sense of growing unease filled her. The tracks from the animal were almost superimposed on hers, leading into the forest, and were quite fresh.
She brought the rifle up, and suddenly her fear seemed realized. She recognized those tracks, and knew that the same one was now following her. Why is it still following me? I never did anything to it! The animal was seemingly less like an animal every moment and more like some vengeance driven madman who was out to kill her. She gritted her teeth, but panic induced tears ran down her face and her hands gripped the rifle tightly.
She started backing down the road, keeping her eyes locked towards the woods that she had exited from. Maybe the aegysback’s unease at her presence hadn’t just been because of her being there. Had the massive grazer noticed the keyl as well? The possibility made a chill run up her spine, and she tried to calm herself down. Now is not the time to panic. But she knew she already was doing exactly that.
She moved down the trail, increasing her pace, and trying to get out of this area as fast as she could, before the animal had time to setup an ambush. Such things were supposedly common from what she had heard. An animal wouldn’t just wait until you were ready to attack, it would wait until the opportune moment to do so. It could be lying in wait in front of her or to her sides and she wouldn’t even know until it was too late and the animal was on her.
Cautiously, she started sweeping her eyes from side to side towards the grasses against the road and in the middle of the pathway. It would be too easy for a predator, even one that size to lie in wait for her. Then she realized something she hadn’t even considered for a moment since her encounter the night before. She had heard the animal’s presence and seen the aftermath of its attacks, but she had yet to see the actual beast. Had she not seen the tracks previously, she wouldn’t have even known there was anything around her.
She almost laughed at the thought she was being haunted by a bogeyman rather than an animal, and then in a moment of inattention, her foot caught on a rock and she stumbled to the ground. She spat out a string of curses that would have gotten her punished for sure by pa had he heard them, and she felt a breeze run through her hair as she picked herself back up.
But when she got up, she was immediately knocked to the ground again. The keyl spun on its legs, raising that big flat tail in a threatening manner and she caught the glint of blood off of those blades on the animal’s head as it prepared to give the killing stroke. Her rifle went off a moment later, creating a loud boom and instead of eviscerating her on the spot, the keyl bolted for the cover of the vegetation in the wink of an eye.
Only then did she realize what must have happened. The keyl must have been right there off to the side of where she had tripped and she had walked into the ambush zone. Stumbling to the ground had probably saved her life, and the animal had struck her with that big tail to knock her down and go for the kill again.
Her shot had easily gone wide, but the animal had fled all the same. Perhaps it’s just afraid of loud noises? She suspected that a predator that tangled with aegysbacks would not find itself very fearful of such noises, but the idea still played at her mind. The animal was still alive, and that meant she was still in danger.
Her hands shook from both fear and excitement as adrenaline coursed through her veins. She didn’t know what she was scared of now. The animal? Dying? Whatever it did to her, she knew it would probably be quick and painless. She had known pain before, and wouldn’t fall victim to simple bruises and welts. What I’m afraid of, is not winning, she realized with a sudden flash of insight. I’m afraid of the animal getting the upper hand.
She stood there for a moment, and then she knew what she had to do. Running to the village and hiding from the beast simply wasn’t feasible. It was only a matter of time before the animal set up another ambush, and she couldn’t lay all her hopes on tripping and avoiding the initial death blow again. She knew right then and there, she wouldn’t survive the trip to town.
No, I have to play his game, she knew. She would have to kill the animal before she could do anything else. And just how do I plan on doing that? Keyls were intelligent animals, supposedly more so than dogs. But they weren’t still weren’t people. She just needed to find some sort of method to hunting the animal. That required getting close enough to fire a killing shot without getting killed in return.
Aryel stepped off the trail and headed deep into the woods. The animal’s logical spot for another ambush point would be just along the trail again, but far enough up that she couldn’t see it getting into position. Until she came up to that area, or passed it, she held the advantage in this battle. Each step down on the ground was planted so as to prevent any sort of noise giving her position away. In the forest, she couldn’t hope to be as perfectly silent as the animal was; she just wasn’t built the same. But she wouldn’t hand the animal the victory.
She had once met a man in town some years back. Pyew Mater had been his name. He was old, at least eighty or ninety, so he was entering the grey years of his life. The man had lost both eyes in some sort of fight years back when he had been a teenager. But where he could not see, his other senses were more than compensating for his lack of sight. His senses of smell and hearing were far beyond anyone that Aryel had ever met. He could hear small animals chirping in trees hundreds of yards away that she couldn’t even sense, and was able to identify people by their specific odors. That part had seemed more than slightly offensive to her.
Slightly offensive not because he could, but that he had given a passing comment that she had smelled like dirt and cows. She wasn’t the most lady-like in her manner and attitude, but that certainly had not left her smiling at the man.
The keyl must share some similarities with Pyew, since she had never heard of one with eyes. She had always suspected that the animals that were native to this planet had superb hearing, but this was really the first time she was ever going to get to check that theory. She really had nothing to lose by testing it, as she was meat either way. No eyes meant they still needed to sense their environment by some other method.
Powerful hearing that basically let the animal pick up any noise at all, as well as any sorts of movements. While Pyew had a good sense of smell as well, Aryel thought these animals must have sort of sense of smell comparable to her own if not superior. Pyew’s sense of smell had only been good to several dozen feet, and beyond that, he couldn’t smell a thing.
As the breezes picked up, she noted with a sinking feeling she was now upwind from the animal; not the best place to be. I need to find a way around it. That was easier said than done as any bushwhacking could alert the keyl to her location. I sound like I’m fighting a murdering person, not an animal. But if I play it like it is a person, rather than an animal, I might just get of this alive.
Resigned to what she had to do, she checked the gun one more time to make sure that the rifle was still ready for action. It had a long metal barrel, finely cut and forged together. She had heard her father supposedly say that it had come from off-world. Maybe from Serenity, or maybe even Earth itself. The stock on the gun was finely cut copper bark that had been polished and sanded to perfection. It only had straight ironsights, not like the scope she had once heard Pa moaning about not owning.
She didn’t know what exactly the scope could do to improve the gun anywhere from what it was. The rifle was still an old weapon; one that definitely hadn’t seen much use in the years Pa had owned it. She couldn’t actually remember Pa ever having used the gun, only having wielded it menacingly to scare off maky patrols that bothered the cattle.
First, she needed to get ahead of the animal. As unnerving as it was to know the animal would be behind her and stalking her the whole time, staying ahead of the beast and letting it come to her was the preferable option. Ultimately however, she knew she wouldn’t have any sort of chance of knowing whether she had managed to get ahead of the animal until the plan was set into place.
Maybe an hour or so passed until she had gone a distance she had deemed appropriate. Then, she gripped her rifle close, and put her finger on the trigger as she approached the trail. This was where it would become incredibly tricky. If she hadn’t gone far enough, the animal would be downwind from her and would know where she was just by a quick sniff of the air. That was assuming it did have a decent sense of smell, and that wasn’t something she wanted to risk her life on.
And if she measured wrong, she could walk right up on the animal and scare it. Any there was nothing more dangerous that a startled keyl, she knew. Each end was just as dangerous as the other. Those razorblade horns could slash and rip while the tail could pummel and crush. Startling one would end up being the last thing she did if that happened.
A moment before she stepped out into the clearing where the path led, she looked at the trees around her for the appropriate sized one that would be necessary. There, a few yards further up the road, she found a large copper bark tree probably five or six feet thick, with a few branches hanging low enough for her to grip and climb to the top.
She checked around her to make sure nothing was sneaking up to snatch her from the branches as she climbed and when she was satisfied she was alone, she started up the side of the plant. She had climbed more than one tree in her fifteen years of life, and she scrambled up to twenty or thirty feet onto the tree. There she spied a nice thick branch that she could sit on without worrying about falling off.
