Chapter 18

The Hunt – Part 3

With Lyrika out in the forest searching for the flowers that should stop her from getting an infection, Olivia moved on to the other item she would be needing.

A bandage.

Given where she was, it was slim pickings in terms of what could actually be used. There was no first aid kit nearby, no hospital to go to, so all she had was what the forest could provide and what she had on her already.

Thankfully, her injury wasn’t bleeding much at all. The horrible rodent hadn’t bitten her too deeply, but it was still an utter mess where having knocked the thing off of her, it had torn quite a bit of her skin off.

This meant that while she needed the bandage to hold down the ground flower, keep pressure on her wound and just generally keep it covered for when she was active again, she wasn’t pressed for time to find one. The problem was actually making the bandage, as given the small amount of choice, there were only a few things that could be used.

As she looked around, there were many, many leaves, some large enough to probably wrap around her whole body. While close to hand, the issue was that she had no idea about any of these leaves. Some may be absolutely fine, but others may be poisonous. Then there was no telling what bacteria was present on the flora here, which could make things even worse it if got into her wound. Boiling the leaves was an option, but that would likely just cause them to shrivel up and be unusable.

That means she would just have to bear it until they reached the camp and boil some of the ruined tent, in order to kill any bacteria on it and use that as a bandage. While becoming more unusable by the day, they thankfully still had the cloth from the tent, as they kept on finding uses for it.

With a plan in place, all she had to do now was wait until Lyrika returned, which thankfully wasn’t too long.

.....

“I managed to find it. They are quite common within the forest and not hard to miss given their vibrant colour.”

Lyrika sat by her side and started searching for something to crush the flower, which as she said was bright blue giving quite the contrast to the green and browns around them. Taking the petals off, she placed them on a slightly concave rock and got to grinding them with another. The scratching of rock against rock was the only sound that could be heard as she toiled away ensuring it was ground to a fine powder.

Several minutes later, she was done. Her arm was now dead from the repetitive movement, and so she struggled just to gather it up in her hand.

She hurried back over to Olivia and checked on the wound, before applying the powdered plant with her fingers to the torn flesh.

Olivia sucked in a sharp intake of air as she started to rub the flower in, it stinging as it touched her exposed flesh. Thankfully, it did not feel as bad as when people poured alcohol on wounds like she had seen in films. It was possible that her body had other benefits such as better pain mitigation and maybe even quicker healing, just to add to her already increased strength, but she would only find that out with time. And from accumulating more injuries.

The blue powder stood out when compared to her dark brown skin and given the way the wound was shaped, it almost formed something akin to an oval, albeit a messy one making it look like she had a bright blue tattoo.

“This should stop it from getting infected, but it looks like it is still bleeding a bit.”

“Yeah, let’s get back to the camp and I will bandage it up.”

Olivia made her move to stand up on her own, but Lyrika quickly held her down.

“Don’t be stupid. You are hurt. Moving like that will just make things worse.” Lyrika quickly said, all but forcing Olivia to remain where she was. She didn’t think that moving to stand would make much of a difference to the bite wound, given it was by no means large or deep, but she figured it would be best to follow her advice. She was a little annoyed at being called stupid, but with the way Lyrika was worrying about her, she ended up just breezing past it.

“I will help you stand… slowly. Now give me your arm.”

Doing so, Lyrika helped lift her up, not that Olivia couldn’t have done it herself, making sure to keep her as still as possible making sure not to agitate the area around her wound. Once they were both up, they grabbed the dead Efflers and snares and started to make their way back.

Olivia was worried the blue flower would just pour out of her wound, but it held quite well. She didn’t want to think too much about why that was the case.

…

As they travelled back, Lyrika stood by Olivia’s side the whole way. She glanced over to Olivia a few times looking at the wound to see if there was any change with it or see if she was in pain, but this thankfully never occurred. Olivia pretended not to see this and just kept moving forward. The wound did still sting a little, but that was likely from the flower doing its thing, she hardly felt it as she was distracted by Lyrika’s worrying and caring attitude, as well as the fact that the distance between them had dropped considerably.

Whether this would be the case going forward was anyone’s guess, as the closeness had clearly come from the fact that she was wounded, and that Lyrika may have felt somewhat responsible. Obviously, she didn’t cause the Effler to attack her, but it was her suggestion to go out hunting in the first place.

Either way, she would have to wait and see how things would go once the attack was off both their minds to see whether they could continue as they were.

…

Reaching the camp, Lyrika helped Olivia down, who then went to boil the cloth. But, before she could she was very bluntly told to “stay down” before she could even get started.

Now unable to move for fear of Lyirka getting annoyed with her again, Olivia watched her work. She heated the water that they had, bringing it to boil, where she then placed some of the ripped tent in the pot and waited. Once a good enough amount of time went by, she let it cool down, removed the cloth and rung it out.

Then came the making of the bandage.

The cloth wasn’t very long though, so they had to improvise a bit. They did have longer pieces but there were being used as bedding for the time being.

Placing it over the wound, Lyrika took one of the vines and lay it over the cloth, which Olivia held. She then wrapped it around her body two times and tied a knot, finishing the makeshift bandage.

“Thank you for helping me,” Olivia said as she looked over at Lyrika, who had just sat back down to rest after that fiasco.

“You say that like to didn’t expect me to.”

“Wha- that’s-. I in no way meant it that I didn’t expect you to. It’s just that even though you still don’t trust me…fully, you still helped me without a second thought. I am very grateful for that.”

The only thing that came as a reply from Lyrika was silence. But really, that was all that was needed, to know that she took Olivia’s words to heart.

The slight blush of embarrassment on her face showed that too.

…

As the day came to a close, while later than they had hoped, they got started on dinner.

The Efflers would keep for a while, so they decided to have one each, along with a small amount of the usual hard tack and jerky. Olivia was worried how Lyrika would react to that, but with the luxury of meat in her hands, it didn’t even crop up as a problem.

As they got to work preparing the meal, this was the time for Lyrika to impart the final lesson on hunting.

Dealing with the kill.

She took Olivia through how to skin the Effler and then the process of removing its innards. She had to pause halfway through her lesson though, as Olivia had to look away and almost vomit from the sight of the organ removal.

“How can that affect you? You are supposed to be a big scary monster.”

“How does it not affect you? That is disgusting.”

Gagging again at the sight, Lyrika had to wait for Olivia to sort herself out before she could continue… and continue she would. Nothing would stop her from eating this meat, even Olivia’s revulsion to her gutting the animal. She could have just left her to almost throw up, but she felt that she needed to finish off the hunting lesson before she did.

It took a while, but Olivia was finally able to watch her do it without needing to look away, and with that out of the way, they got to cooking and a short while later were sitting back and enjoying a lovely flavourful meal.

“This is so good. We definitely…need to keep meat on the menu… for every meal.” Olivia said as she chewed the Effler. While it wasn’t like having steak on Earth, having had only fruit, hardtack and jerky since she ended up here, a freshly cooked almost-rabbit-thing, even without seasoning was a godsend.

“That should not be too hard. Efflers reproduce constantly so there are always some to kill. We could also try and hunt a Gootra as well sometime. They taste amazing. Much better than the Effler.”

That sounded good to Olivia. She could only imagine what it would be like if she could actually find some kind of seasoning in this world. Being able to add that to the already delicious-sounding Gootra would be perfect.

“But for those, snares will not do much. We would have to actually fight it, or use a pitfall or rope trap.”

‘That complicated things, but setting up a rope trap in the right place sounded feasible.’ She thought to herself. All they needed to do was get some rope. There was the option of using the vines, but they might be too fragile for a rope trap, compared to the strength of actual rope.

“What does it look like?”

“Err, it walks on four legs. It is very quick and will attack you on sight. But, they are much smarter than the Effler, running if they know they are outmatched.”

‘Ok, this is sounding very familiar.’

“They also have long jagged bones that stick out from their head. The grow spikes on it when they try to attack making them very dangerous.”

‘And there it is. Of course, it’s the deer-looking thing.’

“I guess we have to keep an eye out for one,” Olivia replied. She still remembered her fight with the deer thing, now known as a Gootra, and how she almost beat it before it scampered off. She had gotten very annoyed that it deprived her of her victory and had hoped to settle the score at some point. So now, she had another reason to try and beat one.

…

The light in the sky had completely disappeared and it was time for some shut-eye. Now that there were two of them, having someone on watch was the way to go from now on. All of the previous times she had been alone and slept in the forest, she had been very lucky that nothing attacked her, aside from the time Lyrika attacked her that is. But now, someone keeping watch was the smart thing to do.

For this night, Lyrika went to sleep first. Whether it was due to her beginning to trust Olivia more, or that she was just dead tired from all the excitement of the day, she ended up sleeping only a short distance from her and went out like a light.

The wound on Olivia’s chest hardly hurt now, and the stinging had died down. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too long before she could remove the bandage. The fact that it was this quick, gave more credence to the fact that she may have improved healing or pain numbing.

Olivia sat there just looking around the area and tossing an odd branch onto the fire every now and then to keep it going. It was completely silent, and she saw nothing as time dragged on. She ended up just thinking about the day and going through some random thoughts. One of which was whether what they did was actually hunting or if it should have been called trapping.

These thoughts didn’t go on for too long though as all of a sudden something hit the back of her head.

It was not physically hard, and she felt hardly any pain from it, but when she turned to look behind her she saw nothing. There wasn’t any sign of anyone or anything. Not long after that, while she was still trying to figure out what happened, she started to feel drowsy, much more so than she already did.

This wave of tiredness hit her fast and she ended up toppling over and staring at the sky as her eyes started to close.

Darkness was all she could see, as she drifted off, but not before hearing a voice.

“Just sleep for a while. Don’t worry we shall talk when you wake up.”

And with that, she fell asleep.