Source: Lifora on dA | Date: 6.26.20
Hunting - Roenden - Caribou
Hermeus was a little nervous on this warm - as warm as it would get in the eastern forests of Roenden, it was just a dozen degrees above freezing - summer morning, as he was expecting a visit from two of his friends that were living in Roenden city. As he was living a lonesome life in the woods as a full-time hunter with nobody around for miles, Hermeus often was nervous when he didn’t talk to anybody in a long time as he was not too good with social conventions.
The visitors who had announced themselves for today via letter a week ago were Penance and Vrayeel, two friends of his that were always great to roam around the wide forests as both of them were experienced hunters too and understood the way Hermeus would think.
“DON’T get scared!”, Vrayeel yelled after sneaking through the back door and almost gave his unprepared friend, who hadn’t expect anybody for another day, a heart attack.
“You should have seen your face!”, Penance laughed at Hermeus, who had jumped up into the air upon the stealthy attack and was now a little ashamed for how much he got scared from such a simple trick.
“I haven’t seen anybody for two months now, how do you think I’m going to react when you just start yelling at me?”, Hermeus replied, but as he didn’t want to seem too salty, he added: “It’s nice to see you guys here so early though. I was just about to go out for a hunt to get the food for the next few days, so as you showed up so early you might just come with me now.”
It had been quite a walk behind the two, but neither Penance nor Vrayeel wanted to let the chance pass to hunt with their friend, so just moments later they were already on the go after taking a quick sip of water from the spring next to which Hermeus had built his cabin.
As usual in the early summer, many small flowers and green growings were spreading all around on the ground, a beautiful picture you would often find in colder regions as bigger bushes would not survive the winter. It was quite a beautiful picture and Penance, who had been working in the city for the last weeks, was enjoying getting out into this untouched nature during the summer, astonishing the amounts of birds flying around them that would all sooner or later fly back south when the summer would lose its warmth.
Soon enough, they came to a clearing where they found some very desirable prey in form of a wild caribou, that seemed to have gotten separated from its group for some reason beyond their horizon. As Penance noticed it first, he made sure the others wouldn’t scare it: “Quiet, there is a wild caribou.”
Trying to come up with a plan, Vrayeel said: “We should split up and attack from all sides.”
“Wait!”, Hermeus whispered though excitedly. “There is another one further behind, look closely between the legs. I will walk around the clearing and scare them from behind so that they will run towards here where you will wait for them. Okay?”
“That sounds good!”, Penance replied and his friend proceeded to walk around the open space hidden between the trees, making as low noise as possible.
Hermeus waited a while after having arrived at the other side as he had no way of telling whether his friends were ready, before putting his plan into action.
With a loud scream imitating his friends surprise from earlier today, he ran towards the confused and shocked Caribou’s that immediately started running as fast as they could towards the path that leads into the forest on the opposite side and therefore directly into the arms of Penance and Vrayeel, who jumped out right in front of them, while later one got lucky and managed to throw one of them to the ground right away, In the meantime, Penance pursued the other one, that had tried to turn around but in sight of Hermeus was now running off to the side along the treeline.
As he noticed that Hermeus was not following him anymore, Penance put what he could into a sprint and managed to get close enough to grab a leg of the caribou, which fell quite spectacularly with a forward flip. As it tried to get back up, he had turned around and managed to kill it with one precise bite.
In the meantime, Hermeus had noticed a rabbit, which ran away from all of the action and pursued it into the forest to his right-hand side. It cut quite a few corners, but was a lot slower than the sporty Vayron and soon found itself being carried back with a tasty breakfast for the next morning in mind.
CP Counter
Land Bonus +1 Added Reos + 2 (Vrayeel 10734) Hunting + 1 813 words + 8 Total = 12