When the sun fell below the horizon, the dense clouds bringing nighttime earlier than usual, every good pce to hide was either insufficient or utterly drenched with a heavy puddle. Settling for a wide fiteret to rest my back against, the weather hardly felt diminished.

  CRASH! A tree fell right in front of me, mud scattering and covering my garments and face. I jumped at the sound, almost pulling out my sword before realizing what exactly had happened. The rain got to work filtering all of the dirt back to the earth. Thus, the sixth day rose, giving way to the fifth day of unbroken storming.

  My stomach began to groan again, desiring another bite of bnd snake. The grumbling clenched my teeth again, but for another reason rather than pain. The sheer force of the rain made puddles out of sloped terrain and sent whatever hadn’t been utterly drained at that point ricocheting straight down to the ocean. Not only did a fire have to be made in the first pce, but had to be kept for long enough to cook something. It was no wonder there were hardly any loose branches sprinkling the ground.

  The pitter-patter of water against the sopping wet mud began to bounce around in my mind. The crash of thunder and the whipping wind accompanied it, a miniature storm all pying inside my head. It would become nothing more than a backdrop to my travels if not for my stomach ensuring to remind me why no food had been poached yet.

  By the seventh day, with fists raised to the sky and dropping to each knee, I yelled to the grim sky. “Cease! Stop! Quit! Leave me!” Other curses followed, but the clouds did not hear. From their weeping hearts, they kept pouring rain onto the thick canopy and thoroughly drenched ground. Once it had been tolerable, the droplets filled with warmth and each new drop ensuring the water never cooled. There, with every protracted growl from below fighting against the roaring storm to be heard, mingling with every heavy drop of water hailing onto my head and forcing each eye nearly to a close, created a most miserable condition.

  Nothing waited in that lonely pce. The only option became to get on with it. Raising back up to both legs, the journey south carried on. Each step forward was another away from the rain. Surely, getting to higher terrain and traveling further innd meant less of the ocean’s weather.

  The eighth day rolled around much the same as the st. The seventh day of unceasing rain kept pouring down, lightning and harsh gales accompanying it as always. No more animals came out from their holes in the trees or the safety of the canopy. Any burrows on the ground must’ve been wholly flooded.

  By the end of that day, there came a new type of tree. A colossus of a beam, a width nearly half of the boat and height unknowable with the canopy all about. No branches grew so low, its leaves high in the sky. However, a giant scar from long gone fires tore open a great wound into the center of the tree. Situated on a small mound, it provided natural cover from the endless rain. The ends of my mouth creaked upwards in a smile. Humanity wasn’t the only thing that desired cover.

  A fat old boar rested in the cover, water still dripping from its deep gray coat onto the clear dry ground below it. It must’ve gone out to forage recently, using this tree as refuge from the deluge. It remained scarily silent, nothing but its pitch-bck eyes staring straight into mine. Yet, its stance shot upright from sitting, its hooves fidgeting with excitement.

  My swordtip pointed straight at the beast, held to the side like a spear with a low crouch. The bde wettened in moments, distant lightning fshing against the trailing droplets. Unlike boar spears, my weight was the only thing to hold the beast back. Aristocrats loved to boast of how difficult it was to sy boar, nothing like the common fat sow eating from a trough. This thing looked ready to charge at any moment, eager to defend its territory from invaders.

  Before the final charge, a thought sprang up. Dear brother, if my end comes from this boar and you can hear me, please eat a boar in my name. A deep breath came in to the lungs, puffing out my chest before it released. The end for its long life drew near.

  With a surge of motion, my feet spping and the boar’s hooves plodding against the wet ground, we charged. It squealed into the air, piercing through the dreary weather. Nothing came from my own throat, the rush of adrenaline too great to vocalize even a scream properly.

  We crashed together, its weight unwieldy and great. Its ferocity truly could not be matched by any other creature, seemingly willing to pierce itself. A gasp finally came from my throat, eyes widening at the sight. It pushed, wriggling up to me despite being pierced so thoroughly. Then its squeals grew, the wide guard on my sword stopping it from charging any further. The tip of its snout smacked against my nose in its thrashing, but its deadly canines were just vrentras away.

  Slowly, its struggles began to wane, my neck craned as far back as it could go. Its weight started to work against it as it slouched further and further. The smell of blood trickled into the air, mixing with the scent of wet dog radiating from the boar as its fur soaked up more rain. The spark of anger flickered in its eyes, snuffed out by a dark death. Boom! Its weight thudded against the ground as enough of its blood drained from its wound, only slowed as my sword acted like a crude plug. When the st jitter died, my sword tore out of its flesh with a few heaves.

  I began to drag its carcass back to the tree, hiding within the space. For a boar, its home had the basic necessities. Shelter from the weather and dry brush beneath to create a fire with was everything a man could ask for. Not only that, processing a boar was a far more familiar process. Back home, almost no one ate snake. Boars on the other hand zed just about anywhere where food could be scavenged, my brother participating in his fair share of boar hunts. Even more, if it was possible to tan its hide despite the constant rain, that provided another yer of protection for myself or as a makeshift bag.

  As with anything, starting a fire became the first step. Inside, there may have been a plentiful amount of brush, but not a lot of wood. I gathered a bit more bark and another stick, going back to replicate my success. While hungry, the weakness from that first day did not linger on. The friction started to burn away the water before a faint spark grew in the bark. Setting it back down, the dry leaves and grass acted as kindling. More sticks were ripped off from trunks then, setting them inside to dry.

  Breaking them down a bit more, each hand whipped them to help remove the yer of water coating them. Droplets flew from them back out into the storm until they were only retively damp. Inside the warm space, they dried out quickly and were added just as soon as they did. Then came time to skin the boar.

  The head came first, getting chopped off and set aside for ter. Then came the legs before starting the process of cutting off the hide. The process was somewhat familiar, if tedious by using a sword’s long bde instead of a knife. The skin had a special pce, however. Moving outside and slicing furrows into the bark, I cmped the skin in pce as it got washed out by the rain.

  With the flesh separated from the hide, further preparations began. My sword cut in and sliced out everything that could not be eaten. By the end of it, all the inedible bits thrown out of the tree’s safety, the carcass looked unrecognizable from before. Some parts were more intact than others, the intention to cook them immediately. The others were thin, fatless strips of red meat.

  Inside, the smoke, the color of light gray, billowed up and caught on some overhanging bark before finally releasing outside. Finding some more branches, they were cut down until they had to be forced into the top. Carving out notches into both the heartwood and the bark, the branches stayed in pce. Finagling them into pce, the strips id above, soaking in the smoke. With the meat cooking and smoking, the time to deal with the skin came.

  Going back outside to the skin, each bit and piece of flesh had to be cut off. Normally annoying and time-consuming in ideal conditions, having to do it without any proper surface or a knife only intensified those factors. Slowly, but surely, every bit of meat and fat got dragged down to the ground by the rain the second they came loose. Multiple times the fleshing process got interrupted by having to check the meat and eventually by dinner. The sky darkened until only lightning, northern comets, and the campfire illuminated the night.

  However, with constant and focused effort (and a happy stomach), all of flesh fell to the forest floor before being taken off to the ocean. Thankfully, with all of the most prone to rotting bits gone, the time allotted before the hide became useless lengthened. With that, it came time prepare the tanning solution.

  That boar’s head found its use then, the top of its skull getting scalped until its brain showed. Mashing it with the pommel of the sword, it soon became mush. Mixing it with some water readily acquired from the rain, it started to take a cream-like quality. Taking a whiff, it made my face grimace. The aroma of the fire returned, the branches giving off a slight scent akin to a dull garlic.

  Returning with the hide, my hands wrung it out until it stopped dripping with water. Next, pcing it out as ft as possible in the retively cramped space, my hands dipped into the boar’s head and began to sther on the solution. My brother told me this was why it was called brain tanning. Back then, he had a container for the brain that he could just pour it all out. While the meat above smoked, I knelt and kneaded the solution into every nook and cranny of the hide.

  Sleeping after a good job, the ninth day dawned. The meat above found itself in an edible state. One strip was enough to make for a good breakfast, though its taste relied entirely on smoke and meat itself. Not the best in fvor, but a step up from eating pin snake. However, the rest needed to be further smoked until it had a dark and tough appearance.

  Focus returned to the hide. Though the next steps were the lengthiest in time, they had little interference. Firstly, the solution had to be wrung out. Secondly, hours of the day needed to be spent stretching the hide as to not become stiff. The fire helped quicken the process, its finish marked by the hide taking on a light appearance. Thirdly, and finally, the hide had to be smoked as well.

  It took some thinking, but it ultimately ended with getting more branches. The fiterets proved to make good, little-ash smoke. They were set off to the side to dry for the moment, my hands digging a hole inside of the tree. Three of the longest sticks were chosen, two hacked down to create an even height. Laid down, they made a cone structure above the hole, the tips nearly touching the ceiling. They were rough and strong against my hands, easily able to take the weight of the hide. The smoke billowed up against the soft, white skin beneath the fur, taking until the night for it to come out as a good, light-brown color.

  Inspecting it closely as distant lightning sent the world into a fsh of white light, my nose caught a whiff of the hide’s smell. The boar’s scent had vanished, repced by that of a campfire and the faint garlic of fiteret smoke. For the first time in a long time, I went to sleep with a bnket above me, the tan-hued hide soft against my skin while the fur had a thick, coarse texture.

  By the wake of the tenth day, after nine days of storming, I rose unlike many others. A faint smile curled at the ends of my lips, a ugh suppressed into a swift exhale through my nostrils. Rain kept destroying the soil, lightning continued to bolt down with thunderous crashes following, and the winds whipped and harried on anything it found. Yet, despite it all, there was good, preserved food above and tanned fur along with it. With the threats of immediate death no longer impeding me, my attention returned to the phoenix.

  For once after nine long days of misery, the adventure could go on unfettered.