Chapter 16

The Hunt – Part 1

Once they packed up the tent, they started to head toward Lyrika’s home.

As they walked, Lyrika still kept her distance from Olivia, but now things were no longer as tense as they were before. The incident with Olivia’s little friend, while incredibly embarrassing, had helped alleviate the tension between the two. Lyrika no longer kept looking over at Olivia to see what she was doing, fearful that she might attack her. She just let the distance she kept between them deal with that.

After the long talk about the plan to deal with the horrible chief, they ended up speaking more as well. Now that they were on a mission, other fears and thoughts were somewhat pushed to the back of her mind, allowing them to talk more casually with each other.

As they walked Olivia talked about herself, and brought up Ameril, telling the tale of how they met. Lyrika was thoroughly engrossed in this, as if true it gave her hope that she could end up being just calm and relaxed around Olivia, where if it was true she wasn’t the monster she had been warned about since being a child, she wouldn’t need to keep her distance from her. Of course, she had no way of knowing what Olivia had said was true. But the hope was still there.

Lyrika also spoke about her village and the tribe. She didn’t go into massive detail but spoke of the different races present, how long it had been around, and a bit of its history. It would seem that the village was built not long after the episode of slavery started for beast-kin. As a lot of them fled from the human cities, many did travel to the other kingdoms seeking refuge. The problem was that after travelling for so long, some were turned away from the other kingdoms. The need to provide additional food, water and shelter, for all of the beast-kin fleeing was a massive undertaking for the elves, dwarves and even the demons where at the time, they generally only had enough for themselves.

Some were taken in by the other races, but these were generally the most healthy and skilled beast-kin, leaving all the others to fend for themselves. Many were enraged by this and had to commit crimes just to survive, food being stolen along trade routes being the main one. This obviously did not bode well for the leadership of the kingdoms and so they ended up exiling them from their lands, forcing them back to the human kingdom.

While all of the beast-kin this happened to were stuck between a rock and hard place, a few of the wisest members came up with a plan to take refuge in the forest of Gradia. The humans hardly ventured into the forest, for fear of animal and monster attacks, and so all of their towns were built a good distance from it. This gave them a good place to set up camp, and eventually a village, in an area hidden by trees and not visited by humans. While the monster and animal attacks were still a problem, choosing between being enslaved and having to fight beasts, was an easy decision to make.

With time, many villages were built in the forest, as the beast-kin expanded. Once slavery was made illegal in the human kingdom, they then expanded out of the forest back into the plains of the kingdom. With all that occurred with the beast-kin, it was decreed by one of the human kings that reigned that they were free to do so, providing them with the deeds to the land they now occupied, asking only for trade agreements and non-aggression pacts.

.....

It would seem that this king was quite the saint and beloved by the beast-kin for the opportunity. There were however rumours that he had a beast-kin as a lover, so she may have influenced over some of his decisions.

But anyway, he gave them the opportunity to truly settle themselves into the human kingdom, where eventually, the majority of the villages in the forest were abandoned in favour of ones outside the forest, like the village Lyrika was from.

Her village while outside of the forest, is close to its border, which is why Lyrika fled in this direction. The hope was the chief would not follow her into the forest, or not even think she would go that way, which as it stands, seems to have worked.

As Olivia continued to learn more about Lyrika and the history of her village, they walked through the dense and repetitive forest, where with all the greens and browns you really had no way to tell if you were just walking in circles.

Thankfully, she had Lyrika with her.

Olivia not being native to this world, still had a lot to learn. While she was by no means a navigator or a tracker, on Earth everyone knew the direction the sun arose, giving you a good way to tell the direction you were travelling. There were also other ways to navigate such as with the North Star, which she had learnt from school.

None of this though gave her an edge in this world.

While the sun did rise and set as you would expect, what direction it did so in was completely unknown to her. Thankfully, she now had someone to tell her that.

Sort of.

“It normally rises from the forest, travels over our village and then descends past it. So, we just need to follow the direction it travels and that should take us out of the forest close to my village.”

Olivia just stared blankly at her once she said that. While it may make sense to Lyrika, Olivia wasn’t too sure how this would work out. Granted the girl had only travelled in the forest for a day, but who knows how turned around she became. Whether they end up close to her village or somewhere else along the forest edge was anyone’s guess. All they could really be sure of was that following the sun would lead them out of the forest, but where it did was another question. But, it was the only plan they could follow, as Lyrika was the only one who knew where she lived.

…

It had been a good several hours since they started to head to Lyrika’s home, and both were starting to get hungry.

“Should we stop here and have some lunch.”

“Sure. What are we having?” Lyrika asked as her stomach rumbled.

“Hardtack and jerky.”

Lyrika’s face just dropped at hearing that. “Again. What about some meat. There should be plenty of animals around to eat. Do you not have any kills with you?”

“If I knew how to hunt I’m sure I would have, but for now I only have hardtack and jerky.”

“You don’t know how to hunt.” The stupefied look on her face only grew, “How do you not know how to hunt? It’s hunting. It’s what all Orcs and goblins do to get food. How could you not know?”

“Well, as I said, I’m a bit different from Orcs and Goblins. I also lost my memory, so if I did learn how to hunt, I’ve completely forgotten it now.”

While completely false about possibly having learnt to hunt, it was better than trying to explain that she came from another world, where all you had to do was go to the local supermarket and pick your food up off the shelves.

Lyrika stunned look quickly changed as she came to understand what Olivia meant as she recalled her mentioning her memory loss. But as her stomach growled for the second time, she jumped back in to deal with things.

“Ok, we shall have the hard tack and jerky now because I am starving, but then we are going hunting. No way I can eat that stuff three times in a row.”

The way she spoke almost reminded her of Ameril where, as a noble, she imagined her stating she was too good to be eating the common camping food in a haughty tone. Thankfully, Ameril had changed a bit since they met, but she could still imagine her saying it.

…

Setting up a small camp, they got to work on lunch. The annoyance on Lyrika’s face as she ate the hard tack, showed how much of a struggle it was to do so. Olivia could almost imagine her staving herself rather than eating it again after this. Why she was so affronted by the food she didn’t know.

Olivia had no qualms with the food. It lasted a long time, and while not a tasty treat by any means, it didn’t taste horrible. But, if she could learn how to hunt, that would definitely improve her flavour pallette.

It didn’t take long and the meal was finished, which was followed by a grimace on Lyrika’s face. But now that the meal was over, they decided to get to work… and hunt some animals.