"So... You want to get back to the hunt?" I ask Heiya, leaning forward to get my boots back on as she waves a hand before her face. I give her a little jokey sneer, bringing something of a smile to her face.
"Sure." she goes, keeping to herself as I put on the final touches of what I need to get to doing. The last straps tighten and I ease myself onto my feet, wobbling ever so slightly as that achy feeling in my feet goes away. Coming back ever so slightly as I apply proper pressure onto my feet. The unfortunate knowing my body has yet somehow I can't actively think about.
"Alright, I'm ready." I answer, emptying the smoking pipe across the ground. Instantly, I step on the embers. Burying and scrubbing away at them with the rubber of my shoes. My eyes do a double-check and I walk away, leaving it all behind.
I turn slightly, offering a hand in case she needs me to take something up. She needs me to, she really needs me to. But she won't let me help. She keeps Ivahstar's weapon in hand, her own, too. Come on, Heiya... Let me help.
She gets up, wobbling and wavering. She finds her footing, leaving me with but a frown. My height lets me hide it, a slight turn to the right, doing even more. I try to keep my attention on the forest, but it's hard to go anywhere else. She's too important to just turn an empty thought to.
"Alright, let's get to it," she goes, either knowing the awkwardness or somehow slipping in with no awareness. She walks and I follow, keeping track with her even as she makes a point of using the undergrowth.
"H-Hold on, Heiya. Hold on." I let out, climbing over the fences and whacking some bushes as I need to. The field goes on by, little rodents rushing about and buzzards going up into the air. Each stride knocks seeds and bits about, making as much a mess of the plants as it does help them.
My arm reaches ahead, and I grasp the plank of wood, hopping up over the fence. I look ahead and then turn back the other way. Heiya fell behind me in the open field. And, admittedly, it's quite cute watching her make her way through the messy field like nothing's happening.
"Hurry up, slowpoke!" I go, in complete contrast to how our journey began. She picks up the pace for but a blink of the eye. The rustling comes to a stop, and she slips through the fence. Her musket bashing on the fence and leaving it with a gentle wobble.
My hand lets the cut wood go, and I take a few steps ahead. I turn back slightly, watching her rise with a few pats of the chest and sides. Though she's not even bothering with cleaning her prior kills. All that blood is quite the glue for plant debris.
"Ready?" I ask and she nods, throwing a pointed hand up at the forest and following the direction. I catch up with her and join in, and we leave the light behind for the gift of the canopy. My eyes follow the bark and trunks up, hopping between the branches and birds until the light is in my eyes. Not enough to make me wince, until it is. When it suddenly lances in the most sudden of spots.
I keep my focus ahead as one might normally do, occasionally looking to where Heiya is. She doesn't seem to have found anything of note, but I can't be sure if her efforts have changed. Who knows, maybe now that I'm here, she wants a bigger quarry? I know I'd aim for something bigger if I had help and Ivahstar was much the same.
"I want to try and get something larger." she explains, proving my mind right in an instant.
"How much larger? A corpse doesn't have wheels and I'm not pulling something larger than a large house pet." I explain, partially joking, as the simple fact I get to eat a good cut of the kill is enough excuse to put the effort in. Besides, I'm no pushover when it comes to work. Labour pains aside, I've done my time in the grunt pits and the like.
"Guess we'll see..." she mutters, setting aside Ivahstar's spike gun so she can properly focus on her musket. Oddly, she doesn't load the right kind of ball and she's putting on the wrong parts. A quick and easy kill is not what she's going for.
"Heiya?" I ask and she ignores me, intentionally slamming all the parts on and off as loudly as she can. The rails slam and chug, their grooves not used to such rough behaviour, no doubt. It's the roughest I've ever seen her intentionally be with that musket... Very, very rough.
Mm...
"Well, let's go get us some dinner." I say, choosing to leave the topic alone for the moment.
"Yeah." she answers, finally. Though, her tone is nothing but ice and freezing cold. It was barely any time ago that she... No, leave it, Hrurim, leave it.
"Alright, let's go." I say, clapping my hands just to see if there is anything in the immediate forest. I have to admit, actually, this is quite surprising. The forest was nothing much to snuff at from the outside, but the perspective really changes on the interior. I can see through it from the farm, but, inside, you can see outside of it all ways.
That's fine for finding my way out, though the problem is not that. It's making sure I'm staying in the forest. A baffling change of perspective if there ever was one. Certainly makes me want to get back into the tunnels. I can find my way through them and Heiya will no doubt about that.
"Down there." Heiya points out, finding a pair of tracks in no time at all. I join her on the ground, taking a knee into the dirt, twigs and more. Shuffling ever so slightly as one of the middle digs into my knee, through my trousers.
"Four legs?" I hazard to guess, and she nods, somehow finding a piece of fur among all the mess.
"Mammal, not in any rush," she adds on, possibly as a force of habit. Something Ivahstar taught her, perhaps? I know he always went on about how hunting is a life skill few appreciate until they're starving. Work like ours isn't always going to put us in a situation where there's a shop to rob. A person to at least hold up for a pack of jerky.
He did good teaching Heiya how to hunt. He did good by her for a lot of things. I can only hope Heiya actually appreciates these lessons enough, even living in the moment like this. If she does, good, if she doesn't... I can only hope she will in time. Grief is a strange moment, not just of sadness.
Unresolved anger, joy she blinded herself with. She will get worse before it gets better, depending on how this goes. Who knows how it will even look for her? I can only speak from experience myself. Those bits about life that just lead you down a path and you have no choice but to follow along with it. I did it, she will, too.
"Lead the way." I tell her, offering her an enforced hand up to her feet this time. Though I'm rough, I gently pat her off and she has nothing to say. She gets going, heading along the increasingly clear path as we cross more marks. Not all are footprints, but the signs are clear to me for the moment. Clearer to her.
We take a turn and then another, going off course just to fit into a path we can actually go. We're lost, then back on track. All for the sake of the same path. Yet, for all the animals we do catch signs off, Heiya is ignoring them. No matter how juicy and tender they appear to be and are.
I keep my thoughtful noises to the confines of my head and fall in behind her, not wanting to get in the way. She keeps us going, understanding fully what we are to do. We go up logs and around bushes. Under branches while being mindful of falling acorns and the like.
She gently backhands my stomach, bringing my attention to her. She keeps going, even with my attention, and I bend down, putting a stop to it before she gets too close to my face. The hand goes ahead, right for our target. A piggish thing more than happy to enjoy what we're up to. I doubt it has any idea what's coming for it, either. It just wants to eat.
Heiya hoists her musket high, aiming as she needs to and... She's off on her shot. That's all there is to it. Her posture is uncanny, and that's the only explanation. She's intentionally-
"SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" the animal cries away, the bang of the musket somehow not the loudest sound in the forest right now. I blink, following along Heiya's path as she reloads her weapon. The simple bolt-action sounding so crass and cruel for the moment.
"I wasn't blowing heads off because it was the best way." she admits, a sniffle to her voice as she brings the gun up again. I do nothing, and the forest rings out again with a bang.
"SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" the animal cries even louder, spinning wildly as two immediately non-lethal wounds bleed it dry.
"Heiya?" I question, knowing full well what this is. Pain on the inside becoming nothing but hatred for the world on the outside.
"I shot their heads off to make sure I can do it. To make sure my aim is right even when my head is... When my head is where it is. I kept replaying it. Pops' last moments. My biggest mistake. I kept playing it through my head... Again! And again! AND AGAIN!" she builds herself up into, firing off another shot without me even picking up the bolt's movement.
"SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE- Eeeeeeeeeeee...!" the animal cries, its voice breaking as it struggles to figure out anything. Where to go, where to flee, what to fight. Fight or flight, it can't make its mind up. All it can do is scream in pain in a way only an animal on its way to the butcher can.
"Heiya." I go, firmer than before as she fires off more poorly aimed shots. It keeps squealing, begging for its suffering to end even without a single word ever leaving its snouted face.
"I'm going to do this to him... Gamtambo... His family... I'M GOING TO DO THIS TO THEM!" she screams, shoving the gun right against the animal's head and pulling the trigger one final time. Brains and gore scatter across the ground and she's heaving away. Steadily stabbing herself into a mad frenzy.
"HEIYA!" I roar, grabbing onto her and putting a stop to the needless brutality. She stops instantly, clinging to me with shivers and shakes. Whimpers and... Tears.
"I'm g-going to... I'm going to kill him!" she swears, barely able to make a full sentence as her crying borders on sounding like laughing. And, there's nothing else to say but...
"I know. I know." I tell her, holding her tight and close so she can get it out of her system in this brief moment of lapsing attention.
"I'm going to fill him with bullets... Blow his toes off... His fingers... I know how to keep him alive so he can feel every bit of it!" she swears, adding clarification where none is needed. Yet, that's just the thing. All these promises, all these acknowledgements... They won't matter in the end. They won't.
It's much like a cigarette, really. She will have that moment of relaxation, the joy of it... And then there's nothing. She might shoot the dead body some more, kill more people associated with it. But, there's an odd, indescribable high that needs to be experienced right now.
I know the bads of it, but I know she needs it... She needs it as much as she needs to keep her mind off of it.