Mannat quietly fell behind Pandit.

A young man in his twenties walked a few feet ahead of them. The man had an unusually long beard for someone his age, but he was quiet as a cloud.

Mannat could hear the wind ruffling through the leaves, shrubs, bushes, and ferns, but he didn’t hear the man walking on a foliage littered ground. The same ground might as well have been lava for him. He could barely take two steps before stepping on one or another thing. He was also the reason why the man was walking ahead of them, and not with them.

He had received a good few glares from the man before he simply went ahead and kept his distance. Mannat wasn’t one to keep repeating mistakes either. He analyzed their way of walking. They weren’t pushing the ground back with their feet but gliding over it. There was more to it, but that was all Mannat managed to analyze. He copied their movement and still produced noses. It was the trees. They were pitting him. They had carpeted a scratchy noise mine for him on the ground and Mannat was not wise enough to know where not to step.

The woods looked nothing like he remembered. Light shimmered through the cracks in the ceiling like diamonds in the rough. The trees were tall, but trees in the end. The lowest branch he saw was more than ten feet above the ground -- out of his reach. In his sight, the trees were pillars holding the sky. Mannat wasn’t sure if there was mana coercing through their veins, but he found them no better than corpses standing watch over them. No wonder the woods looked eerie at night.

Pandit’s father, a thin but agile man, followed behind them from a distance. Both the men carried bows. Pandit’s father had a compact bow that fired swiftly and accurately. The man at the front carried a heavy bow on his back and a short spear in his hand, to prod the ground for enemies, and draw directional marks on the trees as he walked past them. Pandit had his cleaver drawn and ready to attack.

As for Mannat -- he had a knife, in the knife pocket of his pant. It was to remain there unless he was in danger and there was no one around to help him. If danger does befall upon them, his orders or option was to stay calm –which he could—and try to get behind anyone near him. The knife was to be his very last option. They treated him like a kid on a safari and Mannat quietly accepted the treatment without uttering a word. Perhaps, his calm and understanding nature was the reason why he wasn’t reprehended left and right for the noises he was making.

Mannat was tired and sweaty. They had been walking for two hours straight, and it didn’t seem like they would be stopping anytime soon. He was starting to realize why Pandit’s father had tried to dissuade and change his mind. Perhaps, he would have given up if his friend had not been so lenient and excited in his approach.

Pandit had gone straight to his father after hearing Mannat’s intentions. The man obviously disagreed at first and asked his son to change Mannat’s mind. Pandit asked him once and then gave up, and that in front of his father. What else could the man do? He could only agree to bring Mannat along.

“Just for this time,” He told Mannat who was all too happy for getting his wish. He was expecting some pushback, but there was almost none. Wonder why he believed Pandit wouldn’t agree to take him hunting in the first place – the boy was clearly happy to help. Even said he was finally getting a chance to show off.

The sound of another branch snapping brought Mannat back to reality. Perhaps, his focus and lightheadedness were the real reason behind his amateurish display in the woods. They were supposed to be on deer hunting. It was not going to be a fight. The bearded man named Vayu was looking for signs but the deer’s seemed to have vanished from the woods.

Another hour into the audaciously painstakingly slow and boring trek, the man suddenly went to the ground and touched the foliage. He went around looking for more signs, cruising through the forest like a phantom. Mannat searched the ground for hooves prints, but there was nothing to see. He then looked around to find a broken branch or something along the lines, but everything looked the same to him.

Pandit noticed his confusion and told him about the less obvious signs. He pointed to a particular bush, which looked no different from the other bushes. If anything, it had a few more young leaves on the ground under it.

“That’s a sign?” Mannat asked with a sigh. “It could have been wind,” He was confused, tired, and in pain. He had lost his precious ‘focus’ some time ago, and the woods were proving too confusing and loathsome without it.

Pandit waved his hand for him to quiet down. It irritated Mannat, but he didn’t’ lose his patience over something so damned provoking. Was it, though? He couldn’t figure it out; he was too fidgety. Hunting was too stressful.

“Of course, it could have been the wind,” Pandit whispered. “That’s why Vayu is taking a look around. He’s not off to a stroll. Deer’s have a tendency to eat and take a dump.”

Mannat opened his eyes wide in realization. “We spent over three hours searching for Deer poop?” Pandit's eyelid twitched in response. He didn’t’ like the sound of that either. Mannat added, “Seems like unnecessarily raising the difficulty of an already difficult task.”

Pandit scoffed, “How else would you look for a small deer in this big forest? And it’s not complicated. Do you know Deer’s spread their shit all over the place to distract predators?”

“Is that something you made up?”

“They do it by beating their tail,” Pandit said. He paused before his lips curled upward and he added, “There is a saying among us hunters. It goes: If you ever hear the sound of heavy rain on a sunny day, it’s probably a deer taking a shit.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Pandit replied cryptically. He was smiling and trying to hold his laughter in check. He was starting to sweat. Mannat found nothing funny about the remark; so why was his friend overreacting?

It didn’t take him long to find out.

Eventually, there was a birdcall, and Pandit’s ears perked up. Mannat followed his gaze and found Vayu standing straight at a distance, waving his hands for them to follow. They quietly followed the direction and fell upon a trail of berries that led them toward a pile of fresh stool.

“Boar,” Mannat heard behind him when he was looking to ask his friend. Pandit’s father had bridged the distance and was walking right behind him for safety reasons. With a bow in hand and eyes at the woods, the man was ready to tackle anything that came at them.

Vayu approached with his eyes on the lookout. “Do you want to set a trap here?” He said stopping a few feet away from their lot.

Pandit’s father looked around. He chose a few trees and the three of them started building rope traps underneath them. Mannat didn’t understand the reason for choosing the specific trees, but he did notice the lichen, a structureof algae adn fungi, growing on the tree trunks that were picked.

He asked Pandit as they were setting two traps of their own, and this was what the boy told him. “Wild boars are very aggressive animals. Tackling them head-on is plain suicide. We are going to trap them so they can exhaust themselves. We’ll have a much easier time catching them then.

“Why choose this tree? Is it the lichen?”

“Yeah. It is a very potent flea repellant. The boars like to rub their backs against these things. It’s nature’s way of taking care of its inhabitants.”

Pandit nodded.

Soon they were on their way again. Another two hours or so elapsed, but forget Deer’s, they didn’t even see a squirrel on the way. Well, Mannat didn’t; Pandit would point at one every ten minutes.

“There is another one,” He whispered again, pointing at a mulberry tree not so far away. Mannat didn’t see a thing other than leaves and branches, but he did hear a whistle as an arrow traveled past him. It flew straight toward the tree Pandit had pointed at and stuck its trunk with a muffled sound. Pandit then silently left the group for the tree. He returned within a minute holding an arrow from the shaft, with a squirrel dangling from its head. Pandit pulled the squirrel out and threw it into the rucksack hanging from his waist. It was starting to fill. His father took the arrow as the boy fell back in line. They didn’t kill every squirrel they found or shot every bird to death. That would have been tantamount to killing the hen that laid golden eggs.

They wanted enough for themselves, not everything the woods had to offer.

Overall, Mannat was tired. His head was down, legs were stiff as two dry branches, and eyes looking at his feet -- they were itching inside the boots. Turns out, walking on the uneven, sometimes soft, and most times loud surface of the woods was a lot tougher than running on a plain road. He thought he had the stamina to last the trip… Well, he thought wrong. No wonder he could never catch up with Pandit no matter how hard he tried. His friend had been doing the same since he was eight years old.

Mannat didn’t see many animals on the trek, but he could hear them around. The birds were in a jovial mood and hadn’t stopped singing for a minute. There were more sounds than he had ever heard in his life. There came a point he felt they had stopped moving. It was a surreal experience -- not sure if he’d like to experience it again. The trees were thick and the sky was a net of leaves and branches. The blue sky as lost in the green heaven as he was in its depths.

They approached a cave. A dark pit in a barren land; it looked so out of place the cave instantly drew Mannat’s attention.

It was weird.

If he was vying for something different from the monotone trekking then he was to be left disappointed. They passed the cave and nothing happened. No beasts came to attack them. The men didn’t even pay attention to the place. Only Pandit bowed his head and slowed. The boy slowly slipped behind him and he heard a soft sigh, but that was the extent of it. They didn’t stop to rest.

It had been three and half an hour since they set off, and they were still going deeper into the forest with no signs of a break nearby. These people were crazy! Vayu kept moving forward, checking the ground at times, slowing down but not completely stopping. At least, they weren’t creeping in the forest like Mannat first believed. That would have scarred him for life.

A time came when Mannat had enough. He was on his last legs and about to crash when suddenly, Vayu crouched low to the ground and raised his right fist in the air.

That was a signal to stop and hold the position. The group became vigilant. Everyone got on their haunches, ears perked up and eyes turned to the front.

There was a spotted Deer grazing grass some dozen feet from them. It was tall, a male, with long and majestic horns above his head. It looked to be at peace, but not for long.