I pressed my tiny body as close to Crab as possible, trying to avoid Captain’s gaze. I heard Crab laugh once again, but I was not to be fooled; this Captain was a rabid beast. One look into its piercing eye told me all I needed to know about its feral nature.

As I leaned into Crab, the beast walked forward towards us, eventually leaping off of the table and onto the cot. As it met my eyes, I froze like a deer in headlights. Before I could think about what this meant, an odd feeling washed over me and I was forced to close my eyes to keep from getting sick.

The memory of a forest swam into my vision, one much like the forest Crab and I had traveled through, minus the snow. The trees were bare and decaying, and what little leaves were left drooped with the brown color of death. This passed through my mind in a second, and was quickly followed by a graceful creature staring in my direction, proud yet careful. I realized what it was as I saw the odd growth on its head: a deer.

The viewpoint of the memory turned and a human entered my vision. The man was smiling, dressed in an odd orange shirt. He pointed back towards the deer, and I looked to see that it had leapt into the tall brush, obscuring itself.

The vision faded from my mind, and I tried to understand its implications. The clothes of the man… they were like nothing I had seen yet in the village, bright and garish instead of drab and practical. However, I had learned something even more important. When I had turned to the man, my eyes had been almost level with his. I would have to think about this at some point… but it would have to wait.

I slowly opened my eyes, being sure not to feel too nauseous, and was met by a furry black face less than a wing’s length away from my own. I stared, unsure what to do, and Captain slowly poked me with one of his paws.

Acting as a catalyst, his paw sprung me into action as I dived sideways and tried to scramble to the other side of the cot. As I moved, Captain pounced on top of me, using his front paws to pin my body to the bed. Crab, finally seeing fit to intervene, spoke with an authoritative voice.

“Captain, you’re not allowed to eat Senya. No matter what, you hear me? If anything happens I’ll give you back to Erik.”

Crab’s speech seemed ineffectual until he spoke that last word. With the mention of this Erik Captain leapt off of me, hissing and baring his fangs at Crab.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I don’t think anyone wants that.”

Crab held out his hand until Captain stopped hissing and gave in. He nuzzled Crab’s hand, and quickly settled down, keeping his wary eye flickering between me and Crab.

Once Crab had laid back down on the cot, I quickly jumped onto his chest and settled back into my old home. On top of being comfortable, the pocket on his coat seemed the safest place to sleep. Eventually I fell into a light sleep, still a bit high strung with the new presence of Captain.

Crab moving woke me the next morning, and I could see rays of sunlight streaming through the window across the room. I quickly checked for Captain, and luckily he seemed to be missing. Resolving myself, I climbed out of the pocket and down onto the bed. Crab was busying himself getting ready, but he stopped what little he was doing as I caught his attention.

Making sure he was watching, I climbed onto the wooden fixture at the end of the cot. I perched at the top for a moment, before diving onto the bed, mimicking what I had done to the Silver Wolf. Digging my beak out of the cot, I gazed at Crab expectantly.

He seemed to think for a moment, before taking a guess, “You want to… practice fighting?”

I shook my head side to side, and then approached him and dug into one of the pockets in his coat. It took a while to find what I was looking for, but Crab sat patiently until I dragged out a piece of dark brown meat and looked up at him.

Once again he thought before guessing, “You want to get some food?”

I gave him a ‘kaak’ before miming my diving technique on the dried meat, and he seemed to grasp my meaning.

“You sure are impatient. I was going to wait until you had grown some to start hunting, but if you want to learn I can start now.”

He picked me up and dumped the meat back into the pocket I had retrieved it from, saying, “For now, we should take it slow. There shouldn’t be anything out there much bigger than you, but there weren’t supposed to be any Silver Wolves round here either.”

As we left the small cabin out into the morning sunlight, I could see that the village was already awake and moving. Villagers worked, talked, and bustled about, doing activities whose point I could only guess at.

“As much as I like this place, it gets boring fairly quick. I’d much rather be out hunting than holed up here.”

Crab continue walking, back towards the large building the Chief had been inside yesterday. Entering the hall, instead of returning to the round table Crab walked into one of the side rooms. The room was filled with the larger knives, shafts of wood with metal at the end, and slightly smaller poles of wood with indents on each end.

Crab took one of these smaller poles, testing its flexibility, and then dug into a box in the corner of the room. Taking out a thin string, he then attached it to the bottom indent on the wooden pole, bending the pole to compensate for the shorter string. Grunting with effort, Crab secured the string on the top of the pole and held the thing up for inspection.

As I saw the completed product, a word pooped into my mind to fill in the gaps: bow. It was a weapon that shot a projectile, and while I couldn’t picture what that was, Crab quickly answered my internal question by retrieving a bag from the box. Feathers protruded from the opening at the top, and this sparked a picture in my mind of the bow being used; arrow releasing from the string, whistling through the air before planting itself into its target.

“Well, it’s certainly been a while. Hopefully Chief doesn’t mind me taking his gear.” Crab experimentally pulled the string before finally heading out of the building and back into the light snow.

As we reached the gate that we had passed through the day before, the same two guards nodded in our direction. Well, they could have been anyone, but their faces were covered by thick cloth to protect from the cold. We were passing through the gate when a voiced grabbed Crab’s attention. Donnie came running from slightly further down the wall, waving at us.

“Wait up! Are you going hunting?”

Crab waited for him to catch his breath before responding, “Yeah. With all the game in the area, I figured we’d get something.” Then, drawing Donnie’s attention to me he said, “Besides, I doubt Senya wants to stay in the village under everyone’s supervision.”

Donnie glanced at me tentatively, and then agreed, “I guess I understand… But the Chief will probably come looking for you guys in a bit, so you’d better hurry. I think he wants to show her to the rest of the elders.”

Hearing this, I ‘kaaked’ angrily at Crab, making him chuckle.

“Well then, we’d better hurry.”

As Crab was turning to leave, Donnie stopped him once again, “One more thing. One of the hunting groups left earlier this morning. They had the same idea as you, thought they would take advantage of the number of snowtails running about.”

Crab paused and asked, “I knew that there were more than usual, but that many?”

Donnie nodded and said, “Yeah, they went northeast towards Kenner Village. If you hurry you can catch them up.”

As Crab started walking away he yelled, “Thanks Donnie!” over his shoulder, putting distance between himself and the young villager. Crab increased his pace as I heard Donnie shout “It’s Donnel!” behind us, but Crab didn’t respond.

The trees surrounded us as we left the village, and they brought the peaceful sounds of birds chirping. I was happy to be out of the village, as safe as it seemed. I wasn’t comfortable with all of the humans, and I certainly wasn’t willing to share a space with that damn cat demon.

Maybe I would get used to being around more than just Crab eventually, but until I figured out the memory I’d had the night before I would stay alert. Before I could consider it too much my thoughts were interrupted by Crab as he seemed to have an idea.

“So far you’ve really only made those ‘kaaking’ sounds, haven’t you?”

As confirmation, I let out a curt ‘kaak’ as he resumed talking.

“Try listening to the birds in the forest. I want to see if you can mimic any of them.”

Unsure of his real intentions, I went silent and listened to the soothing sounds around us. Many of the overlapping songs I could hear were so smooth and melodious that I doubted I could even come close to matching them. However, among the many songs, I eventually made out a harsher squawking, sounding in intervals. I listened for a few more moments, before trying out my own rendition.

“SqWaaAkk”

Crab practically jumped in surprise, and I admit that I did as well. The sound I had made did indeed sound like the original, if that original had a crushed throat. I crouched back into my pocket home, trying to hide my embarrassment, as Crab hesitantly responded.

“Well… that’s a decent start… I guess. Just keep practicing, and eventually I’m sure it could work!”

Even though I had little interaction with humans, I could still tell that Crab was being fake with his words. Well, not that I blame him.

Despite my terrible mimicry, it was interesting to make a sound other than the ‘kaaks’ I had been using up till now. I hadn’t really thought about using different sounds, it’s not like Cab would’ve understood me any better.

“Hmm. It should do for now. We both need to practice our part, as I haven’t shot a bow in almost a year.” Crab stopped, looking around. He then lifted me out of his pocket, continuing, “Since you don’t have your feathers yet, you can be a lookout. I’ll be down here, and you’ll be in the trees trying to spot snowtails. If you see any, use your new call to let me know where they are. Hopefully the call you chose isn’t from one of their predators.”

I cocked my head to the side, waiting for him to clarify.

“Ah, snowtails are these big grey creatures. They have long ears and a white specked tail. You’ll know when you see one, there isn’t much else out here this time of year.”

I ‘kaaked’ my understanding, and Crab approached the nearest tree. He held out his hand to the nearest branch and I clambered up onto it. I could feel my heart hammering away in my chest as I used my beak to slowly scale the tree.

Climbing to a higher branch, I looked down at Crab, now smaller than before. Gazing through the surrounding trees, excitement coursed through me: my first hunt was about to start!