It was hurtful to do, but there was no other way. It was do or die and he didn’t want to die. Apologizing to the corpse of his previous hunting partner he prayed for him to find a better master on his next life or at least that he managed to rest in peace.

Before cutting him off to eat him, he “dehumanized” the dog, making him mostly unrecognizable to try make himself feel less guilty, but it had the opposite effect. He couldn’t leave the dog be, even after his death.

He would have apologized for this too, feeling quite emotional, but his hunger defeated his feelings and he started fervently piecing the corpse to instantly cook it in a fire he had started. As soon as the meat started looking cooked, he munched on it like a wild dog.

After eating enough to satisfy his immediate needs he realized what he did and looked at his hands in terror of himself. He started punching the floor, making his hands bleed, trying to incapacitate himself so that he couldn’t do such actions again.

But the pain, together with the mix of emotions stopped him right in his tracks. Not because he knew that it was bad for himself in the long run, which he knew, but rather because he started crying. At first only a few drops, but soon enough he was bawling his eyes out with the loss of his two companions. Even though he barely talked with his sister and his relationship with Piti was mostly of “work”, knowing that he would never see Piti again and would probably never see his sister either hit him hard.

Lying on the ground like that, covered by the blankets that his sister used to use, he fell asleep. The very next day he woke up with back pain, stomachache and itchy face. The first one was because of his bad sleeping posture, the second one due to him eating meat basically raw because of his carnal instincts that had taken over him and the last one due to his tears ruining his face and the salts in them sticking to his skin and during the night the damage was done.

But it wasn’t time to worry about such mundane things, he had to move on and do something. Staying in bed would only let his mind wander, leading to thoughts about his sister and his dog, of which he had already had enough for his whole life.

He stood up and looked out the door. The storm had finally waned a bit and even though it was still snowing, he could do some work outside. Because he had nothing to do, he decided to hone his skills, specifically he wanted to build a perfect house.

There was no objective in mind when he started and he didn’t even have a mental image of what he wanted, but he started cutting wood and melting some ores to create nails before he built anything. His illnesses did hinder his work and he had to stop at times to treat himself an herbal tea or to stretch his body in an attempt to heal himself, but it naturally was a slow process and with him overworking himself it became even slower.

He spent a few days like this, but he realized that he had barely gotten any healthier, so he had to change his behavior. Instead of doing physical work, he would enjoy carving little statues out of wood which would still take his mind of the recent events, but it should let his body heal.

And he did get better, physically, that is. Mentally his plans didn’t go that well. He couldn’t “turn his brain of” while carving wood and at times something he took out or left had a similar shape to a dog, a horn or a person and he, focused on his activities, saw and remembered.

It didn’t help that he was making human-like statues, but even when he didn’t, he saw them everywhere. When he prepared his lunch, he saw the shape of his sister’s head. When he chipped wood, laid down on the mattress, he saw the house wooden walls and remembered how Piti had sullied it before. Anything he did seemed to bring back memories he just wished to forget… if only he could magically forget things…

And he could! He remembered that not only could he block or forget memories through magic, but he could also change them. But was he willing to change the structure of his mind for this? To forget something as important as his sister. What if she got saved by someone else and they found each other again? How would she react having a brother with lost memories, just like herself?

But on the other side it was severely disturbing his workflow and such a solution would basically solve his current problems, though it would be dangerous to “operate” on himself, more so if it was directly on his brain.

He considered both options for a while before reaching the conclusion of doing something in between. It would be a difficult spell, but what he wanted to achieve would make it worth it. The idea was that he’d block the essentials, knowing that fully forgetting about his sister would make him lost, losing some memories related to his sister yet essential to his current life. Then, when some conditions were met, he’d slowly remember things, not to fall unconscious by the information overload.

One of the conditions should be him meeting his sister, of course. Another could be meeting Kupi, even though he didn’t want to see him, Kupi might ask him about his sister and if he couldn’t respond the situation could turn difficult for him. But what if he wanted to change the conditions or add more? That wouldn’t be possible with his current knowledge, so he had to generalize somehow.

In the end he wound up setting the mechanism to unlocking his memories to be related to whenever he was directly asked about “his sister” or “Arabelle”. This was quite a safe method unless he got a new sister somehow and he was questioned about her. But Gabriel planned to stay here in the mountain, therefore it was unlikely that he’d meet anyone that not only wanted to live there but also wanted to be treated as his sister.

Gabriel was willing to bet that this would never happen and started planning the endeavor. Not only did he need to create a safe environment, free from external distractions, but he also needed to create a backup plan in case anything went wrong. And this was only the start. Once he approved of his constructions, he had to start drawing the spell itself. Then he’d need to practice on something with a brain or mind to see if it worked. When it did, he could progress further.

Without really realizing, he was already forgetting about his sister and the dog while working to do that. He was really focused on the planning and execution of the plan that it was the only thing he could think about. After four months of hard work, in a cool autumn afternoon, he successfully made a fly forget how to fly and then relearn it after being asked about its sister. Not that the fly would understand, but its ears would feel the vibrations and send the signal to the brain which is how the spell worked.

He decided to immediately test it on himself, confident that it’d work and feeling not too tired he felt that it was going to go well. And indeed, the “operation” went without a hitch, and he could only remember vague things about a person that was close to him. He left a paper beforehand that said that he’d remember when it was necessary, and he knew that it was his writing. Trusting himself he decided to go out of the room he was in and observed the place to see what he should do next.

With his body healthy he continued working on the house he had started before and decided to add some wooden sculptures as well to lighten the place up and make it look better. He also decided to change his original plans that were a square beside a square and innovate a bit, making the larger half of the house an octagon, while the bedroom would be in the square he had built before.

So, he spent months building different houses and when he got tired of that, he moved onto farming and then cooking. He practiced many skills that could be useful in certain situations, but he mostly did them to spend the time, though with farming and knitting there was an added sense of need because his food supply was too variable, and his clothes had started to break down with their use.

If nothing had happened during his eighth year on the mountain, he would probably had never left the place. He had everything he needed up there, after all. But life is anything but predictable and constant so there was no way he could stay like that forever.