《Eric the Unready》Chapter 5 - Scared of the Dark

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A bruised and bleeding Eric lurched away from the pond, clutching the remains of his messenger bag and its assorted contents. The Rabbit's attack had torn through most of his school notes, to the point that they were only good for kindling at this point. Eric looked around possible shelters.

In the lee of a tree, he saw some small brush that would lend itself to comfortable shelter in case it rained. A few rocks would make a firepit, and he could use a bow to start a fire. With fire, he could create a pot and cups, boiling the water and rehydrating himself. If he could kill some rabbits, he could use the sinew for cord and make traps. He started right away pulling over the brush and covering it with leaves and grasses for both comfort and camouflage.

An hour later, he had a basic leaf hut, with basic A-frames using logs and sticks pushed together. There was barely enough room to wiggle inside, but it was quick, comfortable, and blended into the woodland. With the limited stamina and tools at hand, Eric was proud that he was able to put even this together.

Next, Eric gathered a few rocks to create a fire pit a few feet away from his shelter. Without the ability to control potential sparks, Eric felt safe was better than sorry in having the fire too close to his tinderbox of a shelter. Eric cleared away the leaves from his new firepit and started to search the wood for tinder, starting with matchstick-size all the way up to thumb-size sticks. Sharpening one of the sticks, Eric tried to start the fire by rubbing against a flat piece of wood, as he saw on all the survival shows. 15 minutes later his arms and hands were sore, and not a spark or ember had formed.

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After beating his head against a rock (figuratively?), Eric realized he could have used a shoelace to make a bow-type friction method. wrapping the string around the sharped stick and tying each end to another stick to speed up the rotation, Eric started again. Again, just spinning the stick on another piece of wood was useless as now the bow moved the point around too much. Using his knife again, Eric tunneled into the wood, creating a pit that would hold the stick in place. Finally, he saw that the wood was getting hot and smoke was coming out of the wood pit. Adding some finely torn paper to the hot wood, Eric started an ember. Carefully shielding it from wind, he built it into a small fire.

Eric's arms were shaky and his back was soaked with sweat. He was done in and crawled into his A-frame to get some shut-eye.

The warg smelled a sweet-sour smell along with the iron tang of blood. It slunk close to the light coming off the embers of the burned-out campfire. It was hungry, having only eaten a rabbit earlier and looking to fill its belly with warm, red meat. Looking carefully around it didn't see any movement but the A-frame was an invitation to attack, with its only entrance shrouded in darkness. The warg knew once it got in, there was no way for its prey to escape except down its throat. Salvia dripped out its mouth and down its razor-sharp teeth as it thought of the smell of blood and the feel of rending flesh. It readied itself and leapt across the fire into the shelter.

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