Ambrose let out a huff of exhaustion as he dropped the sacks he had carried back from town. The butcher had found the story of the 'magic bunny' as he put it, a bit unbelievable when Arlon had explained it to him, but luckily, when Ambrose had elaborated it, he quite quickly seemed to change him mind.

  He took the smaller sack that contained the deer meat out of the larger one he had been carrying. Since all of the meat would have gone off before he could eat it, he and the butcher came to an agreement. Arlon would pick up two deer every fourteen days, which she would pay for at a discounted rate, she would have the skin and he would have the meat. In return he would teach him how to butcher a deer once it was skinned. He even threw in a quick lesson on how to properly fillet a fish, when Ambrose had mentioned he had part of the stream on his land. He wasn’t sure if the five silver he had agreed to pay a deer was fair but he didn't really have a better option.

  Ambrose looked at the rest of what was in the sack on the floor.

  Couldn't be that bad of a deal considering, He thought.

  In the bag next to the rolled-up deer skin Arlon had given him in exchange for his, was a leather sheath, containing a freshly sharpened iron hunting knife. Arlon had insisted that he have it along with the old hunting bow and fishing net that she had given him. The bow and knife were so he could actually put the skills she had taught him to use and the net she said she had no use for, as she had stopped her regular trips to the coast in the last few years and it could help him to gather fish for oil quicker.

  I went to the town hoping for kindness but I never imagined all this.

  Ambrose had never been one for begging, even when he had not eaten for days, he had preferred to forage himself, or when he was lucky to find them, do menial jobs to earn small amounts of coin, or scraps of food. He had honestly never thought people would be this giving.

  As he set up some of the meat to cook on the fire he made from his remaining wood pile, he couldn't help but smile like a fool.

  The rest of the day he spent planning. He had been given a few arrows from Arlon and she had told him that they could be reused but had also warned him that they would eventually break.

  He picked up and examined one of them. They seemed to him to be composed of three parts, a sharp tip; stone on the ones he had, a wooden shaft with a notch on the bottom for it to catch on the bow string, and three feathers attach just up from the bottom along the shaft. it didn't seem too impossible to make.

  With the arrows he did have, he started to practice using the bow, picking an unfortunate tree not too far from his camp as his target of choice. After a few hours of fumbled misses, Ambrose was finally able to get the hang of constantly hitting it, at what he felt was an ok distance.

  Ambrose looked at an arrow sticking out of his target.

  The right to live, farm... and hunt. He thought to himself, remembering Faraleen's words.

  He had no problem eating meat or using animal parts but the deer in the cave was a mercy killing, it was already going to die. Could he kill an animal that was just living its life peacefully?

  In almost a response to his thought, a raven darted down from the tree he had been looking at. Ambrose jumped but managed to track it as it shot down, grabbed a small mouse from the brush to his left, and flew off with it.

  He sat stunned for a moment, before the reality of the situation settled on him. This isn't the city; these aren't people's pets. This is the forest and here, if you don't kill, you don't eat.

  Once he had awoken the next day, Ambrose put the quiver containing the arrows he had on his back, and tied the smaller satchel that had held the meat onto his belt. He told himself that he was only going wash the meat juices from the bag so he could use it to hold sticks, sharp rocks and discarded feathers to make more arrows, as well as any berries and nuts he could find. In the back of his mind though, he had decided that if he saw an animal, he would have to try to hunt it.

  He made his way to the stream, filled his water skin, heated the water and tried his best to clean the satchel with it. As he crouched at the edge, scrubbing the material together before rinsing it, his mind wandered to the river itself.

  While it was rather calm at its edge, as it got deeper, the water had quite a rapid flow. It was about a quarter of a chain wide and he had only managed to cross it by swimming, meaning it effectively partitioned a section of his land from the rest.

  Should I build a bridge? He thought to himself.

  He hadn't even managed to build himself a proper shelter yet, he wasn't sure how he would eventually start to build a bridge.

  He also couldn’t help but notice the schools of fish swimming through the water. He had gotten himself so worked up about hunting with his bow he had completely forgotten to bring his net.

  They may have been an easier start? He thought to himself, annoyed.

  He finished up washing and began looking for sticks worthy of being made into his arrows.

  He was comparing two different potential arrow heads, when a noise pricked his ears. He slowly put the rock which was obviously the correct choice in his satchel and moved forward, stopping behind a bush.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He peeked his head over and saw something he had not been expecting. He assumed that the noise would have been another deer, since they were the most common large animal in the forest but instead what he saw was a large brown pig. It was sniffing the undergrowth, mostly likely for food Ambrose assumed.

  Skinning a pig can't be much different from a deer… can it? He thought.

  He hadn't even considered that he might be hunting anything but deer, something he now realised was pretty foolish of him.

  Ambrose slowly got his bow ready and took out an arrow. As he knocked it, he could see his hand shaking.

  Breathe, just breathe.

  He aimed the arrow at the pig but found he couldn't release it. His shaking increasing more and more.

  This is the forest, if you don't kill it, something else will. Kill it, and honor it by using all that it was.

  Ambrose felt the words like they were his own thoughts but they didn't sound like him. Either way they seemed to calm him, as his shakes had now settled and his hands were steady. He took a last deep breath, checked his aim and released the arrow.

  As he carried the pig back, he could feel his stomach rumbling, while he had eaten a nice big piece of the meat he had cooked yesterday for breakfast. The work he had done today combined with the feather spell he had cast had taken a lot out of him.

  Once back, he used some of the vines he had gathered to tie to the back legs of the animal, and; leveraging it against a branch of a tree, hoisted it off the ground. He tied the vines as tight as he could around the trunk of the tree. He didn't know how well he had cast the feather spell, and so wasn't sure how heavy the pig would be when it wore off.

  When he felt it was a secure as he could make it, using the hunting knife Arlon had given him, he made a cut in relatively the same place she had showed him to make on a deer and the pigs blood fell from the wound in a sickening splash on the ground, the viscous liquid slowing to trickle after a minute.

  This is not the glamorous life the hunting guild had made it out to be when I applied. He thought.

  Skinning and processing the pig was not too dissimilar from what he had done for the deer, though the pig’s skin was a lot thicker and gummier with the amount of fat that sat just underneath it. He didn't have anywhere to lay it flat so after salting it, he tied the edges of it between two trees to keep it off the ground. He wasn’t really sure what to do with the organs he had removed, so he hung then in a bag from a tree a little away from his camp to keep them away from bugs, and to hopefully keep any smells away from him.

  Last thing I want to be greeted with in the morning is the stench of rotting meat.

  While he still felt a ting of guilt for killing the pig, it was mostly washed away by the succulent pork he feasted on that night. Though he knew he should probably be finishing the deer first, he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten this well, and he noticed how much stronger he felt for it.

  The next day Ambrose took his net and attempted to go fishing. Arlon had mentioned the reason she knew the butcher was because he supplied her with fish oil when she couldn’t afford the guild's and when he had asked the butcher which fish he could get it from, the only one he could think of that he may have access to was river trout, since he got most of his oily fish from ocean fishers.

  During Ambrose's first attempt at using the net he had been gifted; despite the river being full of fish, he had only been able to catch a few. The butcher had described a trout to him; a long fish with yellow scales and black spots. He had caught some fish that looked like they could match that description but he wasn’t sure. He decided the best way to tell was to try each of the fish he had caught and see which one seemed the oiliest. After a quick roast over his fire, he sampled each of them, and most definitely, the ones he had already assumed were the trout were much oilier than the rest.

  Once he knew he had a source of oil, he had checked on the pig skin he had been drying. It seemed he had done the process correctly, as the remaining flesh came away from the skin pretty cleanly but the salt that he had used had seemed to dirty a lot quicker than when Arlon had demonstrated the method to him on the deer skin. The final product seemed a lot more supple than the other skin, though also somewhat greasy. He used it to fortify the small shelter he had previously made, adding it alongside the deer skin, laying both of them on top of it to make a small roof. He found it protected him a lot better from the wind and importantly captured a lot more heat from the fire.

  His new found comfort lent to the deep and peaceful sleep he had gotten that night, though it appeared to have been a bit too deep. When he awoke, he found that the carcass of the pig; mostly it bones and a few scraps of meat, which he had left just outside of his camp, was gone. He hadn't known what to do with it, but he hadn't planned for it go to waste.

  Could an animal have taken it? He thought to himself. But how could it have been dragged away so silently, and why wouldn't it have just eaten it here?

  Ambrose found himself somewhat disturbed at the concept that something had been so close to where he had been sleeping without him knowing. When he had slept rough in the city it was normal to hear someone walk past him but out here in the forest, it felt a lot more threatening.

  That day Ambrose didn't feel too much like venturing out away from his camp. While he still felt the strange comfort of home while on his land, the thought that something else was on it as well, made him feel more then a little uneasy.

  He spent the day using some of the larger chunks of wood he had and his new hunting knife to whittle himself a couple of bowls and cups, he had a small ceramic bottle with a cork stop that contained the fish oil he had been given, but besides that and his water skin, he really had no other storage vessels.

  Maybe I should try to make a bucket, or a barrel? But how would I make planks?

  After a day of work and many casts of healing to fix small cuts, he had two bowls and a cup, and while they weren't very big, he was happy with them.

  He had completely forgotten about the strange event of the night before by the time he had gone to bed. He was very quicky reminded of it though when he heard rustling not far from his shelter.

  Ambrose sat up from where he had been laying and lent his head out. By the tree where he had hung and tied the bag containing the innards of the pig, something was trying to cut through the vines he had used.

  He slowly got up and grabbed his knife, struggling to control his breathing as he did, his heart feeling like it might break out of his chest. He began moving and got closer and closer to the shape.

  Ok, I will run up to it, put my knife to its throat and demand to know what it's doing. He thought, sounding a lot braver in his head then he felt.

  He took a deep breath, pushed off to run at it, and promptly tripped on a root, landing on the figure as he did. It screamed as he toppled on to it, struggling as it tried to escape but Ambrose in the confusion, managed to get on top and hold it down.

  "I'm sorry my lord, I'm sorry!" The person yelled.

  He looked down at what he was laying on top of. It had green skin and big eyes and with its large teeth and pointed ears he realised, it was a goblin.