Even god failed, will I?
This story begins with a male youth running through the woods. The speed of his stride is very fast, considering the teen is barefoot. He is wearing a poncho made of fur, tied with a crude skin belt. A stone axe in his right hand and a silex knife in the left. All you can see is a dark, curly, brown blur zigzagging on a dangerous path littered with wooden spikes, tripping ropes, and nooses here and there. Behind him, a pack of wolves is furiously chasing him.
(Seven of them... It's a bit tough.)
While running, he starts cutting ropes tied on his path. Traps he laid before start to throw rocks and logs, swinging spikes and projectiles at random, making the zone even more dangerous. The surprise and speed of the pack lead them straight into the danger zone with no consideration—except for one of them. Some injure, or literally kill themselves, on the treacherous path.
The boy, not even breathing too hard, reaches a clearing and turns around.
(Three wolves left.)
They reach the clearing and circle him. An unsettling grin splits the youth's face. One that you would not expect to see on a kid of his age. Mostly, it's to intimidate them and soothe his beating heart from both excitement and fear. With a growl-roar, the kid launches a fist. Two of them also react and charge toward the boy in turn.
The biggest one in front, now in reach, jumps at the boy's throat, only to be side-stepped and slashed on his face by the silex knife. It slices his jaw open wide, cheek to the neck, sending him whimpering loudly.
This sound causes a flinch in the other two wolves.
Seizing the opportunity, the boy swings his axe at the closest wolf's head—the one that was charging behind his pack leader—fast and landing the shot perfectly on the beast's skull. The crude axe, unfortunately, explodes from the intense shock, sending shrapnel flying at insane speed straight into the boy's eyes.
-Aaaarg!-
The wounded alpha wolf, red-eyed and bloody, doesn't miss his opportunity for revenge and goes for the kill again. Of course, with a split jaw, the attack only manages to scratch at the boy's arm with his claws, creating a big long gash. But this brought its ending to the alpha's story, feeling the boy's blinded anger. Most of it actually at himself, for stupidly relying on a stone tool like it was made of metal. The poor alpha wolf gets beaten to death by only the remaining axe handle, the boy cursing his ten generations...
Surprisingly, the last one of them just observes all this happening, ready to bolt in the opposite direction, but he hasn't yet!
-Get lost!-
The boy throws a rock at it, but after dodging it, the wolf sits there looking strange, head tilted.
(What is wrong with it... I need to patch up and eat, but with him here, I'm stuck. He could attack me at any time...)
With a sigh, the boy decides to make a fire, but first things first... He wraps his wound with the belt and gets some dry firewood. Since this is a place that he made to hunt this particular pack of wolves, there are plenty of things lying around to burn. With practiced ease, he lights up some bark and special dried mushroom (Amadou), sliced thinly with a little dust of it, plus some dry grass, using two quartz stones to create sparks, succumbing to his thoughts.
(It's been four years, or 48 x 30 days, since I woke up in the middle of nowhere and in a child's body.)
This thought is enough to make his eyes a little foggy from being left alone like this... After a breath, no tears spilled; he is an adult, after all.
(This place is strange. Clearly not Earth! I noticed the plants are northern trees, while some look like oaks, maples, birch, etc., they are not really that. And there are no pine trees, at least in the 100 kms around my main camp... plus, there are many plants I have never seen.)
(Some, or most, are lookalikes from what I knew, but not the same, like a shrub with dark green leaves bearing small red fruits that look like mini strawberries. They are edible and nice. Actually, those berries are my main source of sugar. Anyway, I also saw many strange plants, some of insane colors, but those tend to be deadly, like a warning sign.)
(The animals also seem to be random. From boar to moose, cheetahs, and all kinds of felines, canines, bovines, avians, etc. A lush land, truly, but no people, yet. Besides, I'm sure this is a different world. The night sky is not the same, not just by a little.)
(The stars occupy only half the sky, with a big sun currently smack in the center of the start line—the horizon—so there are four stages to a day. At dawn, the sky is greenish and there is only the black of the void, no stars. At the noon tide, the sky becomes the normal blue I know. The big sun appears, its size ten times the one I knew, but the light is soft, unlike what I knew. I can stay under it all day and barely feel it. The sun is also a bit to the south; it should mean, in theory, that I am in the northern hemisphere of the planet.)
(Then comes the dusk where the green of the sky and the light of the stars keep enough light on the ground to travel and hunt, which are the hunt hours for many predators. Then in the night, light fades completely as the faraway stars disappear behind the horizon and leave complete blacker-than-black darkness and its stranger predators.)
His eyes getting a little wet again. A breath, chasing his thoughts away; he was lost in them, caring for his wound and cooking some wolf meat. The last one, still sitting there.
-Get lost!-
Not moving...
(Over the years, some of my prey got snatched from me, always a third or half, but I never got hungry anyway, so it was fine. It's not like I could go and hunt them wolves before today. That is mostly why I hunted them, and maybe because I'm going crazy.)
(I don't mind being alone that much, to go crazy from that, but since I am in this body, I never felt this good. I keep training myself to the extreme and the next day, except after a decent amount of pain and stretching, I am still full of energy, ready for a new set. Maybe it's the fact that there is no TV and such screens, but I also think this body is awesome.)
(A crude reflection in the water shows his striking, happy, round blue eyes, sharp brows, prominent but not too big or out of place nose, not much baby fat remaining, and a sharp jaw with small but perked red lips fitting for a smirk or pout. Long brown curly hair down to his waist.)
(Though pretty handsome, I still feel I look feminine, a bit. My ears are a bit pointy, almost like a half-elf, pale beige skin with my suntan and no beard or sign of it yet. I'm very confused about my age. I'm around four feet tall right now and it's been four years since I gained consciousness in it... But the days are definitely longer, around 34 hours, and the years... I can't even tell. There is no moon, or not the moon, but lumps of dirt orbiting around this planet. I'm pretty sure one looks like a castle and it passes very fast, every 60-something hours and very close too, you could think it touches the clouds. Anyway, I said four years, that means 1460 days, but not really a year here since there are no seasons and a year is so long that in 1460 days, the night sky did not change enough to be noticed by eye. Only the markings I left give me a crude estimate of over 200 years per one year, or revolution. So yeah, my age is irrelevant here.)
(That brings me to my crazy act of hunting a whole pack of wolves. I am damned strong right now, enough that it did not scare me, but actually felt fun... Still, I need better weapons if I hunt like that again. It was my first real battle, not finishing a dying animal, so I'll learn. My wound still stings, but it should heal on its own; not the first time I got a scratch like this...)
A bunch of meat is roasting over the fire, stabbed on spears. The smell of it wafts over both of them, making their stomachs growl.
-Get lost! This is your own kind, buddy! You can't be serious!?-
Looking at it, saliva is pooling in front of it. It doesn't seem like he is going to leave, so the boy grabs a piece and throws it at the wolf.
-Careful, it's hot!-
(What am I thinking! Giggle... I just made him a cannibal and act like I care about him.)
The wolf doesn't seem to care and pounces on the thing, getting halfway to the boy in the action. It gobbles the whole thing very fast and seems to froth at the mouth in a rage frenzy.
-Relax, buddy!-
But as he says this, the wolf is done and looks up at the boy. It looks very scary, with warm blood around the mouth and saliva dripping from each side, letting out a low growl.
The boy, in a panic, throws the rest of the food at it, hoping to sate the leech jerk. The wolf eats every damned thing, which is too much for his rounded belly, but it does not seem to feel good either. It starts twitching and whining in a very painful manner.
-What the hell, buddy!-
The boy is torn between scared and concerned. He watches as the wolf's fur falls off his body; red-tinted steam rises slowly. The poor creature looks horrible, like a Resident Evil contaminated dog. But blood-red fur grows and replaces the old one. It looks like he won't make it in his agony, so the boy comes closer to try and comfort it maybe, but the blood from his wound falls on the beast's head. Something inside the boy seems to stir.
(What is this feeling? Like a mix of breath, synapses, and blood flow, or is it life essence maybe?)
The boy pushes on this feeling and his hand glows a pale green, so does the wolf, but the empty stomach growls hard and lightheadedness settles in before he passes out on top of the beast.