Hunting

Osic sluggishly raises his wooden sword. John charges him from the other side of the backyard.

Clack!

Their swords clash. Osric blocks his overhead strike. He shifts his his sword to the left, blocking John's wide right swing. To the right, blocking another. He's helplessly on the defense, pushed backward with every strike

"Come on, Osric. You can block those wide swings easy. Look at his shoulders!" Randolf shouts.

Am I supposed to look at his shoulders or the sword? There's not enough frames between the attacks. Osric thinks, as he focuses in on John's left shoulder.

His shoulder suddenly dips down.

A sharp pain emanates from Osric's side. A loud thud vibrates his torso. John's sword is wedged into his ribs.

Clutching his side, he stammers backward, slipping on something wet. His butt sloshes into the dirt, his hand in something slimy — it's sunken into a head of lettuce.

"Bwa ha ha ha ha!" Elayne laughs, pointing at him.

Her head tilts up in laughter, one hand grasping at her stomach. The handkerchief covering her ears starts to slip. She throws her hands up to readjust it, teetering on the edge of the well. She almost falls in — but grabs the side. Her eyes widen, and the laughter stops.

"Oh, we're done. We're done..." Randolf jogs over. "Not your mother's cabbages. She's going to be so mad." He bends over to examine the ruined garden.

"Why is she always here?" John asks, pointing at Elayne.

"She's a distant relative. I told you she'll be staying with us for a while," Randolf replies, picking up a torn leaf.

"But why does she always come out here and watch?"

"She likes to watch me get beat up," Osric says, wiping the mud off his butt.

"Why would she want to watch this? It's not even fun. You don't put up a fight," John remarks.

I hate this little brat. Osric flashes his tongue at him as he turns his back.

"You can't even swing a sword. You're so lame," John says, opening the back door.

That insult triggers something inside Osric. A memory. Something he thought he'd locked away. A childlike voice reverberates in his mind: "You can't even dribble a basketball? You're so lame!"

He smacks himself in the head, but the echoing doesn't stop. He smacks again.

"What are you doing?" Randolf asks, still kneeling over the cabbage garden.

"Oh, nothing. Just a little ritual for the Grand Sage," Osric says, deepening into his sage voice.

Osric clears his throat, gathering his senses. "Father, can we please stop with the sword practice?"

"Are you still asking about this?" Randolf stands, making his stern face sterner. "All boys learn the sword. You're lucky I only make you do it on church day."

He heads to the door. Opening it, he pauses, not stepping inside.

"You still haven't apologized to your mother, have you?"

Leaving that remark hanging, he heads inside.

Osric tries to shake the words from his ears.

“All right, time for some magic,” Osric says, wiping the last bits of mud off his behind.

Eyeing the book resting against the well, he trots over.

Flipping through the pages, he stops on one. Elayne rolls her eyes. Osric shoves the book in her face.

"I'm not holding the book again," she says.

"Come on... assistant." Osric smirks.

Elayne slaps the book out of his hands. It sails through the air, pages flapping. It tumbles across the grass.

“No! You’d better not have ripped any pages!” Osric yells, chasing after the book.

“Here, just hold it.” He returns and shoves it in her face again.

“Ugh!” She hops off the well and snatches the book from his hands.

“Think of it this way — it’s a trade deal. You hold the book for me during the day, and at night I teach you how to read,” he says, scanning the page she’s holding open.

“Why do I have to hold this stupid book anyway?” she asks, her eyes drifting to the torn cabbage leaves.

“So my neck doesn’t get tired from looking at the ground.”

She shakes her head at his answer, still staring past him at the cabbage.

“Let’s see… I wanted to try some water magic today,” he says, leaning in closer. “Apparently you can do some cool stuff with water magic — like make a storm!”

He looks up at her, hoping for a response. She’s staring at a bird, eyes following it as it soars through the sky.

You can at least pretend to be interested! he yells in his mind.

Osric hears the muffled thud of the front door shutting. He perks up, the sound giving him an idea.

“Why don’t we do something different today?” he thinks aloud.

He rushes over to the edge of the fence, leaning over it.

"What are you doing?" Elayne asks.

He doesn't answer, too busy staring down the village path. In the distance, two people file out of the house across the road — John and his mother. Then, he sees what he was waiting for — Randolf and Catalina meet them, and they walk down the path.

Osric spins around and stops with a dramatic stomp. He bends over at the hips, stretching a hand towards Elayne.

"Would you like to go hunting ma'am?" he asks her, mid-pose.

Her response is a confused head tilt.

"First, we got to distract your mother."

He rushes inside. Across the hall, Helen is standing in the kitchen, preparing something atop the wooden cabinet.

"Helen?"

"Yes, Master — uh, Osric." She turns around.

"Could you head into town and get me some... candy apples?" he asks, waltzing over to her.

"Certainly... um, candy apples?" she asks.

"They're like apples with melted sugar on them... you can figure it out when you get there."

"I will be on my way then." She turns to the front door.

"I wanna go with you, Mama!" Elayne runs past Osric.

"Sweetie, you're supposed to be helping Osric with his magical research." Helen says, leaning over, patting her daughter on the head.

"I'll be back soon, sweetie." She waves to Elayne, heading out the front door.

Osric walks up to her. She's pouting.

"What? Don't be sad. We're gonna do something fun, trust me."

He bolts out the door, past the fence, onto the dirt path. He beckons her to follow.

>>>

"So, the village is essentially just one long road. One end leads into Lumora, the other into the forest," Osric explains.

"Are you listening?"

Elayne trudges along behind him, bent over. Her arms dangling.

"Why are we walking so far?" she complains, her grating voice growing even raspier as she tires.

"So you weren’t listening to me?" Osric concludes, shaking his head before explaining again.

"You heard what Catalina said at the dinner table last night, right? There’ve been thicketbear sightings in these woods. We’re going to go hunt one."

"Why?" she asks.

"I don’t know… I’m just bored. Maybe it’s because this body’s older now, but I’m getting tired of this life. Ever since you got here a few months ago, all we’ve been doing is hanging around the house, right? I feel like I need to escape that place. Hunting a thicketbear is exactly the kind of excitement I need right now."

"I wanna go with my mama. I wanna eat those candy apple things," Elayne whines.

"Oh, I don’t even know if candy apples exist here. I just sent her out of the house so she couldn’t tell Catalina what we were doing."

They stop. The path they've been following is starting to fade. Osric's eyes track the few remaining etchings of the trail, leading him to the forest.

As far as he can see stretches a forest of trees — tall, thin poles of bark with leaves only at the top. The further he looks, the taller the forest gets, as if each distant tree is fighting for height.

"Here it is." He turns around, throwing his hands out. He presents the forest to Elayne.

She's still bent over, trudging along.

>>>

Trekking through the dense forest, they walk around brush, step over logs. Piles of dead leaves crunch under their feet.

"Ugh!" Elayne's hair gets caught in the needles of a prickly bush.

She pulls her head, yanking it free, but losing many strands of hair among the spines.

"You good?" Osric only briefly glances back at her.

"Why do I even have to be here?" she complains.

"I can't really leave you alone, can I? You're a master at causing trouble, so I'm kind pf like your guardian."

Osric climbs on top of a large log, getting a better view of the forest. Between the trees, he sees bright beams of light shine down to the forest floor up ahead. Curious, he hops down the log, trotting toward it.

He makes it to the light. The forest opens up — no more trees. A large patch of moss encases the trunk of gigantic tree. Many times the width of the others, it easily dwarfs them.

At the base of the tree, a cave-like opening. It rounds at the top, and the back is not visible — only darkness.

Inside the hole lies a sleeping thicketbear.