Curious cat

The food was as always very good but not as good as the boar. I ate the bear this time and it felt pretty tough, tougher than other meats. It didn't take me long to finish, the same goes for the others and once we all were done we left the cave. Only Matthew stood back in there and Finn stopped at the door.

"Come with us! You don't have to hide." I told him a little louder with a gesture to haste him up.

"Cold!" He screamed almost with his shrieking voice. He wasn't too loud normally and since we were a little further from the entrance he had to make a small shout.

"Oh, right. Forgot about that." The heat generated by my body made me ignore the cold wind of the outside. I looked up to the sky and I think it was around twelve or eleven right now, the sun was exactly in the middle of the sky.

"Do you have a long stick?" Marcus asked all of us still standing. "And by the way, what happened to that tree?" He added while looking at the destroyed tree.

"Oh, yeah, it was me," Estel said those words and Marcus very slowly turned to him.

"I'm sorry, what?!" He almost screamed while looking at the elf who had a big smile on his face, wide from one cheek to the other.

"I splintered that tree like that. You thought I couldn't when I told you about it long ago? Hmph!" What is happening to him? Lately, he started acting really weird, more optimistic, and overall a lot more vibrant, more color in him.

"I thought you were just joking back then…" The entire time, around a minute there was the sheer amazement and also fear expressed on his face. "Give me a spear length stick please…" He still looked completely in disbelief as all of it went on. What went on? The whole nature, the wind, the leaves hitting each other, the frosty grass being broken with each step, and the wonder of what we are going to do with the skin of the boar in my head. We should finally do something about it, it's not hard to survive here in the day but the difficulty increases by a large margin when the night approaches.

Estel threw the spear from our hunts to Marcus, he looked at it on both sides and then held it with both hands. Probably to get used to the balance of the weapon. He isn't using the spear but the blunt end of the wooden twig. He then went into a position, one hand in the three fifths of the spear and the other one far behind. A leg to the far front and the other around half of the distance away. His eyes, the eyes that now seemed golden looked at me ferociously, he is the tiger! He is the tiger… And I am a cub about to get killed by its own parent. What an irony…

I went to my stance, this time I took the approach of a curious cat looking at something new. Approaching it with the sword in front of me, the fool's guard. What was the guard I used before? When I fought Bog, what was that? Is there a name for it or I invented a new one? I need to ask Estel, if I invented it, it would be so amazing! But it's not what I should think about now, about the fight right in front of me.

He did the same thing as me, the approach of a curious cat, coming close to me trying to jab but stopping right at the beginning. The same goes for me, faking a long movement with small impulses. Very small ones. Like a step of a newborn checking if it's okay to go somewhere if the floor is safe.

He tried to fake a thrust but he proceeded to the end. I was very aware of it happening therefore this impulse was the one that protected me from losing the fight. The successful dodge led me to an attack from the left, a swing after the dodge to the left, and an attack from the same direction. He jumped over it and at the same moment, he wanted to make a spin in the air and try to hit me with the wooden part. I ducked the move and tried to hit him right afterward when he was already on the ground. A thrust that led to a small disbalance in my stance and cost me bonus stress on my body to recover before Marcus's another strike was about to come forth.

He made a quick thrust that I was able to dodge with a lot of exhaustion slowly infecting me like a disease. More and more trying to take over but it wasn't the time to give up. After dodging the swing I tried to make my own one with very low effort, he stood on my left and so with my sword down on my right I made an attempt to attack. But that struggle was futile as I wasn't able to get enough strength into my swing to make it actually into a swing. So it was just a small movement, I don't know what I did there but it was so slow that he was able to catch it and would probably be able to do it in a real fight.

Because of that, we got into a stalemate, he grabbed the stick so hard that I wasn't able to pull it back out and he wasn't able to thrust with one hand. What now? I pulled the sword with the weight of my entire body, he released it and I fell. It gave him a lot of time to adjust to the situation and so he took the spear back to both hands. He attacked and I just backed off more and more, he was jabbing more ferociously and increased the consistency of it.

It went on for around ten seconds as I hit the tree. Another thrust from his direction, I rolled to the right to avoid it. His spear entered the tree a little deeper than he intended, and that gave me enough time to stand up, enough to even prepare myself for a counter as he was still trying to get the spear out of the tree.

With the sword in my hands and him threw off balance, I tried to swing at him from the left side. He didn't have the time to dodge it but in the same instance as my sword was coming close to his arm with one of the hands' thrust once more. It hit my chest and my sword hit his arm. He won… Both in a bad condition, bad? I meant I was dead and he probably still alive.

"I won." This fight took probably under ten minutes. He was a lot faster than me and I wasn't able to enter the realm this time, he was just better but not as good as Estel. He had to sacrifice an arm of just a bloodloss to kill me. "It was a good fight though, you made me lose an arm actually." He added and then sat down, again, no sweat. I was the one in sweat but not in pain this time. I didn't enter the realm of pure focus and he didn't fight me for real…

"That was a pretty good fight indeed. You managed to use a lot of things that I didn't have to teach you. Common sense that is, rolling from that one thrust changed it all and you weren't consumed by fear of death. If you can call getting hit by a blunt end of spear death like experience." Estel nodded and looked at both of us still standing. We then both sat on the tree, me tired and him with almost no exhaustion on his face.

"That looked amazing! I am not an experienced weapon fighter but after fighting Hayden I saw how hard it actually is. And for you to almost destroy Hayden this much while only losing an arm seems like complete cosmos to me. I know that he is also new but not as green as I am." Bog added with pure amazement on his face. We are both new in fighting with swords or other weapons, but my skills in fighting made him say that it's amazing that I lost? That's pretty… Nice and… Weird. He is actually a lot more emotional and expressive than he was yesterday. Was it from fear or the cold? No idea there.

"Estel, I wanted to ask you. What is the stance I used when I fought Bog? Is it already practiced or I just invented it by accident?" The question left a small smirk on his face as the silencing wind blew by our mouths. Is he avoiding the question or does he just wait for a good moment to say it?