Chp.3: First hunt

Time passed quickly. Before Haku realized it, fifteen days had already passed since his birth. The strange yellow ball that lit up the world, which apparently was called the sun, had crossed the sky fifteen times, so according to what Haku knew exactly fifteen days had passed.

The routine remained the same: when their mother wasn't there, the little dragons stayed in the cave, playing fight or interacting with each other, while when she was there they could go out and admire the outside world, and she explained everything carefully that they saw. Even though the baby dragons had already seen the landscape outside the cave eight times already, each time they found new details that they hadn't noticed the day before or the day before, and of course they wanted to know everything about it, and Neytiri patiently answered all their countless questions.

However Haku had noticed that something was changing, and it wasn't something positive: food was getting scarcer. Their mother still carried the same amount of meat, but he and his siblings had continued to grow and now needed much more food. Luckily they didn't grow too fast, but still they were bigger than when they were born. While previously they could lie snug inside the broken eggshells, they now sat tight, demonstrating that their size had increased. And apparently, bigger sizes meant more food needs.

For now, all of them could still eat. However, the competition was getting higher and higher. By now, as soon as the food arrived, they pushed each other to be able to take a bite first and take the most substantial parts. Several of his siblings had even taken to tearing off large chunks of meat and then walking away to eat them away from others. Haku understood that very soon he and his siblings would have been forced to fight each other, and only the strongest would have been able to eat.

Initially, Haku thought it was just a temporary situation, and that Neytiri would have brought them more food soon. Then, when the situation hadn't changed, he'd tried to convince himself that his mother was simply having trouble finding more food, but he soon realized that couldn't be the case: what about all those animals he saw every time he came out of the cave? Wasn't his mother capable of catching them? Unlikely. So he had blamed his mother's inattention, who perhaps hadn't noticed the problem, and he had tried to point it out to her. In response, Neytiri had told him it was normal and that this was the way in which a mother dragon raised her young. When Haku tried to insist he was quickly silenced. At that point he had no longer been able to deceive himself: the situation wouldn't have changed in the future and indeed it could only become more difficult.

Luckily, he seemed to be one of the favourites. He was quite physically fit and had trained to fight alongside his brothers, winning most of the time. Conversely, some of her sisters were quite puny, so they would have been the ones kicked out. At least for the moment, Haku wasn't in danger of running out of food.

However, there was no garantee for the far future. Haku had thought a lot and in the end he had decided to act assuming that in the future the worst scenario would have came true, that is, the one in which he was left without food. Therefore he had decided to find another source, in case one day he was no longer able to eat what Neytiri brought him. And to do this he would have had to violate the most important rule imposed by his mother, the one for which Neytiri allowed no exceptions: to leave the cave while she was absent.

If he wanted to store food, he had to do it secretly, or his siblings would have stolen it as soon as the lean period came. Therefore, he couldn't simply take more pieces of food from the meat his mother brought him and keep them: he had to learn to get his own food. The best choice would have been to ask Neytiri to teach him, or at least come out when she was in the cave and so she could make sure nothing bad happened to him, but with his mother around all his siblings would have also came out of the cave, which meant that they would have seen him. Without her, however, they would have remained inside and he could have hidden the food he would have obtained, thus not risking someone coming to steal it from him.

It was a risky act. Haku had no idea what dangers he might encounter, but he had to do it. The alternative was to sit back and hope that he was strong enough to always get food, which wasn't promising at all.

So he took a deep breath and started for the exit. His brothers and sisters noticed him and stared at him with curious and concerned eyes, but they said nothing to him. Only when he was in front of the opening of the cave and was about to leave one of his siblings stepped in front of him. It was Darbi. "Where are you going?" he asked in a calm but firm tone.

After all that time the baby dragons had now learned to speak quite well, even if they still sometimes slurred a few words. Therefore, they had no problem asking simple questions and giving answers. Basically, they could quite happily have a conversation. "I'm going out for a moment. Don't worry about me" Haku answered blankly.

"Mother said that we can't go outside. It's the rule" Darbi protested.

"Mother won't know" was Haku's simple reply. "Now, can you please move?"

Darbi didn't look happy. He didn't really care that Haku was breaking the rules, but he wanted to know what he was going to do outside. Having spent virtually their entire short lives together, all the siblings knew each other's tempers, and Haku was known to be the most calculating of the family. Darbi knew that Haku would have never done anything without a good reason and without carefully calculated it before. If he could he would have followed him, but the outside world scared him a lot and their mother's prohibition was a further incentive to desist. Darbi too cared about his life, after all.

So he made the obvious choice: he stepped aside and ignored him. If Haku came back, then he would have followed him when he came out a second time; if not, he would have known that obeying their mother was a better choice.

With no more Darbi to stop him, Haku exited the cave and emerged into the sunlight. Their mother now left them alone much more time. He had at least a couple of hours to spare. Putting into practice what he had learned he began to rappel down the cliff. His claws dug into the hard rock and his powerful muscles allowed him to keep his balance. Haku had by now learned to distinguish the various minerals and knew which rocks were more resistant and which ones were friable, and therefore he didn't run the risk of them collapsing under his feet. Despite being suspended in the air, his body didn't feel the slightest fatigue and his muscles were hard and tense preventing him from falling.

If only he had wings like his mother! It would have been much easier to get off the cliff. But unfortunately he was still too young. According to Neytiri, his wings would have grown only when he grew up.

After a long descent on steep rock faces, he finally reached the land. For the first time his paws touched not the hard floor of the cave, but the soft grass of the meadow. It was soft and pleasant to the touch, and moved thanks to the wind tickling his scales. Haku reveled in that contact for a few seconds, then turned his attention to the trees in front of him. Now he could enter the forest.

In the old world, before the supernova and subsequent mass extinction, a baby dragon like Haku would have stood no chance against the giant dracomorphs that ruled the planet. If Haku had been born in that primitive era and had tried to leave the nest, most likely he would have been killed and devoured within half an hour. But now the animals were much smaller, which is why the dragons had such a hard time getting enough food to survive. And even though Haku was only a baby, his size was already considerable: if dragons had used the metric system, Haku would have known he was already five meters long and he weighed at least a ton. In the new world inhabited by smaller creatures, a five-meter baby dragon like Haku could already be considered a large predator, even if not an apex.

However, Haku still needed a lot of experience. He was making too much noise and moving too fast. He had no coordination or strategy. As he walked through the forest any creature within a radius of several meters took notice of him and walked away. He would hardly have found a predator willing to face him (after all, what predator would have wasted energy against another predator five meters long? Better to look for an easier prey), but at this rate he wouldn't have found any prey too.

After a while, thanks to his keen senses, he had seen some strange pigs with large curved tusks in the distance, and instead of sneaking up on them he had started running towards them. Result? The pigs had escaped immediately and he hadn't even been able to reach them. Haku repeated the mistake three times before realizing that his behavior was wrong. And he finally began to use his brain to think of a strategy, instead of relying only on his muscles. "If I attack from too far away, the prey will flee again. But if I get close, they will hear me... or maybe I can be more silent?"

Haku was still learning and therefore it was inevitable that he would have made his mistakes, but the hunter's instinct came to his aid suggesting some improvements. By the time he managed to find his next prey, he had already thought of a strategy. This time it wasn't a pig, but a deer with a long tail and massive antlers. Haku remembered that his mother had told him about it; he thought its name was indrik.

This time he approached carefully, hiding in the trees and paying attention to his every step to be as quiet as possible. The indrik sometimes glanced in her direction, but didn't seem to notice. Luckily the treetops blocked out the sunlight, or Haku's silvery scales would be impossible to miss. When he was within two meters of the deer, Haku snapped. With a leap he emerged from his hiding place and bit into the indrik at the neck. The animal struggled ferociously under him. Haku found that it was much more difficult to keep him still: it wasn't like the inanimate flesh that mother carried, this was flesh that struggled. His teeth, not yet as hard as those of adult dragons, struggled to maintain a grip.

Haku wasted no more time. His claws ripped open the indrik's belly, spilling its guts onto the ground. The animal struggled again, but now its fate was sealed. When the indrik finally died, Haku allowed himself a moment of tranquility to recover. That was his first successful hunt. He was very tired, but he felt euphoric as he had never felt in his short life.

He was tempted to eat the indrik right away, but that wasn't his goal. Therefore he dragged it close to the cliff and with his claws moved the nearby rocks to hide it. Even if another animal smelled the scent of the carcass, it wouldn't be able to move the rocks, unless it was as strong as he was. Having done this, he climbed the wall again. He had to hurry back to the cave: his mother would have been back any moment and he didn't want her to find out that he had transgressed her rules.

Going up the cliff was more tiring than going down it, but he didn't find many obstacles. After a short journey he was again in front of the entrance to the cave. When he returned some of his brothers, especially Darbi, turned to watch him. However, he ignored them. He lay down on one side of the cave to rest; his first hunt had left him with a sense of exhilaration, but it had also exhausted him and now he urgently needed to get some sleep.