Hunting Part 3

I knew he wanted to go, but I just felt it was better to move without the dreadful grip of their emotions drowning him. "Yeah, sure. Whatever." Joel let go of me, but the voice was incensed with something snide. "Fine, I'll take you fishing then too."

"No, no!" I said way too loudly and way too fast. "That's okay. Do what you think is best."

"Okay weirdo, suit yourself." Joel added after a shrug. Then his nose started twitching. "I smell Elk!"

Really, yet I was the weirdo? I thought to myself.

He set off, making a beeline for his prey. I followed. Rowan walked behind his brother, mocking him silently, while I tried my best to keep from bursting out laughing. Yes, this was what I was looking forward to.

The smell of the forest intoxicated me. My sore feet pulsed to the racking tandem of the forest's creaks and whistling chirps.

Branches grabbed after me as I passed, but their leaves brushed me like fingers looking for a gentle touch.

We came closer to the elk herd and caught sight of them.

Joel angrily shushed us. We understood, because if they got spooked and started running in our direction, we could be stampeded to death.

It still begged the question though, couldn't we catch dinner in a safer way? Right, I ate all those big dinners of bear, deer, cow, and other big beasts.

Joel was really brave now that I thought of it to do this every day. I was thinking too much like a child and I probably should have understood this was a normal day for him.

Besides, it was too late to back out now and I could not run to save my life. We stood a long way off and if we had to escape; we were in the woods anyway, surrounded by a bunch of trees that we all knew how to climb, even if my legs were becoming trees themselves at that moment.

We were so far away we wondered why we needed to be shushed, but best not to ask questions right now and simply observed and that we did. He motioned for us to watch him and follow his lead. And so we did.

All three of us produced our bows and arrows. With his muscular hand, Joel positioned and held his arrow.

Yes, I made the mistake of calling his hand the weaker hand once when he was showing me how to shoot a bow and arrow. He had not liked to refer to his other hand as weak, because he was such a manly man.

Joel gripped the bow and bowstring. He lined up his arrow to his prey's heart and took his shot for the closest elk.

"Boom…" he said. "Perfection." His prey fell to the ground. The bow and arrow was useful, so as not to startle the rest of the herd. It would not take long for them to notice, though, that something was out of the ordinary and they fled.

We only hoped they fled in the next direction, so that our lives could be spared. Oh, the irony. In an effort to not waste any time, Joel quickly grabbed his next arrow and lined it up with his next prey's heart on the line.

That one fell immediately as well. He was just showing off. One elk weighed around seven hundred pounds. There was no way we were going to carry back over one elk by tonight. We already had to make several trips to carry back one elk in the first place.

This was a game for Joel.

"Okay little bro, let's see what you've got. Can you hit the target?" He motioned to one of the babies among the gang that was much further away now thanks to his showboating.

I could not watch. That was like me, wasn't it? That little one had no idea that it was about to die, neither had the big ones. I wondered how they reacted if someone had told them that morning that they only had a few hours to live.

How would they react? Yet here they were unknowingly grazing, enjoying the sun, munching on plants, completely ignorant.

I guess that's how death was for everybody else. No one really knew. Our parents didn't know when their lives claimed that death had already marked them on their respective days.

It usually caught them off guard. I found myself wondering if there was some grace in knowing rather than not knowing. When it takes you off guard, you really got no time to react, so I guessed in some way, that's its own saving grace.

But when you do know, it's all you can think about. At the same time, though, you got a chance to make the most out of the time you have, to make things right, to do what you want, not putting anything off.

Maybe there was some sort of saving grace in both. Would I have preferred to be caught off guard?

I heard my name as I was deep in thought. "Nils, it's your turn."

"Huh? Oh." I clumsily grabbed my own bow and arrow, taking an aim for the other baby elk's heart. Sweat came down my face as I concentrated and tried to keep my thoughts clear.

My fingers were bitten to by the tight string and the rough wood. Those eyes fluttered close as if it was trying to block out the image of what I was trying to do.

I took my shot and instead shot an elk in the leg. The elk yelled out in pain, alarming the rest of the gang, who started running off toward the mountain ahead.

Thank goodness it ran in the next direction. I had not desired anything happening to Rowan or Joel. Joel needed to get home alive to my sister in one piece.

Joel burst out laughing. So had Rowan. I returned to my thoughts. I guessed I'm kind of glad I knew. Knowing made my life all the more interesting.

I would never have read Nial's journal and been introduced to a whole new world. I don't know if I would've believed in the story had I heard it told by someone else, to witness the change in my hair and eyes.

I would never have witnessed this change in my body and I was excited about my trip to the Purple Mountain. I don't know if I would have had that kind of adventure if I had not known that I was about to leave this earth. At the same time, the simple things held great treasure.

I was reminded of those treasures as we made our way down to the river to clean the pieces of elk Joel just collected from where the elk just left vacant, except for the dead elk that lay there in their wake.

The life that lived around us, rabbits, insects, birds, I watched them. It is a beautiful sight.

We had to wash the elk clean of blood before taking it back to the house. So after we got everything cleaned up, I decided to stop pondering over which fate was better. The fact was that fate chose for me to know. That was my reality, and I was going to live in it.

And that's how I decided to spend the rest of the morning, frolicking in the river, in my long pants, dunking on Rowan as he tried to catch up to me to dunk me back. Having the fun I was looking forward to all morning.