Luck

Having caught the hare Kes now needed to find a way to cook it. This was not only because it would taste better but also because it would be a lot healthier for him to do so. He might get sick from the parasites or sicknesses that were hiding within the hare flesh. So to get them out he needed to cook it thoroughly.

First he needed to skin the thing. Obviously he had prepared for this in advance. Even though he did not have a knife he did have a sharp pointed rock from Stinky Cave with him.

'Too bad it smells like shit. No, worse than shit.' Kes pinched his nose as he took out the pointed rock from his robes. 

He really needed to meticulously drench and clean his now tattered brown robes when he found a water source, it too was starting to smell awful. Kes would rather not have the putrid rock touch his fresh meal despite the fact that he knew everything would get burned away by the flames anyways.

He took the hare and started skinning it. He had learned this both from his father and within the academy. The hunting and survival classes they had taught there were really coming in incredibly handy for Kes right now.

'They should have taught us the mushroom picking course earlier, though.' Kes sighed as he finished skinning the hare. He imagined how good the hare would taste together with some mushrooms.

They rarely ever ate mushrooms at home because his parents preferred to keep the meals simple, but Kes quite liked them. He had only ever seen edible mushrooms on his plate and never gone picking them, so he would not risk it now either.

'Now I just need to start a fire and I can finally eat.' Kes felt himself salivating at the thought.

Kes had obviously learned how to start a fire before. Because he had lived in a village this was taught to the children since they were young. After all, it was an essential skill for survival and hunting. So Kes quickly got to work to start up a beautiful fire.

This would be his first time starting a fire since entering the forest. He could not light a fire within the cave, if it was possible he might have tried to chase the bear away with it. Most beasts were scared of fire. It was only natural, fire was scary.

Kes swiftly gathered branches and started up a fire. And when he looked into it, he could understand the wild beasts. 

As he looked into the crackling flames he was reminded only of his burning village. The screams of battle and suffering echoed throughout his head as he was reminded of the sight of his village that had been set ablaze. 

'Fire really is scary.'

Kes quickly took the freshly killed hare, stuck it on a stick and started roasting it over the flame. He started drooling as he inhaled the scent of the hare meat. Kes could not wait to eat something.

After a while of waiting Kes finally could not take it anymore. He took the hare off the flames and threw it on top of a big flat slab of rock nearby that would serve as his temporary plate. He pulled off one of the legs and bit in.

Kes wished he could say the hare meat was incredibly succulent and tender but it really was not. The meat was quite tough, but to Kes it did not matter. 

The intense gamey and slightly sweet flavor that came with the hare leg tasted absolutely amazing to him. He greedily licked his lips as he chowed down on the hare flesh. He had never eaten hare before, his mother had once told him she did not like it, but Kes now saw her as a complete idiot.

"Hare is absolutely delicious." Kes said aloud, tears almost forming in his eyes from eating his first meal in days.

After finally finishing the hare meat and licking the bones clean Kes was still far from satisfied, he wanted to eat more. So he was going to hunt some more, it was not like he had anything better to do.

Now that he had eaten something he was no longer in mortal danger for a while so he decided to calmly walk through the forest while looking out for prey and digesting the food that now filled his stomach.

'That means I will have to poop again too.' Kes suddenly realized. 

It was not a problem anymore, though. He was not stuck in the Stinky Cave because of a bear anymore. He could take a shit where he liked. 

And another while after eating the hare Kes had spotted some new fresh prey again. It was a group of deer, exactly what he had been looking for. This time he would not immediately pounce upon his prey but follow them towards the nearest source of water.

Even if he had to follow them through the night he would stay vigilant and not let these deer get away, he needed to find a source of water quickly. He could not rely on another rainstorm to bail him out. Last time had been nothing short of a miracle. Kes did not believe in any deity but that had been the closest he had ever been to believing in one. It truly had been a divine miracle.

And Kes did not like leaving things up to chance, if he was going to die he wanted to have done everything in his power to try and survive. He did not want his own planning and decision making to be responsible for his own death, as little as possible was going to be left up to luck.

But luck was a variable that he could not influence, the only variable he could influence was chance. If his luck was terrible he might still die, but at that point all he could blame was his own luck. He had made his own chances as good as possible, there was nothing more he could have done. Kes would still hate the idea of such a death, but he would hate it less than a death influenced by his own poor decision making.

'In the end it all comes down to luck, though.' Kes thought.

Even though he hated luck Kes was still quite interested in it. He hated leaving variables up to chance, but sometimes it was necessary. That was why he hated the concept of luck but at the same time was still interested in it. 

So, he had once spent a day going around the village asking people how good they thought their own luck was.

And as it turns out almost everyone thought their own luck was quite neutral or a little bad. Most people who thought their luck was good could be explained by having one singular lucky thing happening to them too.

'But in the end, there is no such thing as luck.' 

Luck did not actually exist, everyone was as lucky as each other. Unless you believed in the concept of fate, meaning everything was predetermined, nothing was left up to luck. Kes knew well enough that there was no such thing as luck, the only thing that actually existed was getting lucky.

'I can't say I haven't gotten lucky lately. I guess I cannot complain about my luck.' Kes thought as he looked back on his previous experiences.

He had gotten lucky in getting away from the village and safely surviving, he had gotten lucky with the rainstorm, and now he had gotten lucky with finding this herd of deer. His luck was nothing to complain about.

'But at the same time, my village got raided and I was unable to search for food or water because I was stuck inside of the Stinky Cave because of a huge bear. Can I really still say I have gotten lucky?' Kes grumbled inwardly. 'Maybe the world has a mysterious way of balancing itself.'

But since Kes did not believe in any deities, he did not actually think so. But still, since luck did not actually exist it made sense that everything had a way of balancing itself. Since everything happened based on decisions and randomness it all just depended on what the person themselves would consider as lucky or unlucky. 

And since most people would not consider most mundane events as something where luck was involved they would only consider the exceptional events as situations where luck had been involved. That was why people who called themselves lucky could usually be explained by standout events.

Many of the hunters had called themselves unlucky while some of the hunters had called themselves lucky. Why? Because they were the ones that, according to them, managed to find a lot of prey once. Over all every hunter had probably found around as many prey as each other, despite a couple outliers because of outstanding tracking capabilities, but because of one standout event they considered themselves lucky.

'I guess everyone from the village would consider themselves incredibly unlucky by now.' Kes thought back to the raid on the village. No one would consider themselves lucky after such an event happened to them.

People who did not have such a standout event would not see themselves as lucky or unlucky. Except people who were just extremely negative or positive about life, no matter what happened to them they would always see themselves as either lucky or unlucky.

That was why there was no such thing as luck, only chance. And Kes would just have to try to manipulate the chances into his favor as much as possible.

'Now let's start tracking some deer.'