Even God failed. Will I?
This story begins with a young male running through the woods. The speed of his stride is very fast, especially considering the teen is running barefoot. He is wearing a poncho made of fur that is tied with a crude skin belt. He holds a stone axe in his right hand and a flint knife in the left. All you can see is a dark, curly, brown blur zigzagging on a dangerous path littered with wooden spikes, tripping ropes, and nooses hidden here and there. Behind him, a pack of wolves is furiously chasing him.
(Seven of them... It's a bit tough.)
While running, he starts cutting the ropes tied across his path. The traps he laid before start to throw rocks and logs, swinging spikes and projectiles at random, making the zone even more dangerous. The surprise and speed of the pack lead them straight into the danger zone with no consideration, except for one of them. Some injure themselves, or literally kill themselves, on the treacherous path.
The boy, not even breathing too hard, reaches a clearing and turns around.
(Three wolves left.)
They reach the clearing and circle him. An unsettling grin splits the youth's face. It is an expression that you would not expect to see on a kid of his age. Mostly, it is to intimidate them and soothe his beating heart, which pounds from both excitement and fear. With a growl-roar, the kid launches a fist. Two of them also react and charge toward the boy in turn.
The biggest one in the front, now within reach, jumps at the boy's throat, only to be side-stepped and slashed on his face by the flint knife. It slices his jaw open wide, from cheek to the neck, leaving him whimpering loudly.
This sound causes the other two wolves to flinch.
Seizing the opportunity, the boy swings his axe at the closest wolf's head. It was the one that was charging behind his pack leader. Moving fast, he lands the shot perfectly on the beast's skull. The crude axe, unfortunately, explodes from the intense shock. It sends shrapnel flying at insane speed straight toward the boy's eyes.
"Aaaarg!"
The wounded alpha wolf, red-eyed and bloody, doesn't miss his opportunity for revenge and goes for the kill again. Of course, with a split jaw, the attack only manages to scratch at the boy's arm with his claws, creating a big, long gash. But this brought an end to the alpha's story as it felt the boy's blinded anger. Most of that anger is actually directed at himself for stupidly relying on a stone tool like it was made of metal. The poor alpha wolf gets beaten to death by only the remaining axe handle, the boy cursing his ancestors for ten generations...
Surprisingly, the last one of them just observes all this happening, ready to bolt in the opposite direction. But he hasn't yet!
"Get lost!"
The boy throws a rock at it, but after dodging it, the wolf sits there looking strange with his head tilted.
(What is wrong with it... I need to patch myself up and eat, but with him here, I'm stuck. He could attack me at any time...)
With a sigh, the boy decides to make a fire, but first things first... He wraps his wound with the belt and gets some dry firewood. Since this is a place that he made to hunt this particular pack of wolves, there are plenty of things lying around to burn. With practiced ease, he lights up some bark and special dried mushroom called Amadou, sliced thinly with a little dust of it, plus some dry grass. He uses two quartz stones to create sparks, drifting into his thoughts.
(It's been four years, or 48 x 30 days, since I woke up in the middle of nowhere and in a child's body.)
This thought is enough to make his eyes a little foggy from being left alone like this... After a deep breath, no tears are spilled; he is an adult on the inside, after all.
(This place is strange. Clearly not Earth! I noticed the plants are northern trees. While some look like oaks, maples, birch, and so on, they are not really that. And there are no pine trees, at least in the 100 kilometers around my main camp... Plus, there are many plants I have never seen.)
(Some, or most, look like what I knew, but not the same. Like a shrub with dark green leaves bearing small red fruits that look like miniature strawberries. They are edible and nice. Actually, those berries are my main source of sugar. Anyway, I also saw many strange plants, some of insane colors, but those tend to be deadly, acting like a warning sign.)
(The animals also seem to be random. From boar to moose, cheetahs, and all kinds of felines, canines, bovines, avians, etc. A lush land, truly, but no people yet. Besides, I'm sure this is a different world. The night sky is not the same, not just by a little.)
(The stars occupy only half the sky, with a big sun currently smack in the center of the start line, the horizon, so there are four stages to a day. At dawn, the sky is greenish and there is only the black of the void, no stars. At the noontide, the sky becomes the normal blue I know. The big sun appears, its size ten times the one I knew, but the light is soft, unlike what I knew. I can stay under it all day and barely feel it. The sun is also a bit to the south; it should mean, in theory, that I am in the northern hemisphere of the planet.)
(Then comes the dusk where the green of the sky and the light of the stars keep enough light on the ground to travel and hunt, which are the hunting hours for many predators. Then in the night, light fades completely as the faraway stars disappear behind the horizon and leave complete blacker-than-black darkness and its stranger predators.)
His eyes get a little wet again. He takes a breath, chasing his thoughts away. He was lost in them, caring for his wound and cooking some wolf meat while the last wolf is still sitting there.
"Get lost!"
Not moving...
(Over the years, some of my prey got snatched from me. It was always a third or half, but I never got hungry anyway, so it was fine. It's not like I could go and hunt those wolves before today. That is mostly why I hunted them, and maybe because I'm going crazy.)
(I don't mind being alone that much, or going crazy from that, but since I am in this body, I never felt this good. I keep training myself to the extreme and the next day, except for a decent amount of pain and stretching, I am still full of energy, ready for a new set. Maybe it's the fact that there is no TV and such screens, but I also think this body is awesome.)
(A crude reflection in the water shows his striking, happy, round blue eyes, sharp brows, and a prominent nose that is not too big or out of place. There is not much baby fat remaining, and a sharp jaw with small but perked red lips fitting for a smirk or pout. He has long brown curly hair down to his waist.)
(Though pretty handsome, I still feel I look feminine, a bit. My ears are a bit pointy, almost like a half-elf. I have pale beige skin with my suntan and no beard or sign of it yet. I'm very confused about my age. I'm around four feet tall right now and it's been four years since I gained consciousness in it... But the days are definitely longer, around 34 hours, and the years... I can't even tell. There is no moon, or not the moon, but lumps of dirt orbiting around this planet. I'm pretty sure one looks like a castle. It passes very fast, every 60-something hours, and is very close too. You could think it touches the clouds. Anyway, I said four years, that means 1460 days, but not really a year here since there are no seasons and a year is so long that in 1460 days, the night sky did not change enough to be noticed by the eye. Only the markings I left give me a crude estimate of over 200 years per one year, or revolution. So yeah, my age is irrelevant here.)
(That brings me to my crazy act of hunting a whole pack of wolves. I am damned strong right now, enough that it did not scare me, but actually felt fun... Still, I need better weapons if I hunt like that again. It was my first real battle, not finishing off a dying animal, so I'll learn. My wound still stings, but it should heal on its own; not the first time I got a scratch like this...)
A bunch of meat is roasting over the fire, skewered on spears. The smell of it wafts over both of them, making their stomachs growl.
"Get lost! This is your own kind, buddy! You can't be serious!?"
Looking at it, saliva is pooling in front of him. It doesn't seem like he is going to leave, so the boy grabs a piece and throws it at the wolf.
"Careful, it's hot!"
(What am I thinking! Giggle... I just made him a cannibal and act like I care about him.)
The wolf doesn't seem to care and pounces on the thing, getting halfway to the boy in the action. It gobbles the whole thing down very fast and seems to froth at the mouth in a rage frenzy.
"Relax, buddy!"
But as he says this, the wolf is done and looks up at the boy. It looks very scary, with warm blood around the mouth and saliva dripping from each side, letting out a low growl.
The boy, in a panic, throws the rest of the food at it, hoping to sate the leeching jerk. The wolf eats every damned thing, which is too much for his rounded belly, but it does not seem to feel good either. It starts twitching and whining in a very painful manner.
"What the hell, buddy!"
The boy is torn between being scared and concerned. He watches as the wolf's fur falls off his body; red-tinted steam rises slowly. The poor creature looks horrible, like a contaminated dog from Resident Evil. But blood-red fur grows to replace the old coat. It looks like he won't make it in his agony, so the boy comes closer to try and comfort it maybe, but the blood from his wound falls on the beast's head. Something inside the boy seems to stir.
(What is this feeling? Like a mix of breath, firing synapses, and blood flow, or is it life essence maybe?)
The boy pushes on this feeling and his hand glows a pale green, and so does the wolf. But his empty stomach growls hard and lightheadedness settles in before he passes out on top of the beast.