Crash

8: One Week

(Baine ^ but he's just a little darker)

Eight days later.

- Lyra

"Go Baine go!" I yelled and whipped the rope off his neck.

He tore across the grass and launched into the lake, snatching a wood duck out of the water.

As it turned out, waterfowl was around here and they loved my lake. Baine had an interest in chasing them down. I figured that out when he accidentally got loose, and brought back a duck.

I was starting to train him to bring them home for dinner.

Over a week and three days, my shooting had improved...ish. All I had to do out here was practice. I could hit the pine cones and now rabbits, if I was lucky enough. My stock of rabbit skins was beginning to grow. 

Six pelts lay in the sun to shrivel. Six little furry blankets I would end up stitching together with sinew from the spines of each rabbit for Baine so I could have my blanket back. It hadn't faded from my mind that I was stuck out here, but it hurt less. I tried not to think about it.

"Good boy!" I praised when he dropped a soaked wood duck at my feet, panting heavily.

I would pluck it and put it in my pot to stew. Throwing in some huckleberries that I found into the pot wouldn't hurt, even if they were a little sour. After I had that started, I threw a bone that seemed to be Baine's favorite to chew on.

He brought it back every time like the good wolf he is. I refuse to call him a dog, it sounds demeaning when compared to him. Baine did happen to excel at fetch though. 

He and I had grown extremely close in a short amount of time. I let him off his rope and he followed me everywhere as if he didn't want to leave me. That was our day, hunt, hang out, eat, have a little fun and things like that. I wasn't so lonely anymore. 

Three days a week I chopped fire wood to keep up my stock.

Throughout the past week, I had seen more elk, mule deer, a variety of water birds, big horn sheep, different kinds of late summer berries, and a lot of rabbits. I wondered why I hadn't spotted any predators. To them, this must've been a paradise. The fear of a predator still sat in the back of my mind though. 

It could help that I walked with Baine around our large area, letting him mark his territory, which hopefully kept away any sort of threats. 

There was something that scared me, other than a predator to compete with, an on coming winter.

The leaves were just barely starting to turn on the trees, Baine's fur was slowly getting thicker, and the nights were getting colder.

I knew what was coming and hoped someone found me before then. I didn't know if I could survive the winter here. It had been almost a month since the crash, I think. Crazy right? Keeping track of the days wasn't hard but I felt like it had been longer. 

The person who needed me direly hadn't shown up. Unless it was Baine, but I doubted that. The dream after the crash was a distant memory to me now. I wrote it off as an after near death experience and nothing more. 

Some nights I still dream that my dad gives up and no matter how much I shout at him to keep looking and that I'm alive, he doesn't hear me and fades away. Ridiculous, I know. 

I wake up to an alarmed Baine when he licks and paws at me frantically until I open my eyes as if he thinks something is wrong with me. I'm lucky to at least have him for my nightmares, which leave me staring at the cave ceiling every time.