Infinitesimal: A Tale of Dragons and Daring Deeds

Chapter 5: Forest Sprites

"The ones left, they fled here, close to the land of the Sixth and Seventh to learn the ways of intelligence and love. They're the ones who told the King that the Seventh disappeared about 20 years ago." Cael reminisced.

"The Seventh is gone?" Lou was shocked. Her mother was so filled with love and passion it seemed weird that the Seventh would be gone from this world.

"Yes." Cael sighed. "Now, let's go hunting. I need something to eat besides bread and fruit."

"But," Lou stood up. "You just said that we shouldn't!"

"I said you should be considerate." Cael pulled a branch off a tree, examined it, and threw it in Cookie's side bag. He hopped on top of her, and held his hand out for Lou. She grabbed it and took Cookie out into the woods.

Cael sat on Cookie, his back pressed against Lou, admiring the stick he found earlier. He whittled at with his knife until it was in a smooth, curved shape. He nicked off burrs and smaller branches until the stick was pale white and gleaming. He carved little symbols into it until it looked less like a stick and more like a piece of artwork her father would comission.

"Say, what are you doing?" Lou asked.

"Making a bow." Cael responded. "I just need something to make the line out of. Do you have some twine?"

"No?" Lou said.

Cael sighed for the fifth time that day. "I'll have to go make some, then. Tell me if you spot some dogbane."

"Will do." Needless to day, Lou had no idea what dogbane looks like.

They rode through the forest for a while, until Lou saw a deer out of the corner of her eye. Cael had found some dogbane and was spinning some string together. He drew it between the two ends of the stick and made himself a sturdy bow.

Lou whistled. "You're quite the magician, aren't you."

Cael flinched. "Ah, yes. You could say that."

To Cael's disappointment, they didn't have arrows either, so Lou had to go and kill the deer herself. Cael stayed behind on Cookie, watching closely and inspecting the forest around for something he could make arrows out of.

Lou held her scythe low to the ground. She sneaked behind it holding her breath in her chest. Closer and closer still Lou creeped until she could almost smell the deer. She swung her scythe around and cut the deer's tendons. It cried out and stumbled onto the ground.

Cael rode over on Cookie, and stared at the deer. He frowned, and hopped off the horse. He took his knife off his belt and slit the deer's neck. He apologized to it quietly. Lou echoed slowly afterwards.

Cael cleaned the deer's corpse as Lou wandered around the forest looking for firewood. She'd found a reasonable stack and a few rocks to put around the fire. She headed back with almost a spring in her step, and hoped that Cael was a good cook. Lou arrived back at their makeshift camp to see an even more makeshift drying rack and the beginning of a fire pit.

Lou tossed her wood into the fire. Cael turned around and greeted her. There's an arrangement of sticks lying around with different lengths whittled off the ends. The chunks of meat from the deer were lying around in different sizes.

"You sure get around." Lou commented.

"Yes, I do." Cael said. "You got a good deer, I wanted to make something good to thank you. However, you've got little to no supplies in your damn bag. Next time we make it to a city, I'm using your money to buy a pot."

Lou laughed and started arranging the sticks in the fire pit. Each rock was placed carefully in a circle around the pit. She leaned back and smacked herself in the head. "Do we even have water?"

Cael pointed at a small, hollowed out log. Lou crawled over and looked in. She sighed. "You're a genius, Cael."

"I know." Cael smiled. "Could you maybe get three or more sticks for the fire? There's more deer than I expected."

Lou made a sound of conformation and headed back into the wood. Within minutes she was back and a fire had started in the pit. Deer meat was on rotisserie above the fire. Lou handed Cael the sticks and he put them below the drying rack.

"Why did you put the hide up for drying anyway?" Lou asked as she stared at the fire. The sun wasn't being as cooperative as she'd liked, since it was already sinking low in the sky. She watched the meat circle round and round and round.

Cael pulled a chunk of meat off and nipped at the end of it. "In case something breaks."

"Like what?"

"Your gloves, or my gloves or any of my armor." Cael mused. "Something is bound to break."

Lou scooted towards him. "Are you sure it isn't just to not be wasteful?"

"That too."

Cael pulled the deer meat off the rotisserie and ripped it into parts. He handed some to Lou, which she graciously gobbled up. The thief roasted some of the bread and ate the meat on top of it. Lou tried the same, and mentally thanked Cael for being so good with food. Lou would have lived on bread and fruit for the rest of her days without him.

"Did you mother tell you a whole bunch of stories when you were a kid?" Lou asked between bites. Cael pondered for a moment before responding.

"Just as much as any mother tells their child."

"Yet my mother told me hundreds of stories all the way until I was nearly graduated from being a knightling." Lou said. There's no way Cael's mother told as many stories as her mother did. It wasn't normal to fill a child with dreams like that.

"My mother told me stories that weren't made up." Cael said. "She told me about her family and the legend of the Sixth. Which was real, mind you."

"The legend of the Sixth?" Lou asked. She'd never heard that one. The Sixth had always been her mother's least favorite one of the Seven.

Cael held his hand to his chest and kept in a laugh. "That's upsetting, the Sixth was always my mother's favorite."

"See, the Sixth was my mother's least favorite!" Lou laughed.

"Let me guess, her favorite was the Seventh?" Cael sputtered.

Lou sat up straight. "You got it!"

Cael laughed hard to himself. Lou asked why he was laughing, but Cael just shrugged her off until she had lost all hope. The afternoon turned to evening, and all food from the afternoon's hunt had vanished. What little scraps left were tucked into Cookie's side bag to be saved for a later date.

The sun dived below the horizon. The sky went from blue to orange to purple and black in a matter of minutes. Lou curled up next to Cookie for her rest, and Cael took the first watch. Lou drifted off into a light sleep as birds finally finished chirping.