Chapter 3: Don't Think About Jerk-y
I woke up to the sound of birds happily chirping away. I grunted. I was most definitely not as happy as they were. After all, I was starving and lost in some weird remote forest, with seemingly no way back to “true” civilization. Yeah, I’m a terrible person that way. WATCHA GONNA DO?!?!?!
Sorry about that, didn’t mean to go all…ehem, “gangsta” on you. But, you know. No food tends to do that to you. I got off of my raincoat (which will now be called the “jacket”) and tied it around my waist. I drank enough water to make my stomach slightly less grumpy, and stumbled outside to see how early it was. The sun was low on the horizon. I grinned the smile of a wolf about to kill a deer. I would have time to make arrows and use them in hunting. I went back into the cave, grabbed my knife and staff, then walked back out and into the forest. I wandered around, looking for any straight, long sticks, long enough so I could draw back the bow and still have the arrow fit in the aiming notch. I would do this as a kid and pretend they were swords, so I managed to find about thirty or so within an hour. By then, I had already tied my staff to my back with my jacket and had stored my knife in one of its pockets so I could carry all the sticks in my hands.
I walked back to my cave and started up the fire again. I took out all the lumpy sticks and started whittling away at any knots or protrusions. Once all the sticks were relatively smooth, I took out the curved ones and held them one by one over the roaring fire. Once they basked in the heat long enough, I started to shape them in order to make them straighter and stronger. As those sticks began to cool, I started grinding the other sticks against the rough floor to shape their ends into point-like shapes. I took out my knife and cut the ends to the point that they would cause quite a bit of pain when pressed against my finger, then grinded the points again to make them smoother while taking care not to dull the point. I then held them over the fire again to let them fire-harden, then set them aside to cool. I sighed, then began repeating the process with the rest of the sticks, now cooled. I hate manual labor.
By the time I was done with everything, it looked to be about 2 PM. I took another long drink of water, then stuffed as many arrows as I could into my jacket’s pockets and tied it around my waist. Luckily, they were the big, rectangular kind with the flaps that you could button shut, so all I had to do was button up said flap in order to secure the arrows. If I have more time, I’d like to make stone or flint arrows, or maybe a blunt axe/mace. Oh well, food is my first priority. I don’t know what plants are edible here, so I’d rather not risk that. I groaned, stood up, stretched my muscles for a bit, then picked up my bow. I threw a log onto the fire and ventured back into the forest.
I found a stream about half a mile away with loads of fish in it. Sustainable food resource, yay! I had to practice a few times, but I finally figured out how to use a bow, lead moving targets, and make up for water refraction. I lost maybe five arrows in the tall grass near the stream, but got all the others back. Eh. Five arrows isn’t that big of a loss. I turned my attention back to the stream, and after a few tries, I speared a small red fish. I killed three more fish after that, but lost two more arrows in the process. Damn. It was getting harder and harder to see the fish, so I looked up at the sky to see why. Turns out I was there for the better part of five hours, and it was getting dark.
I trudged back home and put all my belongings back in their proper places. I drank some water from the lake, soothing my dry throat. I really need to fashion a canteen or something, but out of what? I’ll need my jacket to hold my arrows. I shook my head, sighed again, then stabbed the four fish onto some arrows and stuck them in the ground next to the fire, angled so the arrows wouldn’t burn but the fish would cook. I sat back and watched the flames dance and cast flickering shadows everywhere. Maybe if I managed to catch a rabbit or something I could try and shatter some of its bones to make sharper, more durable arrowheads. Heh. Arrowhead. Like water back at home, where I didn’t have to drink out of a potentially contaminated lake, but from a bottle instead. You know, Arrowhead never really did taste that good. Back at home, I drank…
Home. That one word hit me in face like someone asked me, “Hey, do want to get run over by a train?” and shoved me in front of one without waiting for a response. Dick. All this time, this all seemed like one of the daydreams I constantly have, or like some weird fucked-up camping trip where I was left with no food, no water, no supplies, and no partner. But this is real. I could die out here. And home is probably really far away, as little sense as that makes. What am I going to do? Just live out here like some beast-man until I die of the common cold or something?
Ugh, snap out of it. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. When did you become such a sentimental old fool, Richard? My eyes unglazed as my mind returned to the land of the living. Hmm. The fish are still cooking, so I haven’t been out of it for that long. Good. They look almost done, maybe fifteen more minutes will do the trick. Might as well come up with an escape plan in case someone with a pointy stick shows up. Let’s see. I’ll group the bow and staff together near the fire, and maybe I’ll add a torch later on. If I am, then I’ll just shift my jacket to the left and stick the staff through the knot so it looks like a sword in its sheath, and I’ll still have access to my arrows on my right. I’ll run with my bow in my left hand or slung across my back, and I’ll hold the torch with my right. I’ll keep my rock and knife in both my pockets from now on, in case I need them. Yeah, that’ll work.
A faint burning smell hit my nostrils. Smells like the fish are done. I yanked the arrows out and stuck them somewhere else to cool. Thankfully, they were already fire-hardened, so they didn’t bend or anything. After waiting a while for the fish to cool, I ravenously devoured all four of them in quick succession. Okay, in my defense, they were small, I’ve been starving for two days, and have you looked at me? Even though I eat three hearty meals a day, I still look thin as a rail. I am not a pig. You’re a pig. Piiig…ooookay, lapse in moral thought for a second there. I went from insulting some imaginary jerk, to thinking about bacon, to thinking about bacon jerky, to thinking about imaginary bacon jerk-y. Yeah, I’m going to just lie down, stop thinking about this, and pretend it never happened.
Yeah…
Jerky…
Jerk-y…
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3086502 I've seen a story with 47k words in one chapter. What is that considered?
3250821 Probably a one-shot.
3250823 It's not. The story has between 25-30 chapters to it so far.
3250827 Hoooolyyyy...
3250863 It's not even an original, stand-alone story either. It's a spin off of a continuation of My Little Dashie, called "The Problem With Magic".
It's a very good story, by the way.
3250871 Was that the threequel, or is this something else? Also, how do you milk MLD THAT much?
3250920 Yeah, I think it was during the threequel, but from a different point of view. A human turned pony who has to keep his true identity a secret or else suffer enslavement or something along those lines.
And hey, it's not nearly as milked as some others, like, say, Fallout: Equestria for instance.
3250935 Huh. Anyways, that's different, because for groups like that you can have different characters, plots, etc. because they become an idea, a universe, not so much a story. But with MLD, there's just Dashie and The Dude(forgot his name). It's harder to milk that way, harder to create a new story.
3250948 Yeah, I suppose your right. But I still think it's worth the read.
3250956 What, my story, MLD, the threequel, the story based off of the threequel, or Fallout: Equestria?
3250973 LOL, I was talking about the MLD spinoffs, but all of the above I guess.
Anyways the other chapters had little to none comments. Then this chapter came and was like "sup bro". Just a few comments here. And I was like
3305327 All dem comments.
3305327
3305287
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WTF!! Have I been this ... weird? How did I even think back then?
4735333 Hey, if you weren't weird, then you wouldn't have been a statistic in my master plan to enslave the world that begins with a mere story on FIMfiction!
I mean...you weren't weird?
4735798 OF COURSE!! THE SQAURE ROOT OF PANCAKE IS ½
4740616 What brought you back here, anyways?
4740921 I don't remember. :/
pretty good story thus far man. don't really get the dislikes, though
5005699 Why thank you! I imagine the dislikes are just because A. I was even worse at writing then than I am now, B. Because it's a super-generic HiE fic, and C....um, because I'm asian? I dunno.
5008974 That's where my idea for a alternate take comes in!
You see, in 10 years, when I finally finish milking this story with its soon-to-be 100,000 chapters, I'll just get lazy and remake the story except he remembers he's a brony.
But seriously though, I once had a plan for 3 storylines. I've decided to merge 2 of them, and I plan to start it hopefully sometime when I actually have time to work and flesh out this guy.
Oh look, a story I might favorite to see next chapter asap, *Sees 4 chapter was posted 51 weeks ago. Nevermind
5039057 Heh, yeah, really sorry about that. I'm afraid the reasons are purely selfish. I'm busy with school, and whenever I do have free time it usually goes to taking time off. I do have a chapter ready, but for whatever reason my brain won't let me post it until I illustrate some bits of it. And it's forcing me to keep it at 1,999 words, even though it could do with some editing. I'm really sorry that my own ineptitude has driven you away from this fic.
Nice name though.