Chapter two of Mystic Heart Odyssey, part one: Strangers in a Strange Land. I’m no doubt putting my embarrassing complete lack of survival and hunting knowledge on full display here, so please forgive any obvious glaring mistakes in that regard. I hope you enjoy it anyway. Oh, and I promise more exciting things are coming soon. This is just a bit of buildup for the journey.

-Lloxie the Phasefox

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As he felt the sun beginning to warm his face, Lykou started to wake up. With a light grunt, he slowly sat up, stretching and wincing as he already felt some of the aches he’d be dealing with from having slept on a flat stone surface. After rubbing the blurriness from his eyes, he noticed Kuna sitting at the edge of the cave, his legs curled up again. Lykou was glad to see he was still around- he’d half expected him to run off as soon as the sun rose and the storm was gone. But then he noticed a strange look on the sereva’s face.

“Er… good morning. Is… everything alright?” he asked.

Kuna just turned to him silently and gestured outside. “Look.”

Lykou looked past him and at first didn’t see anything unusual. “What am I looking for? Storm’s gone, so that’s g-” he paused. Something wasn’t right. The ground outside wasn’t the slightest bit wet. It was dawn, there was no way the ground had had enough time to dry that much already, even if the rain stopped immediately after they fell asleep. “What the…”

“Go look around outside,” Kuna added, his gaze returning to the far wall as his eye twitched slightly.

Lykou looked back at him for a moment, then got up and stepped out of the cave, looking around. His eyes widened as the morning sleepiness was immediately ripped away from him. Nothing looked familiar. Granted, he’d lost track of where he was amidst that storm, but this was different. The forest that surrounded him was not the forest he’d grown up in, spent his life in. There were strange plants everywhere. And as he turned back towards the cave, it, too, was different than the one he knew he’d entered. The heavy rain may have obscured things, but that cave was distinctly set into a large cliffside. Now, as he looked back down at Kuna sitting in the entrance, it looked like small hollowed-out hill.

“What… how…” he said quietly as he again panned around their surroundings. Then his eyes narrowed and he looked back at Kuna with a slight smirk. “Are you sure you’re not spirit?”

Kuna snapped out of his apparent existential crisis at that and gave Lykou an odd, slightly annoyed look. “What?”

They both stared at each other for a minute, but Lykou could see no sign of deception on Kuna’s face. “...aliki-ka? Forest guide spirit? Fate runner?”

“...what the fuck are you talking about?” Kuna asked him, growing increasingly perplexed and slightly wary.

Again, there was a moment of silence. Lykou relented with a slight sigh and a shrug. “Nevermind.” He looked around a bit more. “I knew that wasn’t a normal storm though. But this? This is….” he tapered off, at a loss for words.

“Yeah.” Kuna replied, finally getting out and standing up to look around a bit more himself.

They stood in silence for several minutes, trying to make sense of things. Finally, Lykou spoke up again. “Well even if you aren’t a spirit, I think we must’ve pissed one off somehow. At least, it’s pretty obvious something... mystical, or magical, or whatever, happened to us.”

Kuna was silent for a beat, then shrugged. “Guess so. Caves don’t migrate, last I checked,” he said flatly.

Lykou chuckled a bit. “Yeah. I’m surprised what ever happened didn’t wake us up. Well… maybe not you. You were sleeping like a log,” he said with a smirk. “Guess you were pretty worn out.”

The sereva glared at him. “Someone chased me halfway through the entire damn forest into a freak rainstorm and terrified the shit out of me that I was about to die a gruesome death,” he spat back, causing the konuul to wince and look a bit guilty. Then, after a brief pause, he looked away again. “Besides… I still got up before you did.”

“Right… sorry. Was just…” Lykou let the sentence die and looked away, ears folded down a bit as he sighed. “Anyway…”

There was an uncomfortable silence as they watched the small local wildlife come and go, trying to make any sense of their surroundings. It was still a forest, but all the plantlife was different. And there were even a few odd little critters that darted around, similar to but different from the squirrels and chipmunks they knew.

After a minute, Kuna’s icey demeanor lessened somewhat as he looked down and fiddled with something in his hand. “...thanks though,” he muttered quietly.

“Huh?” Lykou asked, turning back to him after having briefly been distracted by a strange looking bird on a nearby branch.

“...thanks for… for… you know.” Kuna didn’t meet his gaze and resumed crossing his arms as he turned to look out into the woods again. “...not letting me freeze.”

Lykou smiled, his tail flicking slightly. “Of course, no problem. Sorry for scaring you so much though…”

There was another silence, then he took a bigger breath and went back to collect his things and put his pack back on. “Well no sense standing around.” He took out his knife and started heading over towards a mid-sized tree.

“Huh? Wait,” Kuna said as the konuul started walking away. “What are you doing?”

“Uh, surviving? Who knows how long it’ll take to get home, so I’m going to try and make something that’s a bit easier to hunt with than this knife. I don’t have enough food for more than a day or so,” Lykou responded, testing the weight of a branch that looked like it’d recently fallen from the tree. “You should do the s-… er, go collect… I don’t know… whatever you eat?”

Kuna’s eye twitched again. “Right… predator…” he muttered to himself, then sighed and started looking around for anything that looked remotely familiar, or at least safe to bite into.

Lykou smirked a bit as he started cutting at the branch he was holding. “Don’t worry, I’ll do my hunting well away from you. We can meet back here this afternoon.” His smirk faded as he looked up at the sereva again. “Be careful though. And uh… I guess you don’t have… well, anything with you do you?”

Kuna looked up briefly from ripping some leaves off a promising looking plant, and shook his head. “I was keeping my things in another cave. Ran into the wrong one in all the chaos.”

“Oh. Hmm,” Lykou paused, looking thoughtful for a moment. “Right. Um. I guess… good luck. We’ll have to do something about that later.”

Kuna raised his eyebrow questioningly, then shrugged and went back to what he was doing. Gradually, his searching took him farther and farther from Lykou, and he was almost tempted to just run off and hope for the best. But that idea was squashed when he stumbled across a large pile of old, picked-over bones, accompanied by deep claw marks, not just in the bones and dirt, but even in a nearby stone. The stone still had a faint reddish-brown mark that could only have come from one thing. It was all old enough by now that whatever caused it was likely long gone, but it was more than enough to make him skittish.

With a nervous gulp, he slowly made his way back towards the cave as he continued gathering anything that looked even slightly useful. At least with Lykou he had that weird.. promise-thing that he’d hopefully be a bit more safe with him. He took another look at the stone in his hand, then shook his head, rolling his eyes. Honestly, he didn’t know why he was still holding it. Just in case, maybe? After a while, Lykou approached him again, now carrying a very basic, but functional wooden spear of sorts. Kuna quickly closed his hand and made it look casual.

“I’m going hunting now. It’s probably safest if you don’t wander too far from the cave.” Lykou said as he gently grabbed Kuna’s shoulder. The sereva flinched, but at least this time he didn’t jump away terrified like the previous night. “Please be careful. I’ll meet you back here later, alright?”

Kuna glanced up, and nodded silently after a moment, then knelt down and began digging at the roots of some flowering thing as best he could with his bare hands, after surreptitiously setting the stone aside for a moment.

Lykou left after that. Hours passed in tedious frustration. So many of the plants Kuna found were unrecognizable. Some at least looked similar enough that he suspected they were safe. And going off his general knowledge of herbs, he managed to find plenty of things that, if nothing else, would satisfy him in a pinch and could even possibly be useful for various wounds or ailments he might suffer. Gradually, his collection began piling up in front of the cave as the sun lazily ran its course across the sky.

Around mid-afternoon, he finally gave in to his complaining stomach and took a chance on a stalk of something that looked at least vaguely familiar. Something that resembled the celery stalks he was used to back in the wetter areas of the old forest, albeit a slightly different color. To his relief, it tasted right- crisp and watery like he’d hoped. It might not be as sweet and tasty as fruit, but it seemed less likely to outright poison him if he got it wrong, unlike some unfamiliar berries.

After his little munching break, he got back to work, hauling more piles of miscellaneous plant matter. Besides food and potential medicine, he figured he might as well try and find material to make something useful out of. A bag, or… clothing. Though he had a feeling he was fooling himself to that end- he had no tools, and wasn’t exactly experienced at making them.

*****

Meanwhile, elsewhere, Lykou was stalking quietly through the brush. He’d had no luck with finding any turkeys or anything of the sort. Or boars, for that matter; though if they were like the ones back home he probably wouldn’t have dared taking one alone with such a basic spear anyway. Those bastards didn’t go down easy, and they were known to fight back if you didn’t get the aim just right and take them down in one strike.

Finally, he’d come across a medium-sized, round, two-tailed, fuzzy… something. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it looked like there was plenty of meat on it. It was grunting and facing away from him, digging into a patch of some kind of plant, gnawing at the roots. When he was finally close enough, he lunged his spear into the thing’s side- only for it to sink in, then literally bounce right back out, with no sign of blood. The creature paused its eating and lazily turned around, as if it was more annoyed than upset. Its face had a row of five eyes all in a line, and a strange, almost insect-looking set of mandibles.

Lykou’s eye twitched in disbelief. His aim had been true, he even saw the spear sink in… but there was no sign of a wound. “...what.”

The creature simply grunted in annoyance and started shuffling away at a lazy pace. Its movement was odd, its whole body jiggling and wavering as it moved, almost like it was nearly liquid. He couldn’t even see its legs. Giving it one more go, Lykou again tried to stab it. But the creature merely paused, gave an annoyed hiss, and then pushed the spear right back out.

“Right. Okay. Fine. You’re not dinner. Got it,” Lykou muttered in irritation as the creature wandered off. He sighed. “This place is weird.”

For a while, he stalked around some more, until he finally came across a creek and decided to stop by small waterfall connected to it. Taking off his pack and his clothes, he stepped into the water and relished in the refreshing cool water washing over him. He stuck his tongue out and started lapping some of it up as it poured down on his head. For a while, he just enjoyed himself, though he wished he had some company to goof off with. Still, it was a nice break from the day.

After spending a good half hour or so enjoying the water, he stepped out and shook himself dry, then grabbed a small piece of dried meat from his bag and snacked on it, to calm his complaining belly. As he stood there, waiting for his fur to finish drying so that he could put on his clothes, he looked towards a deeper, less turbulent section of the creek and got an idea. Something caused a ripple at the surface. There were fish in there.

Spear-fishing wasn’t his forte, but it was worth a try. Carefully and slowly, he returned to the water, and spent over an hour barely moving, other than one or two quick stabs that sadly missed their mark. Finally, he got lucky and managed to snag one. He didn’t quite recognize what kind of fish it was, but it was big enough to feed him for at least one meal, so that was a good start. And his strike had been perfect, the fish was already completely dead and still before he even lifted it out of the water. Just the way he wanted. He may have been a predator, but he hated seeing things suffer- the quicker and cleaner the kill, the better.

He spent the next few hours at it, missing at least half the time, but by the end, he’d piled up a small stack of modest sized fish on the shore. Finally, he re-clothed himself, strapped on his pack, and cut a nearby vine to tie the fish together with. Before he left, he made sure to top up his waterskin from the fall. And then, with the afternoon sun creeping slowly down across the sky, he made his way back to the cave area.

When he arrived, he paused as he saw a large stack of miscellaneous plant matter sitting by the cave entrance. It wasn’t exactly organized- just a whole collection of fibrous and somewhat colorful.. stuff. He cocked a bemused eyebrow as he set his fish and a few branches he’d collected along the way down nearby. After clearing a patch of ground a short distance from the cave entrance, he set up a ring of reasonably-sized rocks and began arranging the branches inside it. By the time Kuna came walking back with another arm load of stuff, he had a decent fire going.

The sereva unceremoniously dropped his armload next to the pile that’d been accumulating, then collapsed against the side of the cave entrance, clearly worn out.

“I… see you’ve been busy,” Lykou commented as he skewered a couple fish on another, smaller sharp stick he’d whittled into shape, then held them over the fire, being careful not to let the skewer itself catch fire.

Kuna gave him a tired, level stare. “A bit,” he said, then gave the fish a mixed look of confusion and disgust. “...so it’s not enough to kill them, you burn them, too?”

Lykou frowned. “Burn? I won’t burn anything, I’ve cooked plenty of times before. I know what I’m doing.”

“...’cook’?” Kuna asked, apparently unfamiliar with the word.

The question received a very bewildered expression from Lykou. “Er. Yeah? ...wait, you don’t cook your food? None of it?”

Kuna slowly lifted a purple root-looking thing to his mouth and bit into it, just giving Lykou an odd look. “Is that some weird word for ‘burn, but not really’?” he asked, after he swallowed.

Lykou rotated the fish, still staring oddly at the sereva. “I mean… kinda, I guess? It’s just heating it up. Do… do you not even use fire for anything?”

Kuna rolled his eyes. “I mean yeah, obviously. Warmth and whatnot. But why would you want food… hot?”

“...are you serious?” Lykou asked incredulously, a slight smirk on his face. “It just tastes better. Oh, and it usually lasts a little longer, too. Especially if you smoke and dry it. Unfortunately,” he sighed, shrugging. “No ovens here.”

“You’re just making up words now,” Kuna said, staring at him flatly.

“No, really, you should try it sometime,” Lykou replied, pulling his skewer back to check the fish. It still wasn’t quite done, so he moved it back over the fire. “You might be surprised. Though admittedly it’s not like I’ve tried it with, well, any of… that,” he said, gesturing to the pile of things next to the sereva.

“That’s not all food, you know. Some of it’s medicine. Hopefully, anyway. And some of it I… uh…” He paused, and took another bite of the root he was eating. A slight pink tinge appeared on his face as he munched on it and eventually swallowed. “I was hoping to to make something with it.”

“Oh, like what? ...and with what?”

Kuna’s eats folded down and he shrugged. “Nevermind, it’s not important. I’ll probably just use the meshweed as a blanket.”

“What, by itself? Like that? Doubt that’d be very comfortable, and probably fall apart before long,” Lykou said, then checked his fish again. “You should wrap it in something.”

“How? No tools, remember? And not like… mm, nevermind.”

Lykou looked curiously at him, but decided to let it go for the moment. He pulled the fish off his stick and used his knife to start slicing off pieces to eat bit by bit. It was annoying and frustrating work, but at least it tasted good, and this way he was less likely to get little bone fragments in his mouth.

Kuna made a face and averted his gaze, trying not to focus on what the canid was doing. The two sat in silence for a while as they ate. When they’d more or less finished, the sereva stood up and stepped away.

“Where are you going?” Lykou called over to him after finishing one last mouthful.

“Water. There’s a small stream over here,” Kuna answered dismissively as he walked away.

“Be careful!” Lykou was a bit wary, seeing as how the sun was already setting, so visibility was quickly fading. Then again, he saw Kuna dip down still well within sight, so the stream must have been closer than he realized. After a few moments, he realized he’d been staring at, even admiring the sereva’s rear as he bent down by the stream. He suddenly snapped himself out of it and blushed a bit, wondering what had come over him. He shook his head and quickly refocused on other things, tucking that strange thought away in the back of his mind.

As he waited for his companion’s return, a thought struck him. By the time Kuna came walking back, he was fiddling with the fish bones laying by his side, much to the sereva’s disgust.

“Now what are you doing? ...actually, nevermind, I don’t want to know.” he said, again looking away and busying himself with going through the stack of collected plant matter sitting next to him. Finally he’d decided to start sorting it.

After another silence, Lykou spoke up. “You know, for the future, I have a waterskin, if you want a drink.”

Kuna looked over at him with a raised eyebrow. “Water ‘skin’ huh? I assume that’s a bit of a literal term?”

“I- well, I mean technically-” Lykou said, then paused and sighed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, I get it. Sorry it bothers you, but it’s the only way we have to carry water around with us. It’s going to be pretty awkward if you have to keep running off to a stream every time you get thirsty, especially once we start traveling.”

Kuna rubbed his arm and looked uncomfortable. He clearly wanted to argue, but he was struggling to come up with a rebuttle. “I… I’ll make do. Maybe… maybe I can find a gourd or something-”

“Haven’t seen any around here yet.”

“I’ll make do,” he reiterated, narrowing his eyes stubbornly.

Lykou just returned his stare for a minute, then sighed again and resumed what he was doing with the fish bones. After a bit, he glanced over and saw that Kuna was just passively going through the things laying next to him, seemingly a bit uncertain of himself. “You know, that’s going to be impossible to carry all over the place, especially just in your arms while we travel. You need some kind of pack or something.”

“That’s… one of the things I was hoping to, uh… make, with some of it,” Kuna replied, mostly avoiding eye contact.

“Going to be tricky with just that, and no tools.”

Kuna’s ears flattened and he shot a slight sideways glare at the canid. “You don’t say.”

Lykou then lifted something he’d been working on. It was pearly-white and sharp. Most of the fish weren’t big enough to have bones usable for much, but after some work, he’d managed to work one bit into a crude needle. “Find something to use this with and I’ll help you stitch something together. I was never a weaver, but… it can’t be that hard, right?”

Kuna’s eye twitched. He clearly wanted to object, but also knew he was out of options.

“Look, I know this stuff makes you uncomfortable, but it’s not like you have other options right now. What else are you going to use?”

“Wood. Stone. Something,” Kuna defensively retorted, clearly grasping for ideas as he once again curled up, then rested his arms on his knees and buried his head in his arms. “I don’t know, I was never a tool maker. I just always gathered stuff, maybe stitched things up sometimes.”

“Alright, alright. We’ll deal with this in the morning. Looks like we’re probably going to have to spend another day getting ready to travel anyway,” Lykou sighed. He looked at Kuna for a minute curiously. “What’s your tribe like, anyway? Seems like things are a lot different where you come from.”

There was dead silence from Kuna as he refused to even move. After a minute, Lykou considered checking to make sure he was alright. But when the sereva finally lifted his head, he shot a particularly nasty glare back at Lykou, although there was a crack in his cold, angry facade. A faint hint of tears in the corner of his eyes. “None. Of your. Business,” he said in such a low, quiet, and slightly shaky tone that it caught Lykou off guard and sent a shiver down his spine. Then he suddenly got up and unceremoniously stalked off.

“Hey, wait! Where are you going now??” Lykou called out after him, getting up to follow. The sun was down now and the only light came from the rising moon moon, stars, and their campfire. No doubt the stubborn idiot would get himself lost out in the dark… or worse. “Now’s not the time for wandering off!”

“Back off! ...or are you finally going to break your ‘unbreakable’ promise now?” Kuna said, pausing to hold the stone up to him.

Lykou was totally taken aback and his ears drooped. “No! Of course not! Look, I-I’m sorry if I crossed a line, but don’t go getting lost, or, or killed, or something because of it!” Finally, he dropped his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Look. I’ll leave you alone. Alright? I was just trying to help. Just please don’t go wandering out into the dark alone.”

Kuna couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt, and after a moment, he dropped his arm as well his gaze, though the stone remained firmly grasped in his hand. “...sorry. I… I’m sorry. I just… I think I need sleep. Sorry.” Without another word, he swiftly walked past Lykou and ducked into the cave, his hand coming up to his face as he passed by. It looked like he might’ve been trying to fight back tears.

Confused and a bit hurt, Lykou returned to the fireside and sat back down. In the cave, he could see Kuna laying on the cold stone, with nothing to warm him. For a while, he just sat there, pondering over things. His mind should have been on plans for the next day, further preparing for a potentially extended journey through… whatever this place was, to try and make his way home. But instead he kept trying to figure out his companion.

Last night, he just seemed like a lot more of a sensitive, timid thing. Now he was all ice and fire. But it was clearly a front. Those tears were real. Lykou just wish he knew what to do about them. How to get through that wall. For a while, he stayed up trying to work out some way of stitching together some kind of bag. But ultimately he just couldn’t focus, so he decided to head to sleep as well. After banking the fire for the night, he crawled into the cave, set his pack down, and pulled his blanket back out. He paused to think for a minute, then draped it over Kuna, and opted to lay down on his own, giving the guy some space. His fur was thicker and in any case, without the storm, the night was surprisingly much warmer than the last. Still a bit cool, but nothing he couldn’t deal with.

Much to his surprise, as he was just preparing to doze off, he felt part of the blanket drape over him, and a warm presence behind him. He turned to look, and confirmed that Kuna was right next to him, but he was facing the other direction, pretending to be asleep. He smirked slightly and laid his head back down, drifting off to sleep shortly thereafter.