Sapienophobia

Chapter 27

I moved far enough away to not be able to see the river, but not so far that I wouldn't know which way to return to it.

The trap that I thought would be the easiest to place turned out to be the most difficult. I had to start by sharpening branches with a scalpel. I thought that a good rock would get the job done, but by the river, they were more than scarce.

The branches themselves were on the thicker side and required a bit of strength to pull them from their trunks. I went in with the scalpel to slice down the uneven protuberances the breaks left in the trees. I then covered them with mud to prevent the brightly colored sapwood from catching eyes.

I cut myself once in my haste before deciding that the tips of my wooden crafted spears did not need to be perfectly cone-shaped. If it was sharp enough to chip some bark off, then it would be sufficient.

Six spears and two bandaged hands later, I got started digging.

The mud made getting through the first layers of ground easy, but after that, I was using medical tools for nonmedical purposes. Wedging forceps and tweezers into the soil made progress slow, slower than it would be with ten fingers at least.

Furthermore, it was difficult to get the hole to not fill itself in while digging. I had to use the spears as makeshift mud dams.

The trap also had to be the right width and length so the chances were that much higher of getting Sod to fall in. I placed the pit in between one of the wider openings in the trees, a place I would've used as an escape route because of the lack of tripping factors. I pinned the ends of the nets to the ground with rocks to not make it look suspicious; they were heavy so I had to roll them and then mark over the trails they left with my boot.

Eventually, I dug a ditch half my height. Making it deeper was preferable, but I'd like to be able to get out of it if the need arose.

The spears wouldn't stick into the bottom of the pit. Either the force of my jabs was to blame or it was the texture of the dirt. I had to carve the ends of the branches as well so that they would stand upwards as they sprouted from the ground. The moistness on the wood made that shaving rigid and jagged.

I reconsidered the quality of my initial carvings as I forced the now double-headed spears into the dirt.
The covering was made of nets with leaves on top. When I backed away and saw my creation from a distance, I belittled myself into doing better.

The nets' gaping holes would have been obvious to the animals.

I went back to reexamine the cover.

The leaves and rocks I placed on top were lumped together so they would've seeped through without something to keep them on there. And that was if a bothersome wind didn't blow them off first. Using more glue would've been a waste to attempt to cover the entirety of the net. I covered it again with another net to better hold the camouflaging materials. This meant I was one net short for my other traps. I planned on crossing that bridge when I came to it, though.

Tying the leaves' stems to the nets was difficult as well. They were fragile and surprisingly weak to water. I used some to expand the stems so that I had more to work with when I tried to knot them, but the leaves absorbed the water and went clammy. I had expected the water to increase their elasticity. I ended up placing a mixture of grass and mud in the places I couldn't fill.

To top it off, I had to place the nets in a position where they could neither fall into the pit nor be noticed from a favorable angle.

I got my foot stuck in one of the net's loops and had a tantrum getting it out.

My constant stream of tears when something didn't go how I wanted also proved to be an obstacle.

Keep it together. You're being a child.
I am a child.
That doesn't mean I should act like one. I'm doing adult work.
That sounds like something a child would say.

I concluded that the trap only looked out of place if one looked at it for too long.

This won't work.
It will, I'm looking at it the wrong way. Besides, only humans could be that careful with their footing, and that's when they use magic. If Sod misses this one, he'll fall in the others.

I covered my eyes with my hands and silently screamed.

So will the animals, dunce.

The pit would be all but useless if a deer or predator fell it in first. Sod would be able to smell them bleeding out from meters away and that was if they didn't screech first. Even if the pit trap was a one-use contraption, my other traps would have not been; Sod would head in the opposite direction.

Let's place traps there too.

The "opposite direction" was a vague description,

Sod could head anywhere really that wasn't here. I didn't want to place traps blindly, especially near the lake because they were too many factors I couldn't account for. The animals' behavior, Sod's, the weather, the terrain.

I also feared not having enough equipment to fully cover the area, and if I did, I feared it becoming damaged.

Why bother? This is pointless.
Hold on, I know that animals dislike the smell of oils.

Father had Weeping Tree oils in his cabinets, but I didn't bring any with me.

Sweat is oily, yes?
I don't know if people oil applies. We're animals.
We're predatorial animals to other animals. They can't tell from smelling that I'm weak. They'll stray away.

I cut out the armpits of my sweater that had managed to dampen with my sweat. I sniffed it, and it was as pungent as I was slightly disappointed to find. I doggedly wrung the material and couldn't get a drop out. The material needed to be diluted anyway so that only keen animals could smell it, so I filtered the remains of my town water through the fabrics. I dropped a few nearby blades of grass in the solution to mask it just in case before spreading it across the undersides of the nets.

I made sure not to lean all the way over the pit.