~+Thorns And Asters+~

_-Chapter 2: The monster from above-_

Thorn woke up to Garnet nudging her as if saying that it was time. She ruffled her husky's unruly fur and sighed, lifting her head off of the mossy ground. "Time to check on the traps again. "Three bells were ringing, indicating that some food would be on the table today at last. As thorn dressed for her walk in the forest, she wondered what food it would be. Scraps of pig or sheep, or maybe more than a half-carcass. Maybe a cow. A full cow... Thorn licked her lips, rubbed her hands together, and tripped on a mushroom.

Thorn got up with little stains of blood trickling down her knee, but quickly got up and got a move on out of her tent. The calming sound of soft rain and noises of the camp-like village washed upon the piglin's mind, and the smell of damp land calmed her down a little. Could a chicken have been caught in her trap? She didn't know. As Thorn's unfulfilled fantasies wandered around her mind, piglins bustled around her, brushing past her shoulders and talking amongst themselves. Thorn's mind snapped back to the present, and she took a sip from her flask. Time to check on the traps.

Thorn hummed as she wandered through the dark oak forest, leaves crunching below her fur-clad boots. The near-black oak trees stretched on for miles around, their deep green leaves covering the canopy, creating splotches of light on the forest floor. Slowly the tight bunches of trees started to loosen more and more with each second that Thorn walked towards her traps. Finally, she arrived at the edge of the clearing of her first trap and froze. There was a wild thrashing noise coming from her snap trap. Then, it stopped and a thump sounded from the trap. Thorn cautiously crept towards the silhouette of the trap victim, wondering how she caught prey this big in one of her traps. She arrived at the edge of the trap and peers over.

Thorn covered her mouth to muffle her scream of terror. There was a kind of monstrosity lying in the trap. It looked like a piglin, but without the hooves and tusks. And it had wings; huge, cream wings stained with dried blood. "Maybe I made the trap too sharp," Thorn muttered to herself. The thing twitched, then jerked. Panicking, Thorn hit it over the head with a large stick. It did seem to resemble at least some sort of humanoid being. She had to help it. Time to craft. After around 20 minutes, Thorn had made a square kind of hammock stretched tightly between two trees. Thorn then found out that picking up a 6"6 person isn't the best idea when you're 5"11. 

After tending to his wounds, Thorn saw that he was quite pretty, and avian. She didn't know what he was before because of all the blood. His wings looked twisted and destroyed, but Thorn had put a wood hold on them, so when the avian woke up, he couldn't fly away and hurt his wings further. His leg was mangled too, but that was just dislocated, and Thorn fixed it in a jiffy. Then, finally, after she finished, Thorn sat down to have a break. But the world decided, no, let's not have a break; and the avian's eyes snapped open, pupils in slits.

560 words.