When Hunter Becomes Prey

Tag

The days slowly start to meld together as Briar lives alone in the woods. The only days that stand out are the days when her snares actually catch something. Otherwise the days she must eat plants are dull and forgettable.

With my knife I've managed to make a wooden needle, which sucks compared to metal, and I've made myself rabbit skin mittens.

I don't have nearly enough animal hides to make myself any winter clothes other than the mittens. I'm going to have to be in doe form all winter.

I'm sure there will be some warm days where I can be human. But otherwise it'll be good ole deer form.

Now then, it's time to check my snares.

When Briar goes to check her snares, she finds that in each and every one a stick has been snared. It's definitely not something that happened naturally. Someone has been out here messing with her traps.

I should've known something like this would happen. Sandy will not stop punishing me for something that I didn't mean to happen.

There's no point in having them up anymore. I've only caught four rabbits in Sandy knows how long. I walk from snare to snare, taking the stick out and un-assembling them.

I carefully coil them around my wrist, making sure they don't reach down and accidentally scratch my wound. It's mostly healed now, but occasionally something brushes against it and it starts to bleed.

Weeks Upon Weeks Later

The winter in this fiction was mild, far more mild than what I expected. It only snowed about three inches and the coldest it got was fifteen degrees.

In the real world this would've been a great winter for the deer and pheasants. They would've had easy access to food and wouldn't be freezing their asses off.

Of course with so little snow the ducks would've been suffering come spring. All the duck ponds that rely on winter melt would be bone dry.

My last summer in the real world we had a killer drought. The duck ponds were dry and the lakes were low. Hardly any ducklings that hatched made it.

Then there was duck hunting in the fall. The pond we hunted over had fifteen feet of ass deep mud before it got to a shallow pool of water. It was pointless hunting over it because the dog couldn't make it through the mud.

Anyway, back to the fiction world.

The new plant growth tastes just as bad as the old plant growth. I don't bother with the snares this time. It's spring and everything has young. I'm not orphaning anything if I can help it.

At the moment I'm grazing on a patch of this weird green flower. I mean how can a green flower get pollinated? It tastes bitter and then sweet. It's weird.

My instincts tell me to look up every so often to check for danger. When I look up this time I see a snow white deer watching me some forty feet away.

I only know of one snow white deer in this woods, so it must be the buck.

I don't think he's a threat which means I'm probably safe to keep eating the bs flower.

I continue eating the bs flower until I'm full. When I do my next look for danger I see the buck's gone.

I scan the trees for him. How can a bright white deer just vanish? Maybe he got bored of me and left.

A soft snort from behind me scares the hell out of me and I lurch forward. I don't go very far before I realize it's just the buck.

I stop and turn back around.

He's standing where I just was and looking at me curiously.

That was uncalled for. So I'm going to do what always pissed me off when I was deer hunting.

I snort at him and stop my forefoot.

Oh how I hated when does did this to me. It always ended up in their death because if she blows she goes. Wasting my tag on a doe when I could've had a trophy buck. What a shame.

I do this three more times to get my point across before I stop and give him the evil eye.

He gives me a playful look and before I know it, he bumps my shoulder with his nose. Then he sprints off. He stops for a moment and looks at me before continuing his sprint.

I see. He wants to play tag. Ah fuck it, I'm in for a game of tag.

I chase after him and find him hiding behind a bush. The bush itself is scraggly and doesn't hide him very well.

He stares at me and then takes off. I round the bush and chase after him. I know for a fact that he's faster than me but he's running at a speed that I can keep up with.

He slows down even more and I take this as my chance to speed up and tag him. I head butt his butt before turning tail and going back the way we came.

In the blink of an eye a white blur goes past me and then stops, forcing me to choose between running into him or changing direction.

As the last second I change direction. My momentum doesn't like this though and forces me to roll. I lay there disoriented and feeling dizzy.

He walks up to me with a look that's mixed between feeling sorry and feeling bad.

He kneels down to my level and sniffs at me. I raise my head and look at him. He's spinning in circles. I really am dizzy.

I sniff back and then something unexpected happens. He bumps noses with me.

I think he's trying to make sure I'm okay.

He stays kneeling by my side as the dizziness goes away. A few minutes later the dizziness is gone and I stand up.

He copies me and that's when I realize just how big he is. In the real world he definitely would be a world record sized buck just for his body size. I would love to see just how big he is during the rut. He'd be massive!

He grunts at me, telling me to follow him. He walks at a slow pace, one that's very easy for me to keep up with.

As I figure out, he's taking me back to the bs patch. He even leads me right back to the exact spot I was when I first saw him.

I watch as he turns his head to give me a nod before walking off. This must be his way of goodbye.

I can't help but laugh once he's gone. I just played tag with the buck of my dreams.