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At least the mini-rexes were good for Energy gain, I conclude after eating their hastily-cooked hearts. That, frankly, is the only thing good about the situation. All told, I’m a single percentage point away from being able to level up and I’ll gain that in an hour or so of absorption.
It’s hard to feel excited, though. Not when the gain has been preceded by death. It’s strange. I’ve known Spike for less than a month. Of that time, most of it has been spent apart since either he’s been out foraging or I’ve been out hunting for animals or resources. We’ve only been out to the forest together three or four times since I Dominated him. How can I feel so sad at his death?
But the first time we went out together, he saved my life. And if I hadn’t Dominated him, maybe he’d still be alive now. Or maybe he wouldn’t have been – life in this valley is dangerous. My urgent tasks of tidying up the area by shoving the corpses, including that of the crocodile, into my Inventory are now completed. Now time to actually work through what happened. I sigh and move over to the porcupig’s corpse, setting down by his head.
His eyes are glassy, dead. His fur is stiff, blood around his mouth. At least he managed to make a mark on his attackers, and I finished the job for him. I can’t help but wonder why it suddenly happened now when I’d just decided to take him with me more for fights, that I wanted to help him get stronger. Does Murphy actually exist in this world of magic and Energy? And if he does, is he the reason for why that pack of mini-rexes found Spike today?
I scrub at my face roughly. I can’t blame Murphy: it’s my fault he died. We were out together; I should have been able to protect him. I’d been less than twenty seconds desperate sprint from where he’d been, but sound doesn’t always travel well in this dense forest; I guess they’d been in the fight for longer than that. I probably only sensed the danger when the fight turned deadly. Like how Bastet sensed me being in danger when my arm was broken in the fight with the crocodile.
But I should have been right beside him, not a sprint away. It was me who told him to go eat because I wanted to play with my arrows. For all I know, it’s my fault the mini-rexes were in the area in the first place! I do seem to attract danger. My reasoning for not taking him with me previously now seems rather thin. I thought I was protecting him by not pulling him into the frequent combat I seem to attract, but he’s dead anyway. It’s a dangerous forest, and maybe if I’d taken him with me more often, he’d have developed more skills in fighting. The guilt and self-recrimination inside me is far too familiar, and once more threatens to drown me.
No, I can’t go down that path again. After my mother was killed, I tumbled into the pit of self-loathing caused by blaming myself for her death. I clawed my way out of that dark hole only to be pushed back in by my father’s illness and subsequent death. Even though the doctors had scientific names for the cause of his demise, I know the reality – he died when my mother did; it just took his body years to catch up. The illness that brought his end was really only the coup de grâce to a zombie.
Blaming myself for their deaths has never led anywhere good. With my mother, it led to a difficult relationship with my father, difficulties at school and in connecting with others. Ultimately, it led to an inability to emotionally commit which lost me the only girl I’ve ever loved romantically. Blaming myself for my father’s death led me to the roof of my apartment and, one could say, to this world to begin with. Maybe I need to take another approach this time.
My therapist used to say that I should accept and acknowledge my feelings, but not allow them to consume me. She suggested that I carefully consider what actually happened and, if I truly found some way in which I could have affected the outcome, to consider how to do something positive in the present to acknowledge that. To make a positive action which would attempt to avoid the issue happening again, rather than becoming sucked down into a cycle of could’ve, would’ve, should’ve.
She also encouraged me to take time to mourn. Pushing myself to my feet, I know how to do that: I’ve always been better at working through my feelings when doing something. It’s the reason I started going to the gym in the first place: to be able to deal with the anger and grief still fermenting inside me.
I search around the small clearing which is now empty of bodies apart from Spike’s, the only evidence of our battle the disturbed leaf litter and blood-soaked ground. Finally finding what I’m looking for, I start using the sturdy stick to dig at the centre of the space between trees. Yes, I know that probably the most efficient way of dealing with Spike’s body is to save it as raptorcat food, or even eat it myself, but...I can’t face that. I want to give him a burial.
Plus, the time that I spend digging the hole is time that I can spend on working through my feelings, perhaps once more coming to terms with the loss of someone else around me.
Because that’s what it boils down to. I’m tired of losing people. My mother, my father, my girlfriend, now Spike… Who’s next? Bastet? Kalanthia? Lathani? One of the cubs? But how do I stop it happening? I couldn’t do anything about my mother’s car accident, though I’ve always blamed myself for being the reason she was driving. I don’t know what I could have done to help my father – the wounds were just too deep.
As for my girlfriend...yeah, I was at fault there. I put my work first and ignored the signs that she wanted to take our relationship further. Looking back, it was my fear of losing the ones I love that stopped me from committing: how ironic is it that the the fear became self-fulfilling?
Spike… Maybe I shouldn’t have Dominated him in the first place. It’s a pretty awesome Skill, but I’m coming to understand more and more that it’s not one I should use without careful thought. If I Dominate a creature, I become responsible for it. I didn’t act very responsibly with Spike, and he died as a result.
He died because he was a vulnerable prey animal in a cutthroat environment. If I had been at his side, he may not have died. Note, I say may not because I’m not sure that I would have been able to protect him when it was so hard to even protect myself, but his chances of survival could have been significantly higher than they ended up being. And why was I not there? Because I was too busy playing with archery.
Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that I Dominated him without really thinking of the consequences. Like a person who wants a dog, but doesn’t do his research and gets a breed which needs constant companionship when he’s barely at home, I just went out and Dominated the first creature I came across. I didn’t think about whether his needs matched mine; whether a life of killing was one he would appreciate.
He needed to forage because I couldn’t supply his nutritional needs. I couldn’t be with him every time he needed to forage, I recognise that. Equally, I couldn’t spend hours of each day searching out food for him so he didn’t have to leave the safety of home. I was the pet owner who got a pet despite not being able to afford to feed one. It was doomed from the start.
So, Mrs Therapist, my positive action? To put a lot of thought into whether I should Dominate a creature based on the life I can offer it afterwards. Given its potential drawbacks, the Skill is unlikely to be something I use in a battle without having thought about it beforehand, so I should have no excuse for irresponsible decisions.
The whole thing makes me question whether I was right to Dominate Bastet. After weighing up the arguments either side, I conclude that it’s a different context. Not only was Bastet dying before I offered her the Bond, but that’s the point: I offered it to her. Because she’d been willing to die rather than be bound, it meant that when she accept the Bond, she genuinely did so because she thought it was the best option for her pack.
That’s another point – the raptorcats are used to hierarchy, used to a pack structure. Bastet and I have a very different relationship than I had with Spike, and I think the fact that she came from a context which was already socially complex is a big part of it. As far as I’ve been able to gather, porcupigs stick together as a family until the babies are adults, and then they all go their separate ways. Certainly, Spike’s capacity to communicate was significantly less than Bastet’s.
Plus, of course, I’ve been hunting together with Bastet as well as providing her and the cubs meat from my own solitary hunts. Bastet, despite being a lot more equipped to survive other predators, has actually been exposed to a lot less risk than the more vulnerable porcupig.
It’s a hard pill to swallow, the knowledge that my neglect and thoughtless actions and inactions are what led to this moment, but it’s a lesson that I need to learn. If I learn it now and never commit the same mistakes in the future, then perhaps I’ll be able to forgive myself one day.
For now, I simply dig, and take out my self-anger and sadness out on the soil.
*****
When I’m done digging a hole about a metre down and just big enough round for the porcupig, I trudge over to him again wearily.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him quietly, my throat hoarse from thirst. I haven’t drunk anything since starting my task – a type of self-harm which probably isn’t all that healthy, but has to be better than other things I can think of doing to myself. Lifting him, I carry his stiff body towards his grave. About to lower him in, I pause for a moment of thought, then pull out a few of his quills. Pulling out some of my bark-fibre cord, I make a quick necklace, pushing the points of the quills through the twist. Slinging it around my neck, I tuck it under my shirt, the fibre rough against my skin. It will be a good reminder, if nothing else.
When he’s lying at the bottom of the hole, I pause again. Words don’t really want to come. I feel like I should say a little prayer, give a eulogy, something. It’s not the first funeral I’ve been to, after all. I should know how to do this. But in the end, I just say two things.
“I’m sorry it ended like this,” and “I promise I’ll do better next time.” With that, I start back-filling the hole. Handful by handful, clods of dirt land on his body and cover it. It’s not long before his quills aren’t even visible any more. The horn on his nose is the last thing to be hidden and as it vanishes under the earth, I feel a sense of letting go, maybe even peace. It almost feels like he’s forgiven me, but that’s probably just my own imagination.
By the time I’ve finished the grave and have pressed down on the soil at the top, I feel lethargic and all wrung out. Maybe that therapist had a point: it’s been cathartic to bury him with my own hands, my sweat a sacrifice to his memory. It may be dug up again later; there’s not much I can do about that. But for now, he’s buried and at peace.
It’s enough. It has to be.
And as I walk away, I pause next to one of the trees which have been silent witnesses to the events of this day, and look back. The grave is half-hidden by the leaf-litter already blown by the breeze. It’s calm, final. Blood has been shed here: Spike’s blood in death, my blood in apology, and Spike’s killers’ blood in vengeance. Sweat too. Tears as well, I will not deny.
I didn’t know Spike for very long, but his death means something to me. Maybe more as a symbol than for him himself. Perhaps that’s another wrong I do him. But as I turn away and walk back home, I feel tired, exhausted even, but lighter. Like I’ve been carrying a burden for years, perhaps as far back as my mother’s death and finally I’ve been able to put down just a small piece of it.
