“Woohoo!” Cale yelled as he observed his kill with pride. He clapped his hands in celebration only to find that his hands were so wet that the clapping was causing droplets to hit his face. Confused, he looked at his body to find himself drenched in sweat from the exertion of using his script. He realized that he was a lot more wearied than he had expected, this one use had worn him out as much as an entire afternoon of using it in smaller doses.

  He felt a hand touch his shoulder and looked to his father who had a giant smile plastered across his face.

  “Well done son, now go check out your kill while I scout the area quick. There might be more of those around and I don’t want to be surprised.” In a flash, and before Cale could respond, Phil was gone from his sight.

  Cale’s eyes widened at the thought as he noticed the urgency in his father's voice. He immediately was on high alert and eyed the surrounding area as he looked for potential threats. He tried to determine where his dad had gone but there wasn’t a single footstep or sound to be found. Cale had no idea his father could move like that and he found it very impressive.

  He slowly crept up to the dead boar as he kept his steps quiet and his head on a swivel. He thought about trying to prep a script but doing so while moving wasn’t working so he focused on staying alert instead. When he got to the boar without fuss, he relaxed a little. He trusted his dad to be back soon and after seeing how fast his dad was, there was little worry that he wouldn’t be able to protect him.

  Walking in circles around the dead boar, he observed his kill and saw the blood pooling between the body parts. Watching the blood slowly drain out of it hit him on an emotional level he had not expected. He had never been a hunter and had only fished a few times. Any “killing” he had done had been through video games, which was drastically different than what he was looking at here.

  He thought of the boar's lasts moments, the fact that it had no idea its life was at its end. When it woke up this morning, it had no idea it would be its last. The idea made him sad, and it reminded him of the stories from Earth about how the ancestors of the world would thank the animals after a kill and say a small prayer. So that is what he did. He knelt down next to the boar's head, closed its eyes with his hands, and started saying a prayer of gratitude.

  “I thank you for the life you have given us,” he started out. “I honor your sacrifice and will not waste the gift of your body. May your soul return to the great cycle in peace.”

  Cale bowed his head and closed his eyes for a moment of silence. When he looked up again, he saw his father standing directly before him. Cale hadn’t heard a thing. How does he do that? He thought.

  “What was that, Xavier?” his dad asked him with his head tilted.

  “Just a thank you to the animal. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

  His dad nodded his head in understanding and pulled Xavier in for a hug. “You did well, son, I am proud of you.”

  Those words hit Cale right in his heart and a small tear came to his eye. Emotions he hadn’t felt in a while and memories of his Earth father came rushing to the surface. He tried to suppress them since they were still out in the middle of the woods and he was supposed to be training, but this moment was too much for him. Emotionally he needed to vent a little, so he lightly cried while his father held him.

  After a minute, or possible three, his emotions were finally calmed, his dad's strong arms holding him close had put him at ease. He dried is eyes and pulled away from his dad to look at the boar that lay next to them, “So now what?”

  “Now we drain the blood, and since I can’t cut it open, we will have to find something else to eat.”

  “What do you mean we can’t cut this open? Why did you have me kill it then?” The accusation in his tone evident. His annoyance was reinforced by the guilty face his dad was trying to hide.

  “I wanted to test you.” Phil said back to him, pausing as he conveniently found something interesting to look at in the leaves above them, miraculously avoiding the glare coming from his boy.

  “What does that even mean?!” Cale asked as anger hinted at the edges of his words and his hands tightened into fists.

  “I wanted to see how you handled a situation like this when it is a living creature.” His father turned his eyes back down to Cale, his face grim. “Your new script is strong and I… I wanted to see,” his dad paused as he leaned forward, staring directly into Cale’s eyes. “I wanted to see how you would handle a kill.”

  Cale wasn’t sure what to think about his dad's response, but his body did. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise and goosebumps rolled around his body. For a moment he swore that he felt a heavy pressure coming from his father. It lasted for only a moment, but it made his body shiver. Cale didn’t think his dad would hurt him, but something about his tone made his body very wary, and he looked at his dad with newfound respect in his eyes. His dad was sending him a very clear message that his behavior was being watched, and more importantly, weighed.

  The intense moment was ruined by his stomach, which was not on the same page, as the rest of his body as it started to make noise outside of his control.

  Grrrrrruuuummmm... Grrrrrrgllll...

  His dad immediately started laughing, breaking the tension in the air. “I see that my boy is hungry, let's hurry this along and get you something to eat. I will go find us something a little less sturdy than this fellow right here.” He said, tapping his foot against the boar's body.

  “Are you sure we can’t eat this thing? Let me see your knife,” Cale said holding out a hand to his dad. He was annoyed that he had gotten a little scared at what his dad had said to him and wanted to move past it. He didn’t think his dad would cause him any harm; it felt more like a threat. Plus, it wasn’t like he was strong enough or fast enough to defend himself even if he wanted to.

  “No.” His dad said without hesitation, “You don’t have the strength, but I see the look in your eyes, and I know what you want to test. So, I will show you.”

  Cale watched his dad take his knife and put the tip against the boar's hide. His eyes widened in amazement as his dad tried to cut and stab the hide with no luck. He could see the hide bend under the pressure to the point where he saw his dad sweating, trying to cut it, but the blade never broke through and the hide remained strong.

  “Huh,” Cale said out loud as he watched. He knew his script was strong, but this was really putting things into perspective for him. He looked at the hole in the shape of his script, a simple little slit in the ground. He noticed that most of the blood that had drained was going into the hole and he realized he didn’t tell his script when to stop. His mind had been on the slicing, and he hadn’t even considered the fact that his script would pierce the ground. Out of curiosity he started looking for a long thin stick to see if he could poke it in the hole and see how far down it went.

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  “What are you doing?” Phil asked him.

  “I want to know how far down my script went. I need to understand my power a little better and how this works.”

  His father perked up at the idea and soon the both of them started searching for something to poke in the slit and it didn’t take them long to find a nice long stick that was about as tall as his dad was and thin enough to fit. They pushed it into the hole but there was no resistance even when it was almost all the way in.

  “Woh,” he heard his dad say. “Xavier this is deep. This is a nice reminder to be careful of how you use your script.”

  Cale nodded his head in agreement. If he wasn’t careful, he could easily cause as much harm as good. This didn’t stop him of thinking of its uses; he would make a great lumberjack or even a carpenter. His young brain immediately imagined himself building a house from scratch, using wood that he cut with his script. But then an idea popped into his head. If my script is so sharp that I can kill this thing with one stroke, why can’t I also use it to cut the hide?

  He looked down at the boar and then at his hands, he could already envision what he wanted to do. He imagined a tiny, thin blade protruding from his pointer finger, his hand would rest on the hide, keeping it steady and smooth as he cut. The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. After all he had already used his script to cut potatoes, why not a boar?

  He went to the boar's head and crouched next to it as he thought about it more in depth. What even was his script? As long as it involved cutting, his script had a plethora of options, but why was his script called a wind script? Wind didn’t cut; wind was just moving air... Thats it! He realized, his script was just a cutting script, only the tip of it must oscillate or move! That’s why it has the word wind in the name and probably why it had no problems cutting the boar’s head off.

  With that simple thought his will and intent snapped into place. He imagined a tiny blade a lot like a box cutter coming out of his finger, and with no hesitation, he activated his script. He waited the excruciatingly long seconds before his script snapped into place just like he had imagined. He brought it close to his face and scrutinized his own blade. It had what looked to be like tiny wispy pieces of fog emanating from it where it met his finger, but the rest appeared solid. If his theory was correct, the wind script, without any extra juice or power, should be enough to cut through the boar’s hide. And if it didn’t, then he would try something bigger.

  He heard his dad start to say something and remembered that they were on a schedule. He quickly thought about his will and intent, and when he felt them solidify in his mind, he moved without hesitation and with a single precise motion, he ran his finger with the script along the top of the boar's head and could feel his heart start pounding with excitement as the hide cut like warm butter before him.

  He felt zero resistance as he sliced the boar’s hide on its disconnected skull. He moved his script, and his finger from behind the ears, over its forehead, and down to the snout with the same ease as if he was cutting wrapping paper. Cale deactivated his script before he cut anything by accident and looked at his own hand with amazement. His script was so sharp! Before he had a chance to check out his work, the smell hit him like a hammer to the face.

  “BLARGH!” Cale promptly threw up as the sickening smell overpowered his nostrils. He covered his nose with his shirt while he heard his father break into raucous laughter as he swiftly kicked the head a long way into the forest.

  “We… won’t be keeping that part,” Phil said laughing, “Let's have nature keep that part of the bounty.”

  Cale continued to gag at the smell as he heard the laughter of his father.

  “Does that not smell to you?” Cale asked with wheezing breaths, trying to keep himself from throwing up again.

  “Yes, it does, but the last time I killed one I didn’t have a fancy script like yours and I had to deal with that smell all the way back to the base.”

  “Oh, was that why mom had you take that weird bath with soup that one day?” Cale asked, realization dawning on him.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” Phil said as the smile left his face.

  “Dad, does the whole animal smell that bad if we cut it?”

  “No, that is just what the brain smells like. The rest of it is fine.” Phil told him assuredly.

  It took a few minutes for Cale’s stomach to finally settle down enough to where he could focus again. While he and his stomach battled, his dad went about hanging the boar by its hind legs up between two trees.

  “Xavier,” Phil said with a giant smile plastered on his face as Cale approached the hanging boar. “Since you have been so curious all morning and are the only one able to cut this hide. I think it is time you learned how to field dress an animal.”

  With a small groan, Cale pushed back his sleeves and helped his dad do what needed to be done. A few hours later they had field dressed the boar, hauled it the last few minutes to their base camp, and then made lunch so that they could continue their training.

  Elsewhere in the forest

  He was having a wonderful dream, before him were all the most delicious creatures in the forest and he, the big bad predator, was there to FEAST! As he preyed on the poor creatures, he noticed that some of them seemed to disappear right as he was about to sink his claws into them. Dismayed about his disappearing prey, he found that the dream he was in was starting to fade. Before his conscience could fully comprehend what was happening, he found himself awake and on his feet. His nose high up into the air as if his body was being controlled like a puppet.

  What was this divine smell! Whatever it was, he had not smelt it before, and it had ripped him out of his dream and directly to his feet! He had to taste it! He walked a few feet out of the crook of the giant tree he was in and slowly stretched on the giant branch. Based on how bright it was outside he and his family had only been asleep a few hours. They typically hunted at night, which meant that the daytime was for sleeping. He quickly stretched and moved his eyes branches above him to see if his siblings had become aware of the tantalizing smell. Fortunately for him, they were all much higher up in the tree and the smell only seemed to have reached him so far from his perfect spot on the lowest branch.

  Moving quietly, so as not to have to share whatever it was that smelled so good, he moved down the tree, his sharp claws easily digging into the wood as he slid down the tree like the graceful panther he was. Once he was on the ground, he noticed the smell was a lot stronger and he became worried that he wouldn’t be the first one there! He took off in the direction of the source as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to wake up his siblings nor give away his position to any other beasts who might be heading toward the smell.

  After a few minutes he finally found the source at the base of a tree. It was the head of a large boar that he had seen throughout these woods. He had no idea that it smelled this delicious; they had never killed one and his mother always said to stay away, that they were tougher than they looked.

  As curious as cats are, he sniffed the boar’s head and licked some of the fluid leaking out of it. DELICIOUS! He soon found that he couldn’t help himself and was rolling around in the smell like a cub on his first day outside the den. He unfolded his hidden wings that were wrapped down around his ribs and made sure to get the smell in every nook and cranny. He couldn’t help it, and his siblings would be so jealous when they got near him. Once he was satisfied that he smelled absolutely divine, he couldn’t help but start gnawing on the head. He was very surprised that neither his teeth nor his claws could pierce the hide!

  Rustle, rustle, CRACK. His head spun as something bigger started heading his way, more than likely attracted to the smell. Not wanting to lose his prize, he grabbed the ear of the boar head and sprinted up one of the tallest trees it could find nearby. Once at the top of the tree, he ran along one of the branches. Gaining speed quickly, he sprinted to the end of the branch and JUMPED! He threw himself out over the smaller trees and bushes, his wings springing free seamlessly and well-practiced.

  He used his feathery tail to help steer as he glided toward the big tree his family was sleeping in; the place he called home and away from whatever else was coming to investigate that smell. Once he reached his tree, he quickly brought his prize into his sleeping hole at the base of the branch and snuggled close to the deliciously smelling head. Soon he was fast asleep with a cute purr as he once again started to dream of delicious and helpless prey.