Tegwaret Thief-taker (tegthetracker) wrote in thetruegame, @ 2011-02-23 00:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | leland silverhands, tegwaret thief-taker |
Outdoor Life Stinks
Who: Tegwaret and Leland
What: Visiting and Touching Base
Where: Tegwaret's Hideout and the Environs West of Sapphire City
When: Late Morning
Rating: PG for now.
When living in a natural environment, one must be prepared to deal with the fickle finger of scent. So quickly can it start and brood, like a pile of spoor left to rot and decompose in the middle of a field. Stand downwind and you'll be able to handle it. But excrement pales in comparison to the odor of dying flesh. It permeates and lingers. Avoid it at all costs, lest that you too be tainted with the smell of death.
Those words, once a paper-thin lesson that could easily fly in one ear and out the other, now echoed to life in Tegwaret's mind as he stared at the inside of his make-shift hut. Like the necklace of some dire creature that lived off the flesh of others, the inside of Tegwaret's tree was garlanded with a string of dead foxes. Seven to be exact, as it had been a long day yesterday.
After a constant watch throughout the forest, miles covered from one crouching spot to one tree branch, Tegwaret had ended his previous day with a full catch and returned home exhausted. He had initially wanted to make a few kills and then return the corpses to the furrier's before sunset. That was, however, before he hit the motherlode. It was dark before he returned to his hut; much too late to enter the town. Had he had a proper house, he would have had a fortified shack outside to temporarily keep his spoils. However, in his current situation, to do so would be to lose every bit of the hunt to random night-feeders and animal thieves in the wilderness. Of course, the scent of dying animals would draw predators to his place, but that he could put up with. The next morning, he would take the foxes in, bright and early, and collect the first payment towards his new abode.
But, upon waking in the morning, the spoils had spoiled his nest. Like a glass container, the well-knit branches and walls of leaves, perhaps sealed with the dew of night or morning, had trapped the scent. Now, it was everywhere.
As Tegwaret quickly pushed his way out of the hut, he fell to the ground. His first morning's draught of air had been plugged with the fumes of decaying flesh. As he vomited out all that he had eaten the night before, the fresh air of the forest almost knocked him unconscious.