Let Me Tell You A Story

Fiction III

The Blazing Forest

The green leaves of the trees blocked the sunlight above the daughter and her father, who were standing in the forest. Their gazes were aimed at the animals in front of them. The beings had symmetrical antlers, except for one. The one standing out had, instead of three points, only one point which meant it was dangerous for the surrounding deer.

The father of the daughter had explained a similar situation beforehand in case they would encounter the current case. They both silently observed the group of deer. It was the daughter's first time shooting an actual living creature, and her father chose one of the best days and places to go out hunting.

Their spot was out of the wind so the deer couldn't smell them. The dark colours they wore prevented the deer from seeing them and the temperature outside was comfortable. Neither too hot nor too cold.

The father readied the gun with the lead bullets and handed it over to his daughter, who waited with anticipation. She grabbed the sniper rifle and pressed the buttstock into her shoulder just like they had practised many times before.

She glanced through the lens. The deer came into view, and she adjusted her stance to receive the recoil with the least amount of pain. She made some distance between the scope and her eye. If she held her eye to close to the scope, her eye could pop out of its socket. And that was not something she planned for.

Her finger twitched to pull the trigger, but there was another deer behind her target, so she waited. And waited. Until finally, the deer started to move. she aimed at the heart and lung area before pulling the trigger.

The bullet hit the target, and it went to the ground. The other deer ran away, leaving one of their kind behind.

The father rose to his feet. The daughter handed him the rifle before standing up herself. Together, they walked towards their dead prey.

They went along with the usual routine and wrapped up afterwards. The daughter stared off in the distance, but she was snapped out of a trance when her father called her over.

"Come on Oriana, it's time to go home!" Her father yelled from a path that led back to their car. The daughter, Oriana, spun around expecting to see her father's smiling face. Instead, her head collided with the hard bark of a tree. It felt as if her very own bullet bore right through her forehead, the leaden tip cutting into her skin.

She fell down on the muddy ground. Oriana could feel the broken sticks, which were probably trampled by other people, under her hand. She concentrated on the ground to see if her vision was alright. The bugs and leaves came into focus, and Oriana started to stand up.

Oriana looked around. 'Where did the path go,' she wondered. "Dad where are you!" The answer she got was the leaves ruffling and the faded sound of chirping birds. Oriana remained calm. Her dad wouldn't just leave. Maybe the hit she took was worse than she originally thought.

"Okay, it's alright. You're in a forest. It's not a first." Deep down Oriana knew it was definitely not alright. Far from even. But she couldn't just sit still and wait for someone to pop up. So she did something little her would be proud of.

She climbed a tree.

The first few branches were the hardest. Oriana tried to reach for the lowest branch, which was about three heads above her. The moment she tried to pull herself up on the same branch, it snapped.

She huffed a stray of hair out of her face and once again pulled herself off the ground. The flicked a bug off of her hand before giving it another try. She jumped but couldn't reach the lowest, not snapped, branch. There had to be another way to explore the place efficiently without straying too far from the spot she stood in.