POV Kira:
For the next few weeks I regularly took Eliza into the forest. She eagerly absorbed all the impressions the forest had to offer. Which plants grew here and where exactly? Which of these were edible? Which of these have medicinal properties such as hemostatic or antipyretic? And above all, which of them are poisonous? Luckily there are only a few poisonous plants in this forest. Things were different with poisonous animals. There were a few of them in this forest. They had a slight poison, although fortunately they lived only in certain areas. There were some ponds in part of the forest. Frogs lived in them and caused redness and itchy spots when they touched the skin. Then there was an area with forest spiders. They came in two different types. One of them spread spider webs, while the other's bites were mild poisoned. There were also two species of snakes that were slightly poisonous. Eliza was a docile student, but one thing worried me. She seemed to be unlucky. She managed to get bitten by something poisonous once a week. It was her luck that she always recovered quickly. She was really tough. But she also learned from that. She is rarely bitten by the same animal twice. Her senses were well developed. But then an incident happened that I hadn't expected and that was largely my fault.
POV Eliza
The last few weeks have been very eventful. After I felt like I had been bitten and poisoned by every animal that lived in the forest, at least my senses developed well. Meanwhile, I helped Kira set up traps and hunt game. While doing that we moved further and further away from the camp. One day in the summer, we were examining the traps we had set up to hunt small animals when I felt something big approaching us. The feeling was strange to describe as I had difficulty locating the exact direction. Whatever was causing the feeling, it was moving towards us in serpentine lines. Kira gave me a hand signal to stay back and approached the creature carefully. She had felt it too. It moved in an arc toward the target and quickly disappeared into the undergrowth. I quickly couldn't feel her presence anymore. After a few minutes she comes back.
“There is an injured wolf in front of us. Did you feel his presence?”
I nodded. Did she intercepted the wolf?
“Then your senses recognize him as a threat. He's weak, but still dangerous to you. You now have an opportunity to fight your first battle. In my opinion, he is weak enough for you to defeat him. He hasn't noticed us yet. How would you go about it?”
My first real fight? I was excited but also nervous. His injury couldn't make me too confident. I had to carefully consider what advantages I had. I had often thought about how I would approach a fight. I was well aware that I was too weak for a direct confrontation, so I had to resort to stealth and trickery. From what I'd learned, wolves liked to charge straight at you to bite. It's best to attack him from a distance first and then use my spear to let him run up. I then shared this plan with Kira.
“I'll sneak up to a distance where I can throw my throwing knives at him. If he notices me and rushes towards me, I will raise a spear and let him impale himself on it. I hope that's enough to defeat him."
"Sounds good. I will wait near you and come to your aid before you are in greater danger. Let’s see how well your tactics work.”
Kira hands me her spear and takes her bow from her shoulder. With practiced movements she puts on the string and pulls an arrow from her quiver. Then she sneaks forward and I follow after a minute. I felt my heart beating louder with every step. I felt my blood pressure rise and tension increase. I was fully aware that every fight could be painful and that I always had to live with the risk of dying. However, I couldn't hide in the safety of a city and hope that I would be allowed to live unscathed. I was unwelcome in the Empire and the community always had to worry about being discovered and attacked. I stopped for a moment and took a deep breath to calm myself. Then I crept in the direction my new sense of danger showed me.
A few meters from my destination I lay down on the ground and crawled further. I carefully looked out from under the bush where I was lying. About 15 meters away I could see a gray wolf licking a bleeding spot on its left foreleg. There was a faint smell of blood in the air. I crawled back a few meters and rose carefully. Then I moved forward so that I could see the wolf again. I stuck the spear into the ground next to me and took a throwing knife in each hand. My blood was pounding in my head. I took another deep breath and took aim. With a quick movement I threw the first knife. It hit the wolf in the head, causing him to stand up abruptly. He raised his snout and sniffed the air. He seemed to notice me immediately and ran towards me. I threw the second knife, which hit but bounced off his fur without any effect. I raised the spear and instinctively backed away. The wolf jumped at me and opened its mouth, howling. I saw lots of long, sharp teeth and his foul breath. I felt my knees shaking and then giving way. A loud snap of the closing mouth could be heard. Luckily the mouth narrowly missed my head, but the spear found its target. It dug deep into the wolf's side. Unfortunately, the wolf landed on me with his full weight and I finally fell to the ground under him. The wolf howled and yelped in pain. On the other hand, the impact took my breath away and I could barely move under the wolf. The smell of blood grew stronger as the wolf was now bleeding from two large wounds. A lot of blood from the side wound landed on me. I notice how the smell of blood is numbing me. The wolf struggles to get off me and turn its mouth towards me again. I, on the other hand, try to stop him. I instinctively felt that if he got free and attacked again, he would tear me apart. But my hands were too weak to hold him and he slowly got away from me. Then a terrible pain shot through me in my left arm. My eyes got clouded. The pain almost knocked me out, but I somehow stayed awake. I knew if I passed out now, I would die. My panic was getting worse and I found myself reaching for something with my right hand. Maybe I could drive the wolf away with it. I hit the wolf wildly with it. Then a hard blow hit me on the head and I lost consciousness.