Re: Chapter #4: A Massive Boar
Kellan came trudging back with his pack slung over his shoulder, animated and full of energy after the excitement of the hunt. Dropping the pack he took a long draw from his water skin and offered it around before capping it and setting it to the side. Smiling at Liseth he nodded to her sentiments. "I said much the same thing once, believe it or not, when I was very young..." He began
Taking out the meat hook he strung the bit of rope through the eyelet and tossed the coil over a stout tree branch to hang it. "We were slaughtering hogs for the winter, getting ready to salt them and selling the choice bits, it was just maybe the second or third time my mother allowed me to be out there while the men worked." He tied the knot good and firm. "My brother and sister and I were lined up along the pens watching as they drug the hogs into the barn kicking and squealing...and as we were not helping per say, we got a little bored and started tossing pebbles at the pigs to see them run around...it get's a little slow, working a farm you see" he grinned a in nostalgia.
"Well..." He let the hook dangle then stooped for an oily cloth wrapped around a bunch of simple, sharp iron knives, short curved things with twisted wrought handles and notched blades "We were tossing these rocks when I turn around to see the back of my Grandfathers hand, and he knocks me to the ground so hard my teeth rattled. He snatches up the three of us by the collar and real quite like...he tells us a story"
"Was a time" he said "A Taldan King was in the habit of feasting every day, he would wake up to the finest banquets and fill his belly before he slept, and never once did he consider where those meals were coming from. Well the wars got bad and the servants got scarce and one day he finds himself alone in his Castle and hungry as a bear in autumn, so with an empty larder, he goes hunting."
Kellan stripped down his shirt and shoes as he spoke, hanging them on branches in his bare feet with the little motes of forest dust clinging to his sweaty form "So he walks out into the woods and he finds a doe nibbling on some grass, and he commands the doe "You there, animal, come here so that I may eat you!" Kellan used his best pompous king voice "and the deer, being a deer, bounds off into the woods"
The next day he goes out and he finds a stag surveying his domain and he yells at the stag, being very hungry now "Stag! Come down here so that I may eat you!" And the stag of course runs away..."
Kellan stooped, and with the help of the others he lifts the boars limp form up onto the hook where it continues to trail dark crimson blood, getting himself covered in the stuff as he worked, he continues to tell the story as he begins to skin the creature, running the sharp blade just under the hide
"Well by this time the King was very weak from hunger, and stumbling home confused he sees a campfire tended by and old peasant man, and collapsing near the fire he voices his dilemma to his new host "Why will these simple creatures not obey their superiors? He lamented, "We are smarter, wiser and superior to them, why will they not submit to their natural role and lie down to die" the old man chuckled, but said nothing,
"The third day the King goes out, weak now from starvation, unshaven and his royal robes in tatters and he is wandering through the wood when suddenly he hears this great whooshing over head, and this great scaled Wrym crashes down amidst the forest, the trees shattering and bending beneath his weight and he eyes the King, who proceeds to run as fast as he can in the other direction"
Kellan spilled the gut pile beneath the hook, helping out the coils of intestine and ofal with his bloodied hands "And the dragon calls out to the King "Why do you run little lordling? You should submit to me, I am smarter, wiser and superior ito you in every way, it is the natural order of things"
"Well the King gets eaten" Kellan laughed and wiped the blade on a rag "and my Grandfather explains to me that just because we eat them, does not mean that we do not treat them with respect. He made me help with every hog that day...and I could not eat meat again for what felt like some time, but I do think I learned something...about our place in this world."
He smiled to Liseth as he finished up, quartering the hog into manageable chunks and plopping the huge tusked head into a burlap sack.