Chapter Forty-Nine: Animal Empathy (Patreon)

The next day I continue with digging my pit. After fetching water, of course. Kalanthia disappears into the forest as soon as I get back, leaving Lathani playing by my feet. I tempt her over to my work area with a bit of nicely roasted meat and then she’s happy to mess around in the dirt for a while. I watch with a bit of amusement as she studiously avoids any bug that looks even remotely like the one that bit her yesterday. Though, like a typical cat, she pretends that she’s not avoiding the bugs out of fear; she’s just not deigning to pay them any attention.

Of course, she gets bored with that after a while and goes searching for something else to do. I keep half an eye on her as she tussles with the grass, pounces out of bushes, and wrestles with sticks. I’m less amused when she knocks over my carefully stacked pile of firewood, but the startled expression she gives when the sticks start falling down around her ears is cute enough that I can’t bear to scold her.

Plus, she’s actually got herself trapped within a ‘cage’ of dead branches and is looking forlornly at me, plaintive chirps asking for help. Unable to prevent a smile at her adorableness, I put my digging stick down and walk over to free her.

“Next time, don’t mess around with my wood pile and then you won’t have this issue,” I tell her as indulgently as any uncle. She rubs herself up against me briefly and then wanders off.

She continues having some good, relatively safe fun for a while, but then she spots her next target. I hear a hiss and look up to see her facing off with Spike. The nunda cub, judging by her body language, is playful and curious. The porcupig, on the other hand, is a lot more defensive, and I judge him only a short while away from turning around and presenting his namesake spikes to Lathani’s face. Given that I doubt Kalanthia would be happy to come back to a hedgehog-nunda crossbreed lookalike, I decide to intervene.

“Spike,” I call and both animals look over at me. “Don’t attack Lathani,” I order him, impressing my intentions into the simultaneous mental order. His spikes immediately flatten and his body language drops its defensiveness, but I get the sense that he’s not happy about this. At the same time… “Lathani,” I then say, “play gently with Spike, OK, and if he doesn’t want to play, leave him be.”

That may be more complex than she can deal with, but I’ve really had the sense over the last few days that she understands significantly more than I’d thought – she just chooses not to do what I say unless there’s a benefit in it for her. Speaking of… “If you play nicely together, I’ll give you some more yummy meat, OK?”

At the mention of ‘yummy meat’, the term I’ve been using with my roasted chunks, she perks up and shifts the way she looks at Spike. I’m not sure how to identify her body language, but it’s like...like she’s acknowledged what I said and is agreeing to follow? How I get that, I don’t know. Maybe more of that mind-to-mind stuff again? At the sense of something waiting for me, I check my messages, shifting so I can still see the two creatures out of the corner of my eye.

I click through to the Skill description, feeling like I have an idea of what it might be. Sure enough…

Given what I’ve learned about Wisdom recently, I suppose it’s little surprise that this is the key controlling factor of understanding something outside myself. As for Constitution...if it’s supposed to improve the functioning of my senses, being able to smell pheromones once I get more stat points in it also makes sense.

I close the screen with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s a useful Skill to have – being able to interpret the body language of animals around me might lead to better success with hunts and Taming. On the other hand, it seems more descriptive than active: unlike Fade which actively reduces my visibility, Animal Empathy just seems to describe what I’d still be able to do even if I didn’t have the Skill… Then again, maybe it will develop into something more active later. Ah well, it’s not like it’s a negative to have the Skill and it doesn’t seem to cost me anything.

Lathani is playing with Spike. After the tense face-off, they seem to have relaxed a little bit. The nunda cub is keeping her claws and teeth to herself, mostly, anyway, and so is Spike with his quills. He even seems to be enjoying it now, despite his reluctance to begin with.They romp around a bit, rolling in play fights and then breaking away to play hide and seek before Lathani pounces on Spike and it all starts again. At least they’re having fun, I think to myself with a smile. Plus, it lets me get on with my pit-digging even while I ‘baby-sit’.

Of course, nothing lasts forever, and Lathani eventually gets bored with playing with Spike and comes over to me to beg for scraps of meat. I put a few bits on the ground for her to munch and she starts chewing with gusto. After she finishes the last chunks, however, she just goes to a sunny spot and curls up: apparently Spike exhausted her.

I take advantage of her sleeping to go check on my fire and the progress of my drying clay pottery. It’s coming on nicely and the fact that the drying pots are in a warm environment, but not directly in the sun, means that they’re drying quicker than I thought. I guess I need to go for firewood tomorrow, I mentally note. It will still take another few days I reckon for the pots to dry enough to not be at high risk of exploding in my ‘kiln’, but the wood I collect may need to dry a little too, so just as well to collect it a bit ahead. Not that it’s rained since being here, but there is that mist that rolls through most mornings.

Using my time in the shade wisely, I munch a little meat for lunch and sip some of my soup. I’ve added a little of my precious salt so there’s a bit more taste to the food. Small pleasures... I’ve justified it with the fact that I sweat buckets when digging – I need to replace what I’ve lost. I don’t stay inside for too long, even though I’m enjoying being out of the sun: I’ve got a baby nunda to keep an eye on and I want to make as much progress on my pit as I can while she’s still asleep.

By the time the little bundle of fur wakes up, I’ve been able to make a fair bit of progress, pausing at one point to cast a healing spell on myself when the blisters started to get too painful. The rest of the time until Kalanthia gets back is then spent playing with Lathani, Spike being too tuckered out from her rambunctiousness this morning.

Greetings, Markus Wolfe, Kalanthia’s mental ‘voice’ purrs making me almost jump out of my skin at its suddenness. Has all gone well this day? She’s climbed the hill and is moving over to nuzzle her cub.

“Yeah,” I say once I’ve been able to catch my breath after the shock – I’m so much easier to scare than I used to be; not surprising, I guess. “Lathani and Spike enjoyed playing this morning, then she had a nap and then we played for a bit,” I tell her. “She was good,” I added uncertainly, not sure if my version of ‘good’ matches Kalanthia’s – what do I know about being a leopard mother? The massive predator purrs and rubs her chin over Lathani’s head.

That is well. My thanks, Markus Wolfe. You are free to go now. Thankful for the dismissal, I mock-salute and then go back to my digging. I’m making good inroads, but still have a lot further to go.

By the evening, I reach a point at which I’m happy to call it a day. Good thing too – I’m exhausted. I’ve also earned another two points in Strength, one each in Power and Endurance. It’s nice, though I’m pretty sure that my speed in increasing Strength will slow down a bit from now on – the System stone I absorbed indicates that after ten points in any stat it takes more Energy to increase it, so it makes sense that I have to do more work to even trigger the increase.

Still, reaching ten points is no mean feat considering everything I’ve gone through, and that puts me at the top of an average Earth human’s capabilities, if my interpretation of the stone’s memories is accurate. I didn’t get an increase in Constitution today, but I suppose I can’t have everything. With the Intelligence point I earned last night thanks to going through all those memories, I’ve been making some good progress recently. I’m planning on doing some more of that mental link-making tonight – I still have enough Energy in the tank to increase my Intelligence again, if whatever progress I make is enough to earn another point.

After that, though, I’ll be all out of my Energy store and I only absorb enough Energy per day to increase a single stat. Unless I kill some creatures, of course. The fact that I’m going to venture out into the forest tomorrow in search of lots of firewood makes that scenario rather more likely than not.

Even though the sun isn’t yet touching the horizon, I’m too tired to keep going with my pit, so I decide to eat my supper in the last light of the day. Chilling for a bit, I let my mind wander for a while before once more starting the task of drawing links between my memories. This time, I decide to work on clarifying exactly what I need to do for my upcoming crafts, linking it to my knowledge from Earth as much as possible.

It’s surprisingly interesting when I get into it. Some of my half-forgotten memories of Chemistry at school come to the fore as I think about why soap made of ashes and animal fat works, considering that those are the substances we generally have to wash off. I think it’s my increased Intelligence that allows me to remember words like ‘hydrophilic’ and ‘hydrophobic’ and that the alkali from the potash in ashes is the former, while the fatty acid chains from the fat are the latter. It’s ironic that two messy substances allow water to actually wash off oils and germs, but that’s what happens.

By the time I go to bed, I’ve earned my Intelligence point, but only just. One more point to go and then that one will be ten too! It’s on that wave of satisfaction that I drift off to sleep.