After the short walk back to the cottage, the empty bucket that Shnack took to the river was now full of water, we went back and placed the clothes on a rustic washing line that was piece of string between a tree and the cottage, but was in the sun and seemed to do it's job, as I did that, Shnack went and put away the cooking utensils.
When she came back outside, I asked her "what do you have that you trade with the village, for my clothes as an example?"
"I guess you could say I'm a pretty proficient hunter, I'm good with a bow and arrow, some of the animals I hunt have enough fur for fur coats for the winter or the hides can be used for leather by the village, I also trade the meat if I have too much and it will go rotten before I can eat it all safely."
"So when do you normally start hunting?" I asked
"Funny you should ask, now is normally when I start hunting. You can join me if you want, but if you scare off all of the prey, I'll send you back to the cottage." She said the last bit with a cheeky tongue poking out of her mouth. "You can borrow my spare bow and we can see if you can catch anything meaningful." She continued
"We'll see, I might surprise you." With a cheeky wink and then I gave her a kiss on the lips, it was short but sweet. "hmm I could get used to that" she murmured then went off to get the bows, arrows and quivers.
She came back with 2 quivers, 2 bows and 12 arrows and a backpack, she put 6 arrows in each quiver then put her quiver over her shoulder, then told me to do the same, I did. Then she gave me the bow.
Something changed then, I felt a feeling of extreme fondness and comfort with having the weapon in my hand, I couldn't put it into words but it felt like a second nature to have it there.
Shnack then said "look at what I do and then try and imitate." With one arm outstretched, relaxed shoulders, a smooth drawback to her anchor point, an intake of breath to steady and then release straight into the tree about 20 metres away. She then looked at me expectantly "your turn." So I started going through what she had done. My arm outstretched, my shoulders relaxed. For some reason my body just knew how my stance should be perfectly, as I then notched my arrow, I put tension on the bowstring, brought it directly to an anchor point I didn't know I had, it must be my muscle memory, but not my muscle memory, but the orc's body that I took over, but I just knew it was right so I went with it. As the string was taut and beside my cheek, I took a deep breath, aimed at the arrow Shnack has shot and released.
I watched as the arrow I shot was remarkably accurate and shot through Shnack's arrow and split it almost perfectly in half, I looked over at Shnack with surprise on my face, but her jaw was almost at the floor. After a few seconds she recovered and asked, "have any of your memories come back? That looked like you remembered how to do that." with some excitement in her voice at me potentially remembering who I was.
"No, I don't remember anything, that just felt like second nature to me, like my body knew what it was doing without knowing why. Although maybe if I do more stuff like this, let my subconscious take over, maybe it will help bring back memories by becoming more like my old self."
"We'll have to see if that was beginners luck or it is truly the skill of you muscle memory. I don't have enough arrows to waste, so I'll take that arrow you shot and then we'll head off.
She collected it and then we instantly went off, I followed Shnack along a trail towards where the sun had rose this morning, so I was assuming east, but I wasn't sure.
Shnack was walking with a slight crouch to reduce the noise she was making, I tried to imitate but then my subconscious realised how stupid I was being and made the adjustments to walk soundlessly behind Shnack. Although I wasn't paying attention for one second and suddenly Shnack stopped and turned around in front of me and I walked straight into her.
Looking flustered, she said "sorry I couldn't hear you so I thought maybe I'd left you a bit behind, I didn't realise you were so good at moving soundlessly through the forest."
Anyway after that we moved on and we found a trail of deer droppings that we were following because they seemed fresh, and they were leading back towards the river we had bathed in earlier, I guess every animal needs a drink. As we got too a bit of a clearing, we stayed behind the bushes on the fringe.
By the river we saw a deer drinking periodically and then looking around to make sure it was aware of it's surroundings. We both stayed as still as possible and then as it went back to drinking again, we both drew our bows. It seemed to think it was quite safe now that it had checked a few times, little did it know about me and Shnack.
We took a deep breath to steady ourselves almost simultaneously and we both released. Both arrows struck true and were very close to each other just behind the shoulder of the deer. The deer bolted and ran, for about ten seconds. Then flopped over and didn't get back up again.
"I guess it wasn't just luck on that shot. You really do have some kind of talent for bow shooting." Shnack smiled whilst looking at me, "this will be able to feed us for a while and give us a lot of bargaining power in the village. Winter is coming soon so they will want the hid and maybe some extra food that we wouldn't be able to eat. This couldn't have come at a better time." Shnack said whilst getting more and more excited the more the thought and spoke about it. Her being happy was putting a smile on my face as well.
Shnack quickly took out a sharp knife from the backpack and started field dressing the animal, which was a rather gruesome process I was glad I didn't really have to be involved in and it quickly made my smile disappear. Once she had finished doing that, she washed her hands in the nearby river, then she used a piece of wood with rope attached to it that was on the outside of her backpack, unwound the rope, tied it round the deer's antlers and then started dragging it along the floor with it's face facing the forest floor to help with 'drainage of blood' apparently, I couldn't remember.
We took it in 10 minute turns of pulling the deer, it took us an hour to get back to the cottage but by the end I was a combination of tired but extremely satisfied in some weird way, I felt like a true hunter gatherer that had come back with his food and it felt great to be honest. It was around midday by now and the sun was high in the sky.
Feeling like I'd earnt it, I had a nap, with a smile on my face as I drifted off.