The storm lasted for two whole days. Except for Kanire, who stayed holed up in the den, none of us cared much about the rain, in fact it was much more fun to play in it, only problem it caused was that the river overflowed and swallowed a small part of the clearing. Though Mom did delay the next hunt until after the storm; the rain made it hard to see even the other side of the clearing and all but the strongest scents were quickly washed away. The frequent thunder made it hard to compensate with hearing, which reduced our chances of finding something to eat almost to zero.
While it rained I did my best training my illusions. The trick Kanire taught me, simply summoning up memories instead of visualizing the stuff from scratch, worked wonders and it was easy to make small tweaks on them when needed. But when I had to create something I've never seen before I still had to go back to visualization, at least for the first time, so I couldn't neglect that training either.
Making the illusions move convincingly - the next step Dad introduced was simpler than everything before, but the real difficulty in that was that I had to keep the illusion's interactions with the world consistent, having to use an illusion for every blade of grass, every stalk of moss and every leaf the illusion touched to make them move appropriately or else the illusion won't be convincing for more than a moment.
"Visual illusions are the most complicated so starting with them is the best. Once you master them, all the other senses are simple, except maybe touch," Dad explained it to me.
I stopped by to talk with Kanire a lot too, he was mostly alone the past two days since outside of having the pups nobody uses it regularly. I showed off my progress to him and asked him to tell me stories from his past. I didn't pry when he cut himself off or refused to continue I was happy with whatever he was willing to tell me. He often made that weird sound, he called it laughing, when he talked about the troubles shelled monkeys caused for him, ranging from not knowing their limits and trying to fight him, to starting a forest fire. He did, however, sternly told me to stay away from the ocean. There lived creatures that could go toe to toe with him.
"Ocean is great mass of water, when you are standing on the shore no matter which direction you look, you won't see the end of it. It's very salty too, the water doesn't taste good," He explained when I asked him and said he would show me if Mom allowed it, but added, "Don't tell anyone where we'll be going though, it'd be too much of a headache to take everyone."
***
On the third day the storm finally cleared away. The sun, at its highest point, caused the droplets clinging to the grass and moss to sparkle.
"Everyone get ready for a hunt." Mom's voice resounded through the clearing as she howled.
All of us quickly gathered around. We were all starting to get hungry, at I knew I was, the fruits and berries we found around the densite aren't enough to fill us.
"Is everyone here? Where is Kanire?" Mom asked as she looked over the gathering.
"I'm here, no need to be so loud." Kanire said, scratching his head.
"Good let's..." Mom began discussing the groups and directions where we would be going. Just as she was finishing up there was a rustle on all sides
along with the sound of hooves.
A large bull moose and two small deer walked onto the clearing from different angles. They made couple more steps then collapsed dead.
"Kanire, didn't you promise you would follow the rules?" Mom turned to him immediately with a growl.
With one of his front paws he pushed away Mom's head and grunted while walking towards the deer on the northern side of the clearing, "I did, let's go eat or you'll complain I'm starving myself again."
"This isn't following the rules." Mom let out another growl.
"Did you forget I was the one who made those rules? They are to hold back so that you will not accidentally kill off the strongest members of the prey species and weaken it in the long term but instead only kill off the weakest ones. However you are allowed to use anything you want as long as you guarantee you only kill off the weakest members. Just because no one else reached that level since the rules were created and agreed upon doesn't mean they changed. The thing with the competition with other predators, that's only side effect and was never the intent. We didn't have a role in the ecosystem which is why we managed to fuck it up in just hundred winters. They was made so we would get a role."
"They still need to learn though, they can't if you do this?" Mom motioned towards me, Xerio, and Janym.
"They can just use these to train." Kanire said and the deer he was walking towards rose back up.
"No playing with the food." Mom protested.
"It's already dead, not like it cares, and the youngsters can earn their food this way, it's safer at least."
Mom closed her eyes, the rest of us stood still. "Don't lead them too far away." Mom finally opened her eyes.
"You heard your mom, that one is yours don't go begging for food from the others," Kanire laughed. "It's already dead so it won't use magic, but it will still kick you hard if you give it a chance."
"How did you do that?" I asked.
"I found them, killed them, and made them walk here, nothing complicated. If you want to know wether or not you can learn it, then the first two steps you might be able to, but the magic needed to make them move is impossible for someone with illusion talent to use."
"Why is it impossible?"
"How should I know? I just know that some talents make magic magic from other talents impossible to use. Anyway, it will act like normal deer, it is allowed to move within quarter howl from the center of the densite and not run more than that away from you. If you lose it just follow the tracks, look it will stop until it can see you again. No need to worry, nobody won't be able to steal it away from you. Once you immobilize it, make it lose enough blood or cause any lethal injury the spell will break and you can eat it. Good luck with it and try not to get yourself kicked. Even without magic it can hurt."
(AN: Howl is the unit of distance Caniro use and signifies from how far away one's howl can be heard. In forests like that it's usually 6-9 Km, based on the individual and background noise)
"Be careful," Mom encouraged us and went to tear open the moose.