It was difficult to fall asleep that first night in our new world. The lean-tos were unbearably uncomfortable, as we were used to actual mattresses and the like. The air was cold and bit at any exposed parts of our skin. Anna and I slept under the bear pelt and hugged each other for warmth to stave away the hypothermia.
Meanwhile, Earless seemed to be sleeping soundly, given his snoring. We were unused to sleeping outdoors like this and being big babies, while Earless was used to it because our clothes were still damp from the river. In any case, the night was colder than we were used to.
Thankfully, since we couldn't fall asleep because Earless was snoring so loudly and we were so cold, we could hear a deer get stuck in the alarm system around the camp.
The deer had rich brown fur and the most prominent doe eyes I had ever seen. It looked like the spitting image of Bambi until Earless walked up to it and slit its throat. Me and my sister turned towards Earless with looks of shock as he cut the rope that it was tangled in and dragged it to his lean-to to gut it.
"He's tied up tight, don't worry about it, you said," I questioned my sister about her ability to tie a knot. " And to make things better, he has a knife; it's a good thing he only slit Bambi's throat and not ours, isn't it" I looked at my sister, whose face was burning red with embarrassment at her failure to secure Earless so we could sleep safely at night.
"He probably just didn't kill us because we were still awake, you know, so how about you go take that knife from him when he's done butchering Bambi over there, and then I can show you how to tie someone up properly," I told Anna as added more wood to the dying fire and sat down across from Earless and observed how he butchered the deer.
Based on how he handled that knife, he had better survival skills than us; thanks to our terrible butchering skills, we could only get half of the bear's meat, while Earless here looked like he could use the whole deer.
That wake-up call told me we needed to improve our game to survive. So, I marked it on the to-do list, along with finding some salt for our future meals.
After Earless finished cutting up Bambi, I stood up and took the knife away from him with a bit of difficulty as he desperately clung to it as it was his last form of self-defense. Then I called Anna and showed her how to tie Earless up. We finished with Earless hogtied and laying on his stomach with a gag in his mouth to stop him from yelling to keep us up; he had a look in his eyes that said, 'Earless will remember this.'
With Earless tied up properly, Anna and I felt safe returning to sleep in our uncomfortable lean-to. When morning finally arrived, we woke to the sound of the forest coming alive.
The birds were awake and chirping away into the brisk morning air, the trees were groaning as they swayed with the air, and the sun was now threatening to burn our skin.
Yesterday, the sun wasn't as visible, thanks to the clouds in the sky and the fact that the day was already halfway over. Now, it was out in full force, leaving us with only the treetop canopy to relieve us from its hot gaze.
This announced another problem we had overlooked upon arriving in this world. Albinos and my sister had sensitive skin to the sun, and if left exposed to it for too long, it would harm us, so we had to devise a way to cover ourselves.
Because of our skin condition, we have developed a taste for long-sleeved clothing and hoodies. We were dressed more lightly than usual because I had a match before arriving. Whenever I had a fighting match, we wore more exposing clothing to show we were a team of siblings, with my sister acting as my cornerman.
Now, that was backfiring on us as we couldn't leave the forest without getting sunburned. The only piece of clothing we had that was big enough to cover us was the bear pelt, and it was only big enough to make a cloak for one of us.
"What do you mean it's only big enough for one of us? It's more than big enough for both of us," Anna argued as she questioned why I believed it was only enough for one person. " We have to make more than just a cloak, you know. We have to make a sleeping bag, a backpack to carry our food, and whatever else we find to help us survive," I explained to Anna.
"We need more resources to make the stuff we need, and did you see how Earless prepared that deer? We're seriously lacking in survival skills. We'll be lucky to last a month if we don't get our game together." I explained to Anna our lack of skills to survive the situation we found ourselves in. We were by no means incapable, but our skill sets did not include surviving out in the wilderness, especially not for long periods.
Anna was more than capable of creating shelter and tools to further our chances of survival, while I felt capable of at least hunting food and protecting us. " I think the first thing we need to do is get some proper weapons," I explained to Anna, hoping she would agree that we needed to learn new skills and acquire more tools to help us survive.
" You're right. I don't have great confidence with our current weapons," Anna stated as she eyed the poorly made makeshift knives. She always had an eye for the finer things in life and firmly believed if you were going to buy or make something, you should strive to have the best. She quickly set herself to work improving our weapons by dismantling the large fangs from their poorly crafted handles. She then found some long sticks and split the top of them, inserting the fangs into the slot while chewing the sinew that we harvested from the bear to soften it and then wrap around the fangs to keep them in place. Lastly, she set them by a tree in the sun so the sinew could dry and tighten.
With this sudden burst of creativity from Anna, we had lost two of our makeshift knives and gained two spears. " What will you do with the rest of the knives?" I asked Anna as she finished up with the spears. " I'll just replace the handles with something longer so they could reach more when slicing," she told me, explaining her plan with our remaining knives. "I'm troubled about making anything out of the bearskin. I'm not a tailor," she explained to me, explaining her worries about handling the bearskin. She could handle weapons relatively quickly because they were more straightforward; the bearskin was a problem because she didn't know how to make a cloak from it, let alone tan it.
For that, we both turned towards Earless. He looked at us with contempt that slowly turned to curiosity as we untied him. After all the ordeals he had suffered since yesterday, he was still hanging on. His head was now wrapped with a rag around where his missing ear was, and he had a splint that we had placed on his leg so he could walk around correctly. He was likely still hostile towards us, but we needed to start earning his trust to learn anything from him. We started the first step of gaining his trust by untying and letting him go. Naturally, he didn't go anywhere since he had an injured leg, and this was his camp. There was still the possibility of him attacking us for killing his friends and disfiguring him.
But that was a risk we had to take to survive out here. The skills I had seen Earless display were exactly what we needed. They were basic life skills for him, but they were useless skills that we had never learned in our previous lives in the civilization we had lived in; I mean, when will we tan a bear's skin? Just buy it if you want one.
Earless looked at us with doubt about our actions but quickly understood the reason for letting him go when we pointed at the bearskin and deerskin. He quickly got to work tanning the hides. He began making a tanning solution from the bear's brains and water. He then started scraping away the remnants of flesh and fat, carefully keeping the hide intact. After several hours, the bear hide was ready for the tanning solution, a mixture of brains and water he had prepared earlier. Earless massaged the solution into the hide, knowing it was the key to making the leather soft and durable.
Next, he moved on to the deer hide. Unlike the bear, the deer's hide was thinner and more delicate. He worked with equal care but more remarkable patience, knowing the result would be a supple, fine leather perfect for clothing and gear. By dusk, both hides were soaking in their respective tanning solutions. As he finished preparing the hides, he looked at them with a smile on his face, happy with the results of his work. That smile quickly disappeared when he turned towards us. We were standing there staring at him in amazement and intrigue over how skillfully he worked, and we were intimidated by how quickly he worked.
It was nighttime before we knew it, and we quickly got to work making dinner so we could eat before going to sleep. The dinner, like the night before, could have been more satisfactory, but with the lack of seasoning and ways to cook more to our liking, that was next on the to-do list: find a cooking pot or frying pan, preferably both. Earless's face seemed to scream with delight as he ate the bear meat, which led me to believe that it was a rare delicacy for him, most likely because it wasn't easy to catch a bear.
After we finished our meal, we left Earless untied, to his astonishment. We kept all the weapons by ourselves, though, since we knew we didn't know if we could trust him not to kill us in our sleep. It was a huge risk to take, but one we had to take to get him to teach us his ways.
With Earless now untied, we slept with one eye open and hoped our trust would not be misplaced.