The Systems Challenge

Kim groaned as she opened her eyes. While she had known that the bear was likely on its last leg, she hadn't expected that it'd go down so quickly. Either Patrick had hit a very sensitive area or it was closer to dying than Kim had even been aware of.

Then naturally when the bear collapsed, she'd had to endure the shock of the bear's body hitting the ground. Although, fortunately for her, it had fallen to its left side, which allowed her to be kind of cushioned by its body when it landed. Not that it felt very good.

Especially with how raw her nerves still felt with traces of the bear's stomach acid and bile on her body and clothing.

Another piece of luck, though this had more to do with planning rather than sheer chance, was that the bear's leg that where she and the others were on didn't get crushed by the bear, like they would have been if they'd been by the bear's armpit. Though, it was a little close in Kim's opinion with how close the bear's chest ended up on its leg in relation to where they were.

Any crash you can walk away from is a good one, Kim said to herself, though she wasn't sure if this would be considered a 'crash' or not. Not that she'd been in a crash in the first place anyway, so it wasn't like she had anything to compare the situation with.

"Anyone still alive?" Jonas groaned.

"I'm not sure. Is this the afterlife?" Patrick groaned.

"It hurts to much to be the afterlife, unless we really screwed up and ended up somewhere we really didn't want to be," Elwin coughed.

"Well, at least we're in one piece, even if we got thrown around there," Jonas remarked, his voice sounding a little clearer. "And none of us dropped to the ground, so we should be fine in the end."

Kim wanted to know what Jonas would consider 'in the end' since it wasn't like they were close to finishing anything, other than the ordeal they'd had with fighting the bear. Which was technically over regardless.

Besides, she'd heard the announcement already, not that she really paid any attention to it. Not with how she was still making sure that she has still pretty much in one piece and hadn't lost anything, like what might have remained of her breakfast.

"Well, at least we have something to eat for tonight," Elwin remarked as Kim heard him more than saw him starting to climb down the bear.

"What're you talking about?" Patrick asked. "I'm pretty sure none of us brought our packs with us."

The bear," Elwin replied simply. "We killed the bear, so we can at least harvest some of its meat to eat."

"You know, I hadn't thought about it before, but Elwin's got a good point. Though, even if we had everyone together right now, I really don't think that we'd be able to eat all of this meat," Jonas commented. "It feels like it's be a little… much."

"I'm sure other creatures around here will take care of anything we couldn't get to," Elwin said. "Though, the question now is which parts should we get? I mean, we can get some of the more common parts of the bear, but that kind of feels like a bit of a waste to me."

"How about we go for the parts of the bear along its back?" Jonas asked. "Not only will there only be the skin and whatever layer of fat the bear had, but we won't have to deal with any bones around the meat."

"You know, we probably won't need to worry about any of that anyway," Elwin retorted. "Not unless you want to start right next to the bone. I mean, I have a feeling that any place we harvest will be too much to get, even if we dug down to wherever the bones would be."

"Question I have is if we're going around to the bear's back, should we move around to there?" Patrick asked. "I mean, talking about that is all well and good, but it's also not going to do us any good if it gets too dark to do any actual cutting into the bear."

"What? Worried a scavenger is going to pick parts of it away?" Elwin laughed.

Patrick merely sighed. "It has more to do with the fact that we can't eat anything if we don't cut any of the meat off of the bear. I mean, it's getting so dark that we already can't see each other except as shadows."

"We could always wait to see if the stars will come out tonight," Kim remarked dryly. She really didn't expect that to happen, not with the clouds that had been on the horizon earlier, but there wasn't any way to know if those clouds were heading their way or even how quickly they'd pass over anyway.

Then there was the fact that they weren't above the treetops, even though the bear had knocked a number of them over, especially when it fell to its side. Although, past that point, the tress would still be standing the way they had been. Or at least as long as the trees that were knocked over hadn't created a domino effect with the trees outside of radius of destruction that the bear had created.

"If you really want to do that, have Patrick create you some torches to work with through the night," Jonas said flatly. "It's not like we have enough time to walk around the bear, cut the skin away in any area, then start to harvest the bear's meat as if we're cutting away blocks of snow or ice. Then we'd have to figure out how to cook if it we did accomplish all that." Jonas paused for a moment, Kim suspected it was so that his words could sink in for a minute. "We probably should just accept we're not going to have anything to eat at all tonight. Plus, in the morning when there's more light, we can get all that done faster."

"We don't have to get that much," Elwin protested. "It wouldn't be the first time I gutted and cleaned something I hunted after the sun went down. If we don't get it done fast enough, then scavengers could start picking through it before the sun comes up."

Kim couldn't help but chuckle, but Jonas seemed to find Elwin's statement rather funny as he started laughing out loud. "You do realize what you're saying, right?" he asked when his laughter started to subside. "I know we're in a world of swords and sorcery here, but at the same time, how many scavengers have you seen since we got here that were as big as this bear? Or twice as large as the ones from your own world even."

"Jonas has a point, Elwin," Patrick commented. "Maybe a scavenger will get to the bear, but if we cut into its hide now, it would also give the scavengers an easier time to getting to its meat, where if we wait until the morning, any scavengers that arrive likely won't have gotten through its hide, unless they go for the eyes or where Kim came out of its stomach. Although, if they go to those locations, then they're not likely to get anywhere near where we'd be looking at cutting."

Kim couldn't help but wonder if Elwin was merely arguing just because he didn't like what he was hearing. Though, regardless of the reasons, she was ready to go. She didn't care if any of the others accompanied her. In fact, as she was starting to realize just how tattered her clothing had become, she was hoping a little that they wouldn't join her. She wasn't sure how much they'd noticed, or even how much was revealed by the damage. While it didn't really matter in the darkness of the night, she couldn't be sure if they might not become aware of it during the activities of the next day.

As she walked away, towards where she knew the paws of the bear were, she could hear the other three continuing their argument. Though, to be fair, it was really Elwin who was the one that was pushing the argument forward. She could tell that Jonas was trying to work out a solution or compromise while Patrick was just wanting it to be over.

Regardless of it all, Kim didn't have the energy to waste on that. Especially when it was clear that they weren't going to get anything resolved tonight. Or at least to her it was clear. Whether it was to Elwin or Jonas, she couldn't say. All she could be certain of was that she didn't want to stick around to just listen to them go back and forth like that.

When she reached the paws of the bear, she looked up towards the sky and wasn't that surprised to see roughly half the sky of stars above her covered with clouds. While she hoped in part for rain it was mostly so she could at least get a rinse of the dried stomach acid and bile that she could still feel coating her entire body.

What she planned on searching for in the morning was something to rinse herself off with, if not bathe. At least if they didn't get any rain in the night. Though, she still might even then. After all, if she stayed in the rain until she was certain that she was completely clean of that stuff, she doubted that she'd survive the drop in temperature her body would have had. Not to mention her clothing.

Which was also why she was happy to leave the others behind. She didn't think she'd be able to find much in the mountainous forest surrounding her, but she knew she wouldn't likely find anything to mend her clothing until she could find something to replace it if she didn't look.