I limped to the sound of whimpering, standing above him I could hear how it struggled to breathe, I probably punctured its lung with the broken ribs as I kicked it back then.
The wolf was looking at me, it likely wanted me to suffer, and I could understand that, but beyond that, I could see in its eyes the wanting - the wanting for rest.
I couldn’t imagine what those three had to live through to end up in the state I saw them in.
But before I could deal with the wolf, I had to deal with the wound on my arm.
So I removed the rags from my head, ripped some fabric off, and then tightly wrapped it around the wound, I couldn’t do much at the moment, so that had to do for now.
With that dealt with - I looked back to the wolf, it was still gasping for air, with its eyes fixated on me the entire time.
I started thinking of how to painlessly end its suffering, there was nothing around me but the stick I fought it off with, or the nearby rocks, neither of which wouldn’t leave a mess behind, and that's when my brain finally remembered that I could make a knife out of a shadow.
When I realized it I berated myself for not remembering it sooner - I could've used it to fight them in the first place, and it would've been more effective too!
But I couldn’t turn back the clock, so now I was stuck with that regret sitting in the back of my mind.
Coming back from this momentary daze - I created the knife from the shadow of the nearby boulder, after which I approached the wolf slowly, in reaction to that - it closed its eyes and started breathing less and less.
One swift motion to the side of its head, and the breathing finally stopped, now I was the only living being remaining on that field.
With that finally dealt with - I dropped the knife, and the instant it touched the ground, it lost its form and the shadow returned back to its place.
Now I finally had time to properly see where the scuttle with wolves had brought me.
Apparently, if we would've rolled even a few feet to either side - our meeting would end with me falling down three miles down the ravine.
At least the view from up there was amazing, I could see the raging river bashing against the rocks beneath me, with pieces of Ice being washed up to the sides of it, probably coming from the mountain tops.
Looking at all of that sparked a memory of some advice my father once told me on one of our trips camping:
“If you ever get lost, find a river and follow it, civilization won’t be far”
With that advice now in mind I slowly started walking alongside the ravine to find a decent spot to descend to the river, which yet again took a great deal of time.
It was starting to get bright by the time I finally reached those raging waters, with huge cold gusts of wind periodically going through this valley.
Luckily I never had problems with cold, which always annoyed my mother when I would just go outside with a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of pajama pants to get something out of our shed in the winter.
Sorry, got off track, let's get back to the story.
And so now I was walking next to the river downstream, the valley slowly disappeared along the way, and in its place - I was yet again surrounded by a forest.
I was really missing the mountain view by the hundreds of feet I’ve walked through at that point.
But the river did quiet down a notch, and alongside the sounds of water now I was accompanied by the chirping of all kinds of birds that were hiding away at the tree tops.
It was serene and beautiful… and It got ruined by the sound of breaking twigs I heard just to the side of me in between the trees.
‘Life just couldn't give me a moment to relax does it’ I thought to myself as I quickly created a knife in my hand and stood back waiting for whatever it was to get here.
The first thing that came into my line of sight was a giant axe cutting away the greenery, then I was momentarily blinded by the sunlight gleaming off from what looked like a metallic chest plate, and when my eyes finally reached the height where the head of this person was supposed to be - I was greeted by a furry face of a brown bear.
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