Disclaimer: I own nothing.
*Rattles piggybank * Poor student. Comprendes?
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HUNTERS MOON
I could wait all my life for a night like this. The air is cold and still. The trees are silent and the moon is fat and round, hung low and heavy in the sky.
I am to most appearances, the only living thing in this place. Appearances are, however, deceiving, and I am on a hunt.
My little gift to myself.
Whenever I've had to take care of a big or just plain difficult job, I take myself out of it for a few days. It takes the edge off.
Currently, for example, I stand in a large forest in Eastern Europe, just inside the borders of the Czech Republic. I took up a couple of contracts that nobody else wanted. It wasted my time, took up more effort than it was worth and put me in one hell of a mood. The only good thing is the pay.
So I cool off. In the hills, in the snow, in the hunt.
All I need is my prey, and he showed up about thirty seconds past.
Hare. Not the biggest pray, or the strongest. But the fastest. The most nimble. The one that can get into places I never could.
A little lesson in skill, in pacing.
Downwind. He shines against the backdrop of thin snow, only the black of his eyes and the different texture of his coat to give away his existence. When he moves, I'm going t o have to work by scent alone.
And he knows I'm there. The stiffening of his stance could be mistaken for freezing. He's not. His muscles contract, ready to snap back and take him away at a speed few can match. You can always see the difference. Something about the eyes.
Never mistake the two. Not on a rabbit, dog, cat, man. Never.
The instant that he begins to move strobes into my mind. I see clearly the beginnings of movement running up the muscles, the almost miniscule backwards lean that he adopts and then everything returns to normal, and we're both moving.
He, being the prey sets the course. It is after all only fair that he should choose the direction in which his death will find him.
And we are the wind, moving ever faster, he trying to out race me, while I try to match him step for step, keeping pace in order to not over reach him and thus lose.
A strange type of symmetry develops. Where he can go under I must go over, where he can go through I must go round, all the while never straying far from each other, being pulled back together as though a band of elastic now joins us.
It's all merely formality. Eventually we both know what the outcome will be. Must be. Always true to our roles in this wider picture. He has spent his time eating what the Earth has given for him to eat, and now I in my turn will eat him.
It's not pretty but its true.
That whole truth is beauty, beauty truth spiel's a pile of shit and I know it. So does everybody else on this planet. The truth is, I'm going to catch the hare, and kill and eat it. It dies that I might live. In my life it is one of the nobler deaths in that it serves a purpose other than necessity or fun.
True, I find death not only intriguing (as all you sorry fuckers out there do, and don't bother to lie, whom I t'judge?) but fun.
Here's another, I have larger energy reserves. I wont spend the winter starving asleep. Last night I ate steak. I spend my time working on my physical conditioning, which, thanks to a government not knowing where their limits are, the places that they really shouldn't go, is already disturbing. (You know it is, do you want to be chased by me?) The little bunny is fat and slow, already I see his clock winding down.
I can end this in an instant.
And then, I do.
Under a hunters moon I claim my prize - blood hot and blood red.
HUNTERS MOON
I could wait all my life for a night like this. The air is cold and still. The trees are silent and the moon is fat and round, hung low and heavy in the sky.
I am to most appearances, the only living thing in this place. Appearances are, however, deceiving, and I am on a hunt.
My little gift to myself.
Whenever I've had to take care of a big or just plain difficult job, I take myself out of it for a few days. It takes the edge off.
Currently, for example, I stand in a large forest in Eastern Europe, just inside the borders of the Czech Republic. I took up a couple of contracts that nobody else wanted. It wasted my time, took up more effort than it was worth and put me in one hell of a mood. The only good thing is the pay.
So I cool off. In the hills, in the snow, in the hunt.
All I need is my prey, and he showed up about thirty seconds past.
Hare. Not the biggest pray, or the strongest. But the fastest. The most nimble. The one that can get into places I never could.
A little lesson in skill, in pacing.
Downwind. He shines against the backdrop of thin snow, only the black of his eyes and the different texture of his coat to give away his existence. When he moves, I'm going t o have to work by scent alone.
And he knows I'm there. The stiffening of his stance could be mistaken for freezing. He's not. His muscles contract, ready to snap back and take him away at a speed few can match. You can always see the difference. Something about the eyes.
Never mistake the two. Not on a rabbit, dog, cat, man. Never.
The instant that he begins to move strobes into my mind. I see clearly the beginnings of movement running up the muscles, the almost miniscule backwards lean that he adopts and then everything returns to normal, and we're both moving.
He, being the prey sets the course. It is after all only fair that he should choose the direction in which his death will find him.
And we are the wind, moving ever faster, he trying to out race me, while I try to match him step for step, keeping pace in order to not over reach him and thus lose.
A strange type of symmetry develops. Where he can go under I must go over, where he can go through I must go round, all the while never straying far from each other, being pulled back together as though a band of elastic now joins us.
It's all merely formality. Eventually we both know what the outcome will be. Must be. Always true to our roles in this wider picture. He has spent his time eating what the Earth has given for him to eat, and now I in my turn will eat him.
It's not pretty but its true.
That whole truth is beauty, beauty truth spiel's a pile of shit and I know it. So does everybody else on this planet. The truth is, I'm going to catch the hare, and kill and eat it. It dies that I might live. In my life it is one of the nobler deaths in that it serves a purpose other than necessity or fun.
True, I find death not only intriguing (as all you sorry fuckers out there do, and don't bother to lie, whom I t'judge?) but fun.
Here's another, I have larger energy reserves. I wont spend the winter starving asleep. Last night I ate steak. I spend my time working on my physical conditioning, which, thanks to a government not knowing where their limits are, the places that they really shouldn't go, is already disturbing. (You know it is, do you want to be chased by me?) The little bunny is fat and slow, already I see his clock winding down.
I can end this in an instant.
And then, I do.
Under a hunters moon I claim my prize - blood hot and blood red.