Smoke trickled out from somewhere in the little heap of leaves.
Aerrow crouched down on his hands and knees and blew on it, and it wasn't long before flames were flickering out of the little heap.
"YES!" he screamed in delight.
The fish enjoyed being tickled, he discovered. If he lay on his stomach with his hand in the water, sooner or later one of them would come along to investigate, and he would run his finger under its belly and it would stay still and enjoy the experience. Then he would snatch it out, when it was starting to doze off.
So it was that Aerrow now sat in front of a roaring fire, chewing on a fish that certainly tasted far, far better now that it had been cooked on a stick that he had sharpened with one of his weapons.
Something crunched in the woods behind him, breaking the peaceful night, and he looked round, reaching for the aforementioned weapons.
A pair of small dragon cats emerged from the greenery, obviously attracted by the oily smell.
Smiling, Aerrow peeled off a piece of flesh from his dinner and tossed it to them, for which they seemed more than grateful.
He wasn't native here, of course. It made sense that he would give something back.
10th day
"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
He charged through the wilderness with his shirt hanging off his head and fish blood and mud painted on his face and body, blades glowing in his hands. Anybody who could see him now would probably assume he was out of his mind.
The dragon cats were on the hunt. He had heard their yowls from his little nest. He didn't know what they were chasing, but he knew that he was going to have some of it for breakfast and none of them could stop him.
He drew level with the pack. They didn't seem to care about his presence. Up ahead he saw their quarry: two pugrabbits, fully grown, one of them a little on the overweight side and falling behind. It was obvious which one the felines were focusing on, so he continued past it and ran on to the other one.
As he drew closer, he switched off his blades and tucked them into his waistband, then dived forward and caught the pugrabbit he pursued in his bare hands.
If only his friends could see him now. He must have looked epic.
Aerrow held the struggling creature against the ground with one hand and, with the other, drew and activated one of his blades.
"Forgive me," he muttered.
He was taking a life.
And in so doing, extending his own.
14th day
With a yelp of terror, Aerrow awakened.
He was met with a pair of shining yellow eyes that stared into his face, and looking around proved to him that he was safe in his little nook, facing the area where the sky was greying in the approach of dawn.
He was not in an alleyway in Central.
He looked back to the dragon cat that still stared at him. Its fur was a pale, mottled golden brown colour under its khaki wings. It would have been rather well camouflaged in its undergrowth, but right now it was watching the Sky Knight intently.
Aerrow touched his nose. It felt damp.
"Did you wake me up?" he asked. "Did you know I was having a nightmare?"
He scratched behind its ears as a show of gratitude, and it leaned into his fingers. He held up his arm and watched as it settled down next to his body. Smiling, Aerrow rested his arm on its back.
It had brought him out of his nightmare, so now his body and coat were keeping it warm.
19th day
It was cold, but the water thundering down onto Aerrow's head was more refreshing than he could ever have imagined. Waterfalls were definitely more thorough than showers.
He hoped nobody saw him right now. It would just be humiliating.
As if confirming his fears, an engine roared overhead and he hurried away from the water and pulled on his pants, then grabbed his knives and used them to scale a nearby tree.
The carrier was immense and bore a large insignia styled like a golden swan.
The Rex Guardians.
A light started blinking in one side. Flash, pause, flash, pause, flash…
It was a code!
That was G, then a dot, dash and dot was R, then two single dots, a dash, two dots in quick succession, a dash and a dot, two dashes and a dot again and finally three rapid dots.
"Greetings," Aerrow muttered.
As if any other form of salutation would be used by folks from Terra Rex.
He held up one of his own blades, switching it on and off again and hoping it was visible. Dot-dot-dot-dot, dot-dot.
H-I.
He rested his arm and waited for a response.
D-O-U-N-E-E-D-H-E-L-P
Abbreviations? Considering Rex, that was almost alarming.
N-O-T-H-N-X, he responded. I-M-G-O-O-D
R-U-S-U-R-E, replied the carrier. They must have been using a telescope or something, because how else would Aerrow be visible from this distance?
Y-E-S, he signalled. D-O-I-N-G-F-I-N-E
This felt rather bizarre. He wasn't used to conversing in code for so long.
O-K, said the ship.
While it lingered, a thought occurred to Aerrow and he held the knife higher. A smile spread across his face as he flashed:
T-E-L-L-H-A-R-R-Y-I-S-A-I-D-H-I
"Sir?" the pilot asked. "Is something wrong?"
Harrier frowned as he focused his telescope, and lowered the signalling torch with a huff.
"The bloody cheek," he muttered.
24th day
The stick plunged through the pugrabbits' body and it instantly fell still. Aerrow smiled at the satisfaction of a job well done.
But as he straightened up, he got the inescapable feeling that someone – or something – was watching him.
He looked up and saw rows of yellow eyes watching him from the undergrowth.
He'd caught the natives' dinner.
"Sorry," he said, even though he knew it was pointless to talk.
He prized the corpse off the small spear and stepped back, and the felines were upon it and devouring it in an instant. It was messy, and obvious that he wouldn't be able to salvage anything from what was left over afterwards.
Never mind. There were plenty more fish in the pool.
27th day
Aerrow knew his time in seclusion was drawing to a close.
"One is All and All is One. You have 30 days to figure out what that means."
Insects whistled and chirruped into the night as he sat on the thick branch, looking up at the starry sky, stroking the little winged kitten that had made itself comfortable on his lap.
"You wanna know something?" Aerrow said to it. "I think I've got it figured out now."
The soft feline purred in contentment.
"While I've been here, I've only been taking what I need," he recalled, "and it's been restructured as part of my body. And eventually, when I die, my body will be broken down and restructured as part of the earth. I'll go into the grass and other plants, and then the pugrabbits will eat those, and guys like you will eat the pugrabbits, right?"
The kitten yawned.
"Piper would call that the food chain," Aerrow said, "but it's more than that. It's like…"
The stars twinkled in his eyes.
"It's like a flow," he said, feeling as though he had known this all along and was only now remembering it. "A great big flow that runs throughout the universe. I know there are others beside it, but they're all combined, aren't they? And compared to that, you and me are practically nothing."
A meteor shot across the sky.
"And by putting all of those little individual ones together," Aerrow continued, "you get a single great all. That's what it means."
He smiled. He could barely believe he was saying anything like this.
"Dad was right," he said, speaking to himself this time. "There really is a lot of existential stuff."
30th day
Once he had carved the final vertical scratch into the side of the tree, he turned and looked out at the sun as it set over the canopy.
"Okay," he breathed, "better go over it one last time."
He sat down on the bough, watching as a small block of birds took flight.
"The universe revolves on a flow so huge that humankind can't even comprehend it," he recited to himself, "not without seeing the Truth, at least. And the idea is to understand that flow, deconstruct it and then reconstruct it. And that's what alchemy is."
He felt a large dragon cat leap onto his shoulder, but he didn't bother looking to see. He'd more than grown used to them by now.
"And the thing is," he said, "that same system can be applied to anything."
Still without looking, he reached up and scratched behind the animal's ears. He wondered if he was going to miss them when he finally went home.
"Alchemy is just a small part of the flow," he said, and allowed himself a soft smile as the feline affectionately licked his ear.
"And the flow is that of life itself."
The sun dipped below the horizon.