Ah, the English countryside. It's made men out of boys for many an age now.
The streams flow. The flowers bloom. The butterflies and bees move from flower to flower, spreading pollen. Every female is fertile.
With a shaky arm, and shaky everything, Tony Peepants takes up a camouflage crossbow. Around himself, he hangs a quiver.
Out into the countryside, he wanders. With the steps of a predator, he moves. He hesitates, each time he steps on something that makes noise. He'd hate for his game to get a bad feeling, after all...
There's a rabbit. He aims...and realizes he's not loaded. He reaches for a bolt, and makes noise, as he fits it...
The rabbit hops away, of course. Tony sighs, and keeps stalking.
The day passes. This countryside sure seems to have more bees and butterflies than game...
He sees a quail. This time, thankfully, he's loaded...and not just in the bladder. Although yes, it seems that that always has more to shed than what should be necessary...
He poises, and aims. Alas, a belch sneaks out.
The quail spreads its wings, and flies away. What's worse, a flock flies away with him. Tony didn't see them. Quail really like their camouflage.
Tony's bow does too. But clearly, it's not enough for one's firearm to be invisible. Tony doubts it is. Otherwise, why would wild animals run away from a human, just because one made noise? Sure, humanity's the dominant species and all, but... Never mind; back to the hunt.
Across the sky, the sun moves. It's just about dark now...
Still, a marmot lumbers about. He sees his shadow...and yet, he doesn't retire.
Tony sees him. He's cocked and ready. He relaxes, and tries to stay on top of his gas issue. He stands, and aims the crossbow...
He releases the bolt. He misses. The marmot runs away, and dives into his hole.
Tony sighs. "He saw a wraith's shadow," he jokes, "but not his own."
The sun moves again. It sets. The moon rises.
Now, Tony wanders through a forest. A mist moves through it...
Foxes slither through the undergrowth. Tony can't see them...but he can hear them.
He listens, as a noisy trail is made. He stops. He listens to the noises, and the direction they seem to move in. At last, he's found a worthy quarry...
He aims at where he heard the last noise. From here, he estimates where the next noise will come from. He hears it, and fires.
The bolt flies into the undergrowth, and vanishes. All around it, foxes leap from the undergrowth, and flee.
Tony creeps forward, and feels around for his bolt. He finds it. There's not a drop of blood on it...or so much as a speck of fox fur to be seen.
Tony sighs. This is certainly a lot harder than Gaston, in Beauty and the Beast, ever made it look...
I mean let's face it; in the movie, Gaston shot down an airborne goose while in the village. If he tried doing that nowadays, he'd get arrested on multiple charges...
In the sky, the moon moves on. It sets, and the darkest part of night ensues...
At last, Tony meets his star chance. It's a doe. And not just of any crappy deer species; this is a red doe. Her species is the largest species of ungulate on the island of Britain.
Naturally, that seems lame to some. A lot of continents, of course, have buffalos, and yaks, and bison, and camels, and wild horses, and elands... But Britain's just a northern island. Plus, King Arthur and his knights took more from the land than it could produce, in their time. And they had too many successors where that was. So, naturally, there are no more bears, or mammoths, or bison, or musk-oxen on this island. Nowadays, it's just the stags and the wolves. And even the wolves seem to be having more limits than luck these days...
But then, nowadays, few can blame them. Just recently, there was a war movie with Michael Fassbender, called Centurion. In it, a pack of wolves devours a rogue Roman warrior, after one of his comrades severs his Achilles tendon with a knife, keeping him from running... (GREAT war movie, BTW, despite that part...)
At last, he aims his crossbow. He stands still, and breathes slowly.
He can't see the doe very well. But he doesn't have to. She's a big target. If he misses her, then he'll know for a fact he's a pooftah, as a lot of other guys call him...
In this moment, he loses control of his bladder. Before he knows it, he's irrigated his pants.
Before him, the doe sniffs the air. She smells his urine. She raises her tail, and runs. Her tail acts as a warning to nearby does.
Frustrated, and desperate, Tony keeps firing bolts at the fleeing doe. He misses, each time. They're big, but they sure are fast...
Tony sighs, and mopes. If he didn't have so much respect for the crossbow, he'd throw it on the ground and try to break it.
He looks around. It's late. He should be getting back. But if only he could remember his way back...