Hello! Welcome to my Dr. Stone fic! Please note that there will be mature content, possible triggers, and Kohaku will be a little OOC based on changes I've made to her past. She's still a badass, though. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Dr. Stone.
It was hard to say when things started getting easier in my life.
To put it bluntly, at at the age of twelve, my father died in a lion attack after my mother had died from a strange illness and left me an orphan. My sister fell ill not long after as well, which resulted in her early death. Not long after my sister died, I was shunned from Ishigami village for reasons I never liked to think about, leaving me all alone in a world full of nothing but stone statues.
For the first few months on my own, the majority of my time was spent simply surviving. I taught myself how to hunt and fish efficiently with the small bit of knowledge my father and survival lessons had given me. I spent two long years figuring out how to farm with basic knowledge and grow what meat couldn't provide. If I wasn't busy hunting or farming, I was busy building. While I wasn't a master constructionist, I knew that I could be in time, so I was constantly making whatever improvements possible on my small hut. After being dispelled from the village, I traveled a few miles North so I could settle, putting together what could roughly be called a shack. While I was only twelve years old, I knew what had to be done to survive. Most kids in the village were taught at a young age, and I was no exception. The hardest part was learning to defend myself from the wild beasts scouring the forest.
Fast forward to more current times where I was suddenly eighteen. And I was still having issues with beasts. My movement through the forest made the trees look like a blur as I whipped past them, my waist-length blonde hair flowing behind me as I smoothly dodged branches and rocks. A loud snarl sounded behind me, indicating that the lion I had disturbed was gaining on me quickly. I had gotten a good swipe on the creature when it first surprised me by the river, taking out its left eye with my knife, but it quickly pounced me and knocked my knife into the river, forcing me to escape and retreat. There was little-to-no chance I would be able to outrun it, so I only had one other option – go somewhere that it couldn't. My legs beneath me burned at the effort, and I was finding it difficult to keep my breathing steady as I ran. Up ahead, I could see where the ground suddenly stopped and dropped down a very tall cliff. Glancing behind me, hoping the lion had given up before I needed to implement my plan, and felt my heart drop a little further. It was even closer, and clearly not giving up. That didn't work well for me, considering I knew what my next step had to be to survive.
Once I could go no further, I leapt.
I could feel my feet leave solid ground, my hair swirling around me to catch up with the wind, before I plummeted over the side of the cliff. I felt the weightlessness of free-falling, the air rushing past me as I descended down the cliff-face in a dive. Twisting around midair, I looked through the flutter of hair to see the lion make a last minute stop at the edge, watching me fall to a place it didn't want to go. Laughing to myself, I held my breath as I splashed into the large, deep pond that I knew lay at the bottom of the drop.
Popping my head back above the surface of the water, I swept my hair back and laughed aloud, feeling the exhilaration of having narrowly avoided being eaten. After pulling myself together, I made the swim back to shore, wringing water from my clothes and hair as I trudged from the shallows and collapsed on the grass. The area around me was quiet, and there were no other signs of danger, so I pulled myself to my feet and began the walk back towards my home. I hadn't gone too far for my venture to the river, but the lion chase took me much further away than I liked, leaving me with quite a hike back.
By the time I reached my hut, it was already dark and the moon was rising. Pulling my satchel from my shoulder, I set it on the ground next to the entrance and observed the clearing. My hut wasn't overly large, but the constant tweaks and additions I had made over the years did make it a bit more roomy than usual. It was definitely bigger than what was standard for the huts in the village, but I supposed it was whatever. It wasn't like the villagers were there to criticize me for it. At first, the hut could barely stand, the size being just enough for me to lay down. As I became more comfortable in my survival situation, I kept extending the walls and roof until I had a decent amount of space on the inside.
In one corner of the hut, there was a table I had made out of a tree stump which I had my light sitting on. The light was just a simple bowl of oil with a wick made of rope that was aflame, but it worked quite well. In another corner, I had a pallet of rough leather blankets that I used as a nest of sorts. Another corner was filled with my weapons rack. I had several different spears and knives, a few hatchets, and a couple of mallets. The final corner I always kept empty for emergencies, such as if I needed to bring in my drying leathers if it rained or if I needed to bring some firewood in to dry. The rest of the hut was pretty bare.
On the outside, the clearing I had settled in was quite large as well. Next to the hut, against the wall, several more spears I had been working on were propped up next to a clay pot. The clay pot was filled with water, which I used for drinking and watering my garden which was right next to it. The garden wasn't very large, only about three-quarters the size of my hut, but it produced a lot of edible vegetation. It took me several years of trying and failing to get to where I didn't poison myself anymore. I had a large fire pit in the center of the clearing, which had a spit above it for cooking. The rest of the clearing was pretty bare except my pile of firewood at the edge of the trees, which sat next to one of the strange stone statues of a woman that I never paid much attention to.
Using the moonlight to see, I threw a few pieces of wood onto the pit and went back inside. Holding a small piece of lighter knot above my candle bowl, I let the wood catch and then carefully carried it back to my pit. Kneeling next to the pile, I shoved the quickly flaming piece of knot under the logs. Once the fire was built up properly, I grabbed two small fish I had gotten from the river earlier from my satchel and hung them over the fire to cook. While the smell of freshly cooked fish filtered through the air, I laid back and stared at the stars as the rest of the world passed me by.
…
The next morning I spent tending to my garden and chopping up what firewood I had left. Frowning as I had only five logs to split, I knew I needed to go stock up A LOT before it started to get cool weather. With that, I grabbed my large bag to hold wood and my satchel and made my way into the forest. I spent quite some time gathering and hauling as much firewood as possible back and forth while filling my satchel with anything edible that would last through the winter. It was still early summer, but the previous harsh winter had almost done me in. I couldn't allow myself to be caught off-guard again.
As I hauled my final massive load of wood back, I stopped by the slow, steady part of the river for a moment to get a drink and splash my face. While the nights weren't too terribly warm, the daytime was still burning and humid, and so much physical exertion had me parched.
The cool water felt too amazing, and I couldn't resist getting in for a quick dip. I didn't bother taking off my clothes, as I probably needed to scrub them a little too. I hadn't actually scrubbed myself or my clothes the day before when I jumped into the massive pond, and I really needed to cool off, so it was a win-win for me. I spent a little time tending to myself in the water, scrubbing every bit of me and my clothes that I could reach. After about an hour, I was satisfied with my hygiene and finally emerged from the water, shaking and wringing as much water as I could from myself.
As I gathered up my bags once more to go about my business, I was startled when I heard a booming laughter echo through the trees from a long distance, the sounds joyous and elated. I only hesitated for a moment before I pulled my remaining knife from my belt and crouched into a defensive position. I hadn't encountered any other people in at least a couple of years, and those were just villagers that had been passing by. Slowly and quietly following the laughter, I stayed low to the ground and listened for anything else that might give me a hint as to who it was. My best guess was another villager was nearby, in which case I would just hide and let them leave the area on their own. I could handle any wild animal I might encounter, but other humans were… out of the question.
About a half-mile up-stream, I noticed one of the small clearings in the area had a tiny fire built in the center and the laughter died away. Crouching as low as possible, I crept silently towards the tree line, using the brush as cover so I wouldn't be spotted. In the middle of the clearing, next to the steadily growing fire, was a man I had never seen before. He was kind of tall, with wild white hair that faded into green tips (what kind of human had hair that color?), his red eyes were devious and had a glint of mischief in them, and he was wearing only a skirt of vines for clothing. He appeared to be talking to himself as he stoked the fire larger and larger, a bright smirk on his face.
As much as I wanted to retreat and put as much distance between him and me as possible, I found myself in complete awe of this human who clearly was not one of the villagers… He honestly looked like he didn't belong in this world at all. Instead of hiding away, I found myself intently observing the stranger for the next several hours.
It wasn't until much later, when the darkness had completely descended, that I finally made my way back home. When I had been observing him, I watched as he moved on from his fire and began beating rocks together, which I assumed he was making weapons with. It was totally bizarre that this guy suddenly showed up in my area of the forest, with absolutely no clothing, or shelter, or even weapons. Was he from another village? Was he shoved out too? Whatever the case was, I was much too intrigued by him to just ignore his presence. I was completely fascinated by the stranger, and by this "science" that he seemed to mention between each breath. So, instead of hiding away and pretending the other human didn't exist, I went about my usual routine during the day, but at night I would sneak my way to his campsite and observe him. His passion for his work was astounding, and I could honestly say that I had never seen someone with so much determination and drive. He continued to work step-by-step until he overcame each obstacle, and that was a form of diligence I never hoped to achieve.
As the sun set each day, I would quickly eat my dinner and take off towards where the stranger was set up and observe him until I began to tire, unless he went to sleep first. Most days, he spent a decent amount of time foraging for food. I watched him take some seawater and make salt with it, at least I assumed it was called salt based on his mutterings. He seasoned all of his food with it, which honestly looked rather mouthwatering. He obviously wasn't any type of hunter, but he made up for that by making clever and discreet traps. He didn't seem to have much trouble at all when it came to cooking anything.
He seemed to struggle a quite a bit with chopping wood, however. He seemed to understand pacing himself, though, which meant he made slow but consistent headway. As the days turned into weeks, he seemed to make quite a bit of progress in his survival. He eventually started building shelter for himself, which he put up on stilts as a "safety precaution" (the guy talked to himself A LOT). Once he was finished with that, then he began trying to make clay pots. After badly completing that task, he finally made himself some clothes, though the outfit was very strange to look at.
It was very weird that he was so bad at ALL of these things (except cooking). I learned to make clay pots before I was five years old, as did all the kids in the village. And yet, here was this grown man that acted like he had never done anything like it in his entire life. While he did work diligently until he got things right, it was clear he was working on a trial-and-error basis and not personal knowledge and experience. Who had done all of these things for him before? Was he some type of higher class villager who had these things done for him his whole life?
The questions I had about the stranger were practically endless.