Disclaimer I don't own a song of ice and fire all I own are my OC's.
After an undetermined amount of time I was taken out of the cave to learn to survive in the wilderness and cold of the true north.
When I stepped out of the cave for the first time and was hit by a wall of cold air, I had thought that the air in the cave was cold. I was wrong, it was like sitting next to a warm hearth compared to the cold outside. I took in a deep breath of the cold air and was amazed, while in the cave I couldn't tell but their air was so clear, fresh and it smelt amazing. I was surprised that something so simple lifted my mood so much I felt re-energized. I hadn't noticed how exhausted I had been. Learning about anything I could and the endless practice made me more exhausted than I realized.
With that realization I decided that all the endless work would burn me out if I wasn't careful so to counteract it I decided I would take a couple of days off from practice. As I learned how to survive outside of the cave to slow down and learn carefully and try to relax .
With that decision I stopped all practice with the exception of skinchanging and runes, because I could not stop practicing those for it meant life and death for me if I was unprepared for what was to come.
as I was shown how to follow the cliffside trail so that it would not fall or break something. I found out that even if the sharp stones looked like they would slice right through my feet. It simply felt like walking on gravel. I felt no pain, only slight discomfort that was easily ignored.
Once we got to the bottom of the cliff I noticed how it wasn't as cold nore did the wind blow like it did on the cliff. I looked around and noticed how barren the area was yet when I paid more attention I noticed all the life around me. there were tiny stunted shrubs a couple of fallen trees to provide shelter for anything that needed it as I looked south i saw a small stream flowing down the mountains behind are cave there didn't seem to be any fish but the water look clear are refreshing, there were small shrubs and bits of driftwood along the shore. It was about six feet wide but didn't look very deep. There were small smooth stones at the bottom of the stream and there were small bits of ice floating down stream.
After a few minutes of watching my surroundings he cuffed me upside the head and told me to stop daydreaming. as he walked by he told me to watch, and listen if I did anything he didn't tell me to do he would leave me in the cold to find my own way back.
With him saying that I straightened my spine and brought all of my attention onto what he was doing he started walking east in the direction of some rocky hills west of the haunted forest.
After an hour of hard walking I was exhausted when I trained. There was only so much room in the cave, so walking long distances was something I couldn't train for.
After I followed him for a while I started to slow down but he just continued to walk and didn't even glance at me, making me do my best to keep up and not fall behind.
I started to regret taking so many things with me with all the small knives, a bow arrow and a short spear on my back for the first half hour of walking. It wasn't that bad but after walking for so long my body just was not used to this type of exercise making it harder to keep up.
After what seemed to be about 3 hours of walking we arrived at some rocky hills with some trees and shrubs scattered around. I ask what we were hunting and he laughs at me then explains that it takes hours if not days to hunt if you are not lucky. Instead he said we were going to set up some traps and snares.
They were small snares, the largest that it could catch would be a fox or a large hare. We spent a quarter of the day setting up as many snares as possible and we ended up with 23 snares over a large area. He used freshly peeled roots or stems as bait he said that if you do it in the evening then to check them in the morning and if you set them up in the morning then to check them in the evening
After we made it back to the cave I was told to go to sleep and that I was going to have to get up before the sunrises to check on the snares.
I was awoken by someone kicking my foot as I opened my eyes to see what it was. I saw he was just waking me up so we could check on the snares.
As I followed him I tried to imitate the way he was walking. It looked like he was flat footed. But he had his heel touch the ground a fraction of a second before the toe so that weight would be distributed evenly on the ground,
so there wasn't too much pressure put on any part of the ground. His footsteps were barely visible while mine were easily spotted.
After about an hour of walking I could see a slight improvement in the way I walked while my footsteps were still easily spotted; they did not leave as large of an indention in the ground as before.
By the time we made it to the area where we set up the snares it was already midday, as we went through all the snares it didn't seem like we had caught anything but after checking the 16th one I saw a small white hare.
when his saw the hare he told me to approach when I got close to it he told me to grab the back of its neck and kill it
In my past life I had gone hunting many times and had killed plenty of deer, squirrel ducks and the like.
I had never killed a hare and now I know why it had pretty white hair and cute Cola colored eyes, but I knew it was pointless to think about such things when you're in a harsh and cruel world like this. So despite my reservations I knew showing weakness was a bad idea so after a second of hesitation I snapped it neck.
After I snapped it's neck he told me that I was going to learn to bleed it then skin it. It was something I had never done before so while I was nervous I would try my best to learn.
I was told to use My knife to make a cut just below the chin after I did that he told me to hold it upside down to let the blood drain out so that I can start to skin it
After about 20 minutes of waiting I was told to make an incision from the groin to the sternum and to not make deep for that would ruin the meat.
while making the cut as precisely as I could. I pulled out its guts after I did. He said there were certain parts that were edible but would ruin before we got back to the cave so we had to eat those parts raw.
he said since it was my first kill that I should get the heart.
In my past life people I knew would always say the heart was a delicacy, I think that they were all fools of shit. It was slick going down and I did not have a preference for raw meat. I gagged and almost threw up but forced myself to keep it down so as to not look weak.
After we spent another hour and a half looking through all the other snares we found another hare and a weird looking weasel thing. It wasn't as long as a weasel but had a thicker body it had sharp teeth and short legs. It was a bit smaller than the hare, it had more muscle but less fat on its body.
He said that while they were not rare it was not common to catch one this far from the forest .
He gutted them, gave me the liver and ate the other parts then we made our way back to the cave to skin and prepare the meat. It only lasted two days and that's with making it into a soup then making a broth with the bones, root and other edible plants with some dried meat. I was surprised when I saw them use everything that was left after it was gutted.
I knew that in my old world there were places where people had to use everything just to survive like the far north and south were the climate was harsh and there wasn't an abundance of food but I had never thought about it being this way in this world
But now that I thought about it it made sense only rich merchants and the nobility had enough money to waste food and other things to last one of the common folk months.
Now that I think about it, the free folk probably live in the harshest conditions out of all the people in the world of a song of ice and fire.
This is my first story. constructive criticism is welcome.
Sorry for the delay. I was stuck on this chapter for a week and couldn't get past it for days but I think I will be able to start updating more often.