Kai Porter and the Castle on the Hill

Chapter 6- Rules

Kai (it/they)

It stood under the forest's bright green eaves, unsure of what to do. Should it lie in a bush and wait for game to pass by? Silently prowl about in the undergrowth looking for prey, like how Bonnie did in his fondly regarded hunting memories that he used to tell it about? It once even wondered if it would have more luck setting up rabbit snares, but then figured it wouldn't matter anyway because it likely wouldn't catch anything with snares within an hour, and it didn't even have material for making rabbit snares to begin with.

It guessed it would hide in a bush, sighed, and ventured further into the forest, trying not to rustle the surrounding foliage too much so as not to scare away any game– For both its own sake and that of its peers. How frustrating would it be to come across a deer at last, only for it to be scared away by some girl passing through the area? Kai didn't doubt that somebody would pick a fight with it over a mistake like that. Its classmates back at school would corner it and beat it up for less.

Eventually it picked a particularly thick patch of undergrowth near a pristine stream to hide in. Perhaps something would stop by to have a drink of water.

But if this idea worked... What would it use to take down its prey? It couldn't summon weapons via the Serpentine. Well... Technically it could– There was nothing physically stopping it from doing so as far as it knew– but the last time Kai had used the Serpentine's magic...

It was better off never using it again.

It didn't know what to do. It guessed it could bash its prey's skull in with a rock or rip its throat out with their fangs, but that seemed a cruel and painful way to bring something down. No, it might as well just sit there and wait for hunting hour to end. It still had that bar of hematogen. It wasn't much, but hopefully that would be enough for the day, and Kai could borrow a knife from the kitchens for tomorrow? That wasn't a very good plan, but it was the best they could come up with.

It laid down in the soft green grass and stared at the sunlight shining through the forest's rippling canopy. It closed its eyes and listened to the rustling leaves and murmuring brook, and almost felt calm for the first time in... Well, it couldn't quite remember, and it certainly wasn't going to.

It hadn't realized how loud the world was, in its life before leaving the cottage. Back at school, it could always hear cars as they drove by the building, or people talking to each other and their footsteps as they walked the halls. If there weren't people to hear, there was still the thumping of the heater and pipes and the ever-present hum of the lights, the school's innards making noises as they performed their functions like how a person's would gurgle and grumble as they digested food. Here wasn't much different (sans the distinct lack of cars, owing to the fact that Scholomance was a castle built upon a hill in the middle of the Summer countryside). But now, in the forest– or what was left of it– Kai was surrounded by a nice kind of noise. They wrapped themself in it, it was familiar, almost like a comforting baby blanket they had thrown out a long time ago. It felt like it was so far from everything, a forever away from its own life that it had rent apart because it'd wanted to get away from everything in the first place.

It got up and brushed off the front of its torn jeans. Alright, that was enough of that... Escapist bullshit. (Though it found cussing to be a bit unbecoming, it found that to be an apt term for lying down in a place where it could somewhat get a handle on its anxieties.)

It walked back to the garage and sat on the ground near the door. A few people had already come back with game and hung the dead creatures up on blood-letting rigs: Tall wooden frames from which one hung a carcass, then cut it on strategic points and let it bleed into a container. Kai didn't recognize the others, but one of them... Over the years it had seen his face many times on news channels Mama had deemed unreliable, yet she still never allowed it to meet them. If what half of what little it had heard of him was true, her reasons for keeping it away from him were, to put it politely, not pretty.