Playing Dead

I woke in my hollow at eighty-two percent, thirteen points down as usual, with the sun not up yet and the stream talking to itself below me. I blinked a few times, which I still enjoyed more than I wanted to admit, and lay there thinking about the snapper.

Hunger Clock: 82%

It had sat in the mud of that pond for who knew how long, waiting, and it hadn't moved once in all the hours I'd watched it. I'd thought Stillness made me patient. Next to that thing, I was a kid who couldn't sit through a movie. If I was going to live in a forest full of things that waited, I needed to be better at it than they were.

So that morning I didn't hunt. I practiced. I climbed down to a low branch over the game trail along the stream, set my legs, folded my scythes, and let Stillness take me. Then I stayed. I counted heartbeats until I lost count, then counted birds, then watched the shadows of the leaves crawl across the trail. My legs started to ache. A fly landed on my head and walked right across one of my eyes, and I let it. When the sun was high enough to reach the water, the System finally noticed.

[Stillness] rank up
Base rank: 2 → Effective rank: 5 (+3 affinity)

It wasn't as good as a kill, but it was close. I came down off the branch stiff and pleased with myself and went looking for lunch.

Hunger Clock: 78%

I found it in a tangle of rotten logs back from the bank, digging. It had its head down in the soft wood and its back to me, and it was tearing out grubs and chewing loudly, the way something eats when it doesn't think anything is watching.

[Sense]
Target: Litter Possum ~ Lv.5
Threat: Moderate

It was about my size, round and gray, with a pink nose and a long bare tail that curled around a root while it worked. Moderate didn't worry me much. I'd killed a spider that the System called High. I came at it along the top of the log, slow and low, one leg at a time.

I was two body lengths away when it turned around and saw me. And then it died.

That's the only way I can describe it. It fell over on its side with its legs stiff and its mouth hanging open. Its tongue slid out. Its eyes went flat and dull, like a doll's. A second later a smell rolled off it, thick and sour, exactly like the carcass under my tree after three days in the sun.

I stopped and stared. I hadn't touched it. "Did I scare it to death?" I thought. Then I remembered the documentaries, and the couch, and a narrator talking about animals that pretend to be dead when they're caught. But knowing it wasn't the same as seeing it. This one was very, very good at it. The smell was real. The tongue was real. A fly had already landed on its eye, and the eye didn't move.

My Sense still marked it as a target. I didn't know if that meant it was alive, or if Sense just kept marking dead things for a while. I'd never checked. And I was hungry, and it was right there, and I'd spent the whole morning being patient already. So I walked up to it and reached out with my right scythe to hook it.

It came back to life the moment my scythe touched it. It twisted around faster than I'd have believed and bit down hard on the joint of my right foreleg, right in the soft place between the plates. The exact place I would have bitten.

Shell: -4

Pain shot all the way up to my shoulder. Something hot came up behind it, the red pull I'd felt before, the part of me that wanted to stop thinking and just tear.

[Will check]
Frenzy resisted.

By the time I'd pushed it back down, the possum was gone, a gray blur diving into a pile of brush. I heard it crashing away through the leaves, and then nothing.

I stood there with my leg throbbing and felt angry for about three seconds. Then I started clicking. I couldn't help it. It had beaten me with my own trick. It had held still and waited for me to come close, and I'd done exactly what my prey always did. I'd walked right into it because I was hungry and sure of myself.

"Okay," I thought. "Fair. That one's yours."

The good news was that it still stank. Whatever it had let out to smell dead was all over its fur now, and it left a trail through the brush that even my old human nose could have followed. I followed it slowly, holding my right scythe close, until I found it in a small clearing, nosing around under a fern like nothing had happened.

It heard me and died again, right there in the open. Over it went, legs stiff, tongue out, eyes dull, the same sour smell.

This time I didn't walk up to it. I stopped two body lengths away, settled into the leaves, folded my scythes, and let Stillness take me.

"Let's see who's better at this," I thought.

The trick only worked if the hunter did one of two things. Either it came close and got bitten, or it got bored and left. I wasn't going to do either one. I had the morning's practice still in my legs, and a new rank on top of it, and I had a snapper in my head showing me how it was done.

So we waited. A beetle walked over the possum's tail, and it didn't twitch. Two flies landed on its face. The light moved across the clearing. My bitten foreleg ached, and I let it ache. I didn't blink. I didn't need to.

It was a long time before the possum broke. First one eye moved, just a little, rolling toward where I'd been. I didn't move. Then its nose twitched. Then, very slowly, it lifted its head an inch off the ground and looked around. I was green in green leaves and still as a stick, and I guess that was enough. It decided I'd gone.

It rolled over onto its feet and turned to go, and for the first time all day it showed me its back.

I hit it from behind, both scythes at once. My right hook took it behind the head and my left took it across the hips, and I pinned it flat. It squealed, and then, I swear, it tried to die again right there in my grip. It went stiff all at once and let its tongue hang out.

I clicked so hard I almost lost my hold. "Too late for that," I thought, and I bent down and bit.

[Kill] Litter Possum ~ Lv.5
XP gained.

It tasted better than it smelled, which wasn't saying much. I ate all of it anyway, sitting in the middle of the clearing with the sun on my back.

Hunger Clock: 78% → 93%

Afterward I cleaned my scythes and checked my foreleg. There was a dent in the shell over the joint and a dull ache inside it, but it bent fine, and I could already feel my body working on it, the same slow warmth I'd felt when I was poisoned. I'd have a sore foreleg tomorrow and nothing worse.

I climbed home in the late afternoon and settled into my hollow and went over the day the way I used to go over a bad meeting. Two lessons. The first was that dead wasn't always dead, and that I should never trust anything just because it was lying still. I of all things should have known that already. The second one I liked better. The possum was good at waiting. But it was waiting for something to happen. I'd been waiting for nothing at all, and nothing can go on a lot longer than something.

Below me, the stream ran on. I stretched my sore foreleg out along the bark, folded the other scythe, and watched the light go.