It was new; it was exciting, soon everyone will be doing it, she had mysteriously
assured him in their online chat. It had seemed like a nice thing to do, letting
her choose the venue for their first date. Now he wasn’t so sure.
The spear was getting heavy and, despite the leather grip, kept
slipping in his sweating hands. He wrinkled his nose at the musky odour of
unfamiliar animals.
“I thought that these places didn’t like you getting
out of your car?” he said
“Shhh! You’ll
scare them off!” she hissed, a fierce grin twisting what he had previously
regarded as unremarkable features.
She was certainly different from her online profile, he thought. Perhaps
he should complain to the company when he got back. She was crouched in the shade
of a stand of bushes, sniffing at something that she had picked up. Euw!
“This way. I think we’ve
got one.”
“One what?” he asked,
quieter this time.
“Wild pig I reckon.
Hopefully a young one separated from the sow. Isn’t this great?”
Politeness made him choke back the long list of alternatives to ‘great’
that he thought this was.
He shuffled in her wake, trying to avoid tree roots that seemed to be
conspiring to send him sprawling face first into the dirt and sundry other
deposits that he would rather not consider too carefully.
As he passed her last stopping point, he heard a rustling crash of
leaves and breaking braches and was knocked down by a blow that caught him just
behind the knees. His spear finally succeeded in its attempts to escape his
grasp, falling alongside him.
He scrambled onto all fours just in time to find himself looking at
what appeared to his untrained eye to be something like a wire haired water
butt with legs – and tusks! The beast completed its turn, scrabbled for grip in
the dirt and charged towards him. His hand scrabbled for his fallen weapon.
As
he struggled to raise the spear, its tail caught in one of the tree roots.
Grabbing it with his other hand to try to pull it free, he was stunned once
again by the animal’s arrival. Blinking furiously to dispel the dust, he found himself
gagging on the creature’s failing breath from far too close to be comfortable.
He scrambled free as she ran over to him and helped him to his feet.
“You did it! That
was quick thinking.” she gushed “A stroke of genius to brace the spear in the
ground like that; you would never have stopped it before it gored you otherwise!”
She pulled him into an embrace where perfume fought a losing battle with sweat.
“Is that it?” he asked, disentangling himself
from her arms. “Can we go back now?” He though he sounded a tad less gracious than
he planned, but she was evidently undeterred.
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