Chapter 16: Chapter 14 – The Lake

The day it all changed began as usual. I woke up, foraged for food, and let my parents prepare the ingredients. It was during breakfast that my parents made a bombshell announcement.

“After breakfast, I want you all to start packing up your stuff.”

“What? Why?” I asked.

“We’re moving of course. It’s harder to find deer now, and surely you noticed that it’s harder to find food to forage, right?”

Given that I usually forage near the elven settlement, which everyone else avoids like the plague, I never noticed, but I nodded my head regardless.

“Where are we moving to?” I asked.

“I don’t know the specifics myself, but it’s about three days’ worth of walking from here.”

“Three days for you or three days for me?”

“For you. Remember that all of us are moving, which includes the young children, and there’s no rush, so we’ll be taking it easy.”

Oh good, I thought. I didn’t want to run a marathon for three days, especially while carrying stuff. Speaking of which…

“So how much stuff am I carrying?”

“Just all your personal stuff is fine.”

I didn’t own much at all, so I didn’t think much of it.

 

However, after breakfast, when I showed up back in the living room after a few minutes with just a leather bag with all my stuff, my father asked, “Didn’t we tell you to pack everything?”

“It’s here,” I said, showing the bag.

“What about your bed?”

“My… bed?”

“Yes, your bed. We aren’t leaving anything behind. Not to mention I doubt you’d want to sleep on the floor.”

“But how am I supposed to carry that?”

“What do you mean, you just – oh right. Well, try carrying it and if you really can’t, we can help.”

 

To be fair, the bed wasn’t that heavy, but it was rather bulky and large so it was difficult to carry. I ended up throwing everything on the bed and tying it down, and then lifted the bed along with everything out the door. I was wondering if there was a cart or something similar, but I didn’t see anything like that, not to mention the forest floor isn’t exactly smooth either.

 

A few hours later, my family uprooted the stakes holding our tent in place and we went out to a relatively open clearing. I was somewhat worried about watching the rest of my family carry so much stuff, all balancing on top of their heads, but apparently that’s normal. Meanwhile, if I didn’t tie my stuff to my bed, it would have come tumbling down.

 

Now that literally everyone was finally gathered in one area, I could finally get an accurate population of my village. I counted about a thousand, which was quite a bit more than I expected. Rather than count every person or have rollcall, the way they determined if everyone was here was simply just look around and make sure there were no more tents erected, and no lupo was around the area outside.

What if there was someone that wandered off? Would they just be abandoned by the rest? I thought.

 

The three-day trip was uneventful and was indeed at a pace I could keep up with, although I had to offload my bed to my brother Cabg occasionally when my arms got sore. Not only that, it was boring just walking so I also talked up a storm with him. Hopefully he wasn’t annoyed…

 

Our new home was near a large lake, and unlike the small body of water near our old home, this lake had fish swimming in it. I asked my family if we could settle as close to the lake as possible, and they agreed. Once they finished pitching the tent and I moved my stuff back into my room, I immediately jumped into the lake since it’s been quite a while since I last bathed.

My mother found me, and yelled “Sofare! Make sure to not move too far away from the shore!”

I yelled back, “Why? Are there scary animals in the lake?”

“No, but the water is a lot deeper here, and you’ll drown!”

“Hm? But I know how to – “ I said, before realizing I never learned the word ‘swim’. “Uh, move in the water without touching the ground.”

“Still, just in case!”

“Yes, mom.”

 

Even though the only thing illuminating the lake was the moon, the lake was clear enough that I could still dunk my head in the water and see the various fish swimming around. I wonder how they’d taste, or if they were even edible, since the main protein source I’ve eaten was deer, and I most definitely didn’t get to eat any seafood. I was thinking if I could make a fishing rod or something, but the kind of threads that exist aren’t going to be thin enough and strong enough to really work. A net might work, but I’d need some help and they have to be near the shore.

 

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When I returned home, I asked my parents, “Are the, uh, aquatic animals in the lake edible?”

“You mean the fish? They should be? But they don’t taste very good. Deer is definitely better,” my dad said. “If you really want to, you can always hunt one and cook it yourself.”

“How do I hunt a fish?” I asked. Or rather, why are they even using the word hunt for fish anyways?

“The same with deer? Just throw a spear at the fish.”

“…Okay.” Well, that explains the word usage.

 

Somehow, I doubt it’ll turn out well, but I decided to try it nonetheless. Spearfishing is a thing back on Earth, right?

I walked into Cabg’s room and asked, “Hey, can I borrow your spear for a while?”

“What for?”

“I wanted to try catching some fish in the lake for dinner.”

“Oh, that sounds fun. Mind if I watch?”

“Go ahead.”

 

The two of us walked to an unoccupied spot on the shore. I walked to the shoreline, only to be pulled back by my brother.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Don’t get that close. You’ll scare away the fish.”

“What? But I’m not even near the water! The fish aren’t the same as deer, you know.”

“Well, I don’t know much about fish, but if they run away, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I walked to the edge of the shore, and the fish didn’t change their behavior.

“See, I told you so.”

“Whoa, then doesn’t this make these fish easy prey? They’re a bit small though, but if they don’t run when you get this close, this is easy! And they’re stuck in the water, so you don’t even need to search for them.”

“That’s only if you can hit them though. Well anyways, here goes nothing,” I said, as I threw the spear.

Not surprisingly, I splendidly missed, even though the fish was around ten meters away.

“Huh, you really do suck, just like the rumors say.”

“Wait, what rumors? Also, I’ll have you know that throwing a spear at fish isn’t easy.”

“I heard mom and dad talking with Beda, and how Beda told our parents that you were hopeless with a spear and they should give up on you learning hunting. Also, how hard can throwing a spear at a fish be? Let me show you.”

My brother entered the water only to walk halfway and turn back, complaining, “Aw, the water is too deep here. And I really liked that spear.”

“Hm? You don’t know how to, uh, move in the water without touching the ground?”

“No? It’s not like you can do that either.”

Actions speak louder than words so I just swam and retrieved the spear, much to Cabg’s surprise.

I handed him his spear, saying “Well you can now show me how easy it is to hunt fish.”

Cabg threw the spear, and also missed, much to his surprise.

“See? It isn’t as easy as it looks,” I said.

“But I swore I aimed right at the fish though. And it’s such a big target too.”

“It’s probably something to do with the fact that light bends differently in water, so I think you need to aim a bit closer to actually hit the fish.”

Cabg went and tried to swim to retrieve the spear, only for him to flail around and give up. He complained about getting water in his ears and up his nose, so I went and got the spear instead.

We took turns throwing the spear until my brother finally hit one. I swam and retrieved the fish, which was as long as my arm. We walked home, with my brother slightly drooling as we talked about how to prepare the fish and what it would taste like.

 

I had no idea how to prepare a whole fish properly, so I just scraped the scales off the fish, removed the organs, and then just grilled the rest on a spear.

At dinner, my family dug into the fish, only for my parents to frown a bit while eating it, while my brother seemed to like it. As for me, I honestly preferred the fish over the deer, although it might be because I haven’t eaten fish since forever, and the nostalgic flavor problem made it taste better. I was surprised that such a simple cooking method worked with the fish too. Well, looks like there’s something new to add to the menu, just need to drag my brother over to help “hunt fish.”

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