Living The Wild Life

The week had passed by for what seemed like months of nomadic survival. After only three days was Tony finally be able to climb the whole cliff and basically make it his little home along with Cloudfire. On the first days, Tony had given up trying to climb the Cloudy Cliff because his first fall had worsened his fear of heights. He called it the Cloudy Cliff in honour of the lazy cruel dragon that lived on top of it. He stayed down in the wilderness, using the few tips that Cloudfire gave him when he occasionally came down to find Tony nearly dying or wishing to die. He ate from the plants that he had been advised were safe and edible, and munched on the rare blueberry fields that were found here and there, their growths due to Cloudfire’s clumsy aim during hunting. Of course, Tony would hardly survive on such a weak nutrition, but the real meal was when cooked panther meat miraculously fell down from the sky, which seemed to only happen when he was in deep s**t, lost, or starving to death. He soon affiliated getting lost with getting panther meat, but that also led him to know the place thoroughly, which meant he wasn’t lost anymore, and thus, no more meat. After a harsh morning of waking up in a soggy, smelly tunnel surrounded by earthworms and grass snakes, then spending the day without any meat, and having a dry mouth that tasted like the bottom of an excessively concentrated tea due to all the leaves he had gnarled on, he finally gulped his courage and tackled the Cloudy Cliff.

            After a half-hour climb, an hour of rest, an hour of climbing, five hours of rest, and a final half-hour climb, he arrived at last to the top of the cliff before the sunset was getting too dark. He was ready for a good lunch or at least some sort of praise, but instead he found Cloudfire sleeping as hard as a rock. As the small creature snored, intense heat blew off from his nose, melting the air. Tony had not dared to wake him up, in fear that the dragon would wake up in a jolt and snort an involuntary fireball.

            When he woke up the next day, he found himself back to the start. He was once again surrounded by bushes and trees, next to a river with the view of the Cloudy Cliff a mile away, and he instantly knew that the scumbag midget dragon was to blame. With anger and determination he ran back to the cliff and hiked it all in only an hour. When he finally reached the top he was soaked with sweat, and as he stomped furiously towards Cloudfire, the dragon smiled wildly, showing his yellow, knife-sharp teeth. He raised a small stone that was carved in the shape of a cup and filled it with steaming brown liquid.

            “Want some home-made spitfire tea?” His voice was warm and welcoming.

            “I hate you!” Tony blustered back.

            “Actually, spitfires never made that kind of tea, of course, those plants are not found on our planet but hey, I’m the sole spitfire now, so I guess I’m the one making the traditions�"

            “I don’t care!”

            “You know what? You climbed the cliff in an hour this time.” Cloudfire said, with more seriousness in his voice.

            “…And so what?”

            “Last time, it took you two, and that’s if we don’t count the breaks.”

            “Really?” Tony asked, forgetting his frustration and looking back from where he climbed up.

“Nemusians learn a lot faster than humans do.”

            Tony then thought back to when his mother had first taught him how to ride a bicycle when he was five. He broke a leg. His first try had been horrible. He lost control, went the other side and down the hill. Half-way down the street he was wobbling on his two wheels, and for the other half he was tumbling and grinding down like a barrelling car, scrapping the bicycle, his knees,  and his clothes that became torn and stained with blood from all his cuts and bruises. He swore to never ride a damn bicycle ever again, but then at eight years old he kicked himself, stole Jimmy’s bike, jumped on it and went down that blasted road. He rode it good; he rode it perfectly in fact. He was as good as his brother, and Jimmy had been doing it since he was five. He pedaled back home and told his mom the great news and she was very surprised that he was now suddenly able to do it. Now that Tony thought about it, it really was surprising. He could have thought of other examples of his quick learning ability, like reading and writing, sports, his geography class and science class. He did succeed well at school, except for mathematics. But had he ever actually listened in that class? Come on, he was way too busy drawing penises or other silly and inappropriate pictures, and then secretly passing the paper to the other boys for them to make their own extra decoration. Okay, that didn’t take the whole class, but when it was the teacher’s turn to see the picture, you didn’t learn much from standing beside Mrs. Landry’s office.

And so, life was a lot easier when you had a place to run back to. Tony had almost learned to live on his own, but he always had to run back to Cloudfire when he needed something to be cooked up. Cloudfire could not show Tony how to make fire as the dragon himself didn’t know; he was born with the inborn ability to spit fire out from his intriguing interiors, and so he didn’t have to learn how to make fire in any other way. Even though Tony had acquired some survival skills, one thing that did not improve at all were his nemusian powers. Not once had he transformed into his nemusian counterpart, and even as he tried to force his calves out of his skin, the boy would not fly or even levitate a bit. His strength and endurance had increased a lot from regularly climbing the cliff and all the hiking in the forest, but nothing dramatic enough to knock out a panther. Pascal was able to do all that.  Cloudfire was always talking about Pascal, but Tony didn’t have any proof of Cloudfire’s babble because Pascal still hadn’t shown up. Cloudfire had actually grown very worried, and even as he searched, he couldn’t find him anywhere, and he still had to watch his step because the lizaard was still on the hunt, and these two could not be discovered. Not until Pascal would arrive. They were not powerful enough yet since Tony didn’t even uncover a single Birth Power. He was just a normal, hindering little earthling. It frustrated Cloudfire, but he couldn’t do anything about it, and he couldn’t really blame the kid. He knew it wasn’t his fault that he was so weak and irresponsible. To apologize, Tony spoke of many interesting things about the human way of life, and Cloudfire was a lot more updated with the contemporary world.

To replace Pascal’s job, Cloudfire sent Tony to construct a wooden shelter with a size big enough to fit one little boy, and durable enough to sustain rain and wind. Tony went on a journey to find rocks, wood, and vines to build his little alcove, and stuffed them in his bag that was made out of roots and panther skin. It was the only big animal that Tony ever saw in this forest, the rest being birds, bats, rabbits and squirrels. He thought he saw a tiger once in the shadow between two trees, but when he squinted to see if it really was one, the tiger turned around and softly articulated, “What you lookin’ at?” So Tony turned away, smacked himself in the head, turned around and it wasn’t there anymore. Deserted people did have mirages when they were starving, didn’t they? After a simple search for the necessary accessories to build his shelter, he climbed the Cloudy Cliff to get his instructions from the master on how to stick all the junk he had collected together and form a shed with it. Of course, Cloudfire hadn’t helped in any way; he just sat on his wooden throne, watching, pointing out and criticizing as much as he could. After many blisters and smashed fingers from cutting and chiselling with rocks, he finally finished building his little cabin, which had a base of rocks that held solid branches for the walls, and thicker branches for the pillars that sustained the roof. Leaves were tied up to the branch walls and roof with many vines that were cut with those rocks. Everything was then covered with a layer of leaves to keep out rain, dust and insects as much as leaves could sustain. Cloudfire had named it the Shithole because it was, from his experience, the worst job of a shelter that he had ever seen. However, the three necessities were still there: Trustworthy durability, big enough for only Tony to enter and be comfortable sleeping, and a roof that was….okay, it wasn’t waterproof at all, but that was a problem for later. So then, it was two out of three necessities. It was still averagely good for a boy who previously couldn’t survive without a sofa and a refrigerator.

Twilight was covering the whole forest, and the two friends were sitting at their usual edge of the cliff, sipping on their cups of Cloudfire’s special tea. They gazed at the sky, reminiscing about their old days, Cloudfire complaining about his good old winter days on his planet, hunting for Huskies. Huskies were not dogs on that planet; they were some kind of bears with husks on their forehead and small skis made from their exoskeleton on all its five feet. It was a big winter sport over there to ride them to exhaustion, and then kill them. Tony was moaning about how he missed school, and then he told Cloudfire about that time in 2^nd grade when he had held a yogurt tube to his pubis at lunch break, pretending it was his member, and whacked it across one of the cafeteria tables over and over again until it busted and splattered all over the neighbouring classmates’ hair and clothing.

“I worry…I really wonder where Pascal could have been. He’s never been gone that long before.” Cloudfire sighed.

“He’s probably just trying to discover some new things. Maybe he found another island nearby.” Tony answered.

“He could have warned me. He still doesn’t have control over all his powers, he’s still a child and anything could happen to him!”

“Your tea tastes great, Cloudy,” Tony said, trying to change the subject. “I sure do love hot chocolate better, but hey, I’m in the wilds now, as you always say.”

“Just grab a couple of leaves here and there, improvise a little,  boil some water, and there you go.”

“I don’t know what I could do without your fire, Cloudy. It sure saves me a lot of hell.” Tony said smiling.

“You do know that you’ll have to learn how to make a fire someday, kid.”

“Yeah…I know.”

“I won’t always be here to save you. You have a big future ahead of you, and I’ll be staying in this forest. I’m sure that fire will be of some use for you one day.”

“We never know, my nemusian super ego may have that fire power!” Tony grinned.

“Well, you never know. You can expect anything from the Hero.” He said, laughing.

“That’s… the spaceship you took to get here on Earth, right?” Tony asked, pointing at the pile of metal debris.

Cloudfire nodded. “When the ship crashed in the forest, I went to hide with Pascal because I didn’t know if the place was inhabited or not and I knew that such an explosion would attract attention. Humans kept coming here for weeks, searching everywhere for clues of an alien. Things got calmer as the months went by, but groups of researchers still come here unexpectedly every now and then so I always have to be on guard. Most of the ship parts that lay in the forest were taken away by the humans, but the ones they hadn’t found yet I gathered them with Pascal’s help and brought them here.”

“As a souvenir?”

“No, to use as raw material.”

“What do you mean, raw material?” Tony asked, dumbfounded.

“The metal on this ship can be used to build stuff. Like utensils, axes, shelters and tables even, you know? With Pascal’s Birth Powers and my fire, we can take pieces out of this pile and forge some useful equipment. Pascal even made this sword once but he kept trying to cut down trees with it and the blade broke in half instead.”

“Oh, I see… or else, everything has to me made out of wood or stone.”

“It’s doable to live with wood and stone, but this privileged access to metal gives us some little more luxury.”

“You have to help me forge a sword of my own, Cloudy! And also some shurikens and… a huge war axe!”

Cloudfire agreed. “Considering how weak you are without your Birth Powers, it would actually be a very good idea to make yourself a weapon of some sort.”

“Don’t you have any weapons I can borrow in the meantime?”

“Pascal used all sorts of weapons before his Birth Powers emerged,” Cloudfire explained, “They’re somewhere in the shed over there.”

 Tony’s eyes were already filled with eagerness.

“Don’t even think about it, you lazy loafer. Tomorrow you’ll go down there again and make your own.”

“What’s your problem always making it hard for nothing? It’ll just be easier�"”

“That’s what I’m trying to make you understand: life is NOT going to be easy for you, Tony. The earlier you know what being in danger is like, the earlier you’ll understand how to cope with it. If ever something happens and you end up on your own, you’ll at least have a slight idea of what to do. You have to prepare for that, I’m telling you.”

“Yeah… I know.” Tony sighed, “It’s just that… I never chose to be a superhero.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

***

 

 The tiger was strolling ahead, its head down, mumbling and kicking dirt as it walked down the trail to the Cloudy Cliff again. Dawn was coming once more and his hopes were draining. Hunger wasn’t a problem that’s for sure, but he’d replace all those easy birds, fishes and squirrels for hands and feet to climb the cliff again, or at least fly. Tigers don’t fly; he unfortunately tried it. He sat down, looking at the top of the cliff, hoping desperately that some face would show up and see his merciful self at the base of the precipice.

“Why am I even trying?” He grunted to himself, then shook his head and turned around to go get some food.

“Argh! ‘I warn you kid, don’t do it anymore you’re not used to it, you never know what might happen.’ He told me, don’t do it, don’t do it. And still, goddamn it I just can’t listen. Now hell do I look like an idiot ey?”

 He turned around one last time to take a glance of the precipice that he thought he might never climb again. There was no use even crying out for Cloudfire, he had tried over and over and nobody ever answered.

“Bullshit. I never wanted to stay like this. I just wanted to try. Can’t that be possible? No, of course not, I need to have all the rotten luck.”

 As he continued mumbling to himself, he saw a little grey mouse scurrying by with the corner of his eye. He quickly side-stepped in the mouse’s direction and slapped his big furry paw right on the little critter’s tail. The mouse was swimming endlessly in place as if trying to dig into the ground while having a seizure. With a roar the tiger snapped its monstrous jaw at the mouse’s head and in a second, only the tail was coming out of the tiger’s mouth and he slurped it in like a spaghetti noodle. As he crunched on the snack, he shuddered at the noise of crushing bones, and every time he felt like throwing up, but the taste was so good that it withered the envy away. But then again, the fact that he did like the taste made him want to throw up all over again. He spat the bones out like one would discharge the shell of a sunflower seed, and then gulped the remaining goodness. He wiped his muzzle in the grass to scrub away as much blood as possible, because even if he were a carnivorous beast, he never wanted to be one. He still did care about hygiene, but not to the point of licking his own balls, which he never got used to.

“Why was turning into a raven so easy? Snap, here you go, back to normal. But hey, f*****g tigers are not the same thing now, aren’t they? Oh here, I hand you some powers but woops I forgot the manual, it’s probably up my a*s or whatever, I don’t care. Find out by yourself. Now if I’d have known those rules I would’ve known that tigers are somehow different!”

Cloudfire had never taught him how to swear, but he had his own secrets. If Cloudfire could permit himself to visit other islands, so was he, he thought. But the dragon didn’t know that. Blasphemy was quite unusual to him, and he didn’t understand what the swear words meant at all, but it sure felt good when you were pissed, no matter if you used them in or out of context.

After a week of being a tiger, he got used to his body and he knew how to use his predatory senses and also how to displace himself with incredible speed and agility. The running part was in fact the only reason he wanted to turn into a tiger, it seemed so incredible. And it was. If not for toilet break or sleeping, he always ran around, and running after a prey was even more exciting. Catching up to a speeding fox or jumping up to a high preaching bird was fantastic. Once, he felt cocky and tried to run after a panther, but the panther turned around and started running after him. Didn’t work out quite well, and he never would’ve thought that black panthers were faster than tigers. Oh, and they also climbed trees. After a big scratch across the chest and a high fall from the tip of a branch, he never approached a panther again. Foxes were nicer. Being a tiger was fun alright, but now it was enough. He had enough since almost a week now. He wanted to turn back to normal again, but he couldn’t. Cloudfire warned him about something like that. Of course, curiosity is the human flaw. Supposedly, it was a nemusian trait too.

The tiger heard some ruckus to the left of him, and as he tiptoed like a house cat sneaking up on a dirty sock, he opened his ears and focused his gleaming red irises.

 “Ha-ha, got you now.” The reptilian monster hissed at the little mouse he held up by the tail. He threw it up and the panicking mouse danced in the air before it landed down the humanoid reptile’s mouth, followed by a squeak and a teeth-grinding crunch.

“Ha-ha, I got YOU now.” The tiger whispered to himself as he silently approached down the monster’s back. He knew what that monster was, he saw it about a week ago searching in the bushes as it whispered, “Where is he, where is that cursed little boy?” The lizaard was finally looking for him, the Hero, as Cloudfire had foretold would eventually happen. Then there was this other little boy he saw in the forest the day before but… he was hungry and tired. The boy was probably just a mirage. The tiger lowered his whole body, and then sprung, paws held up before him, ready to rip off that lizaard’s neck once and for all. At the last second some sort of sharp, pinnacle claw attached to the end of a serpent-like tail grabbed the tiger’s face and dragged him down to the ground. The tiger fought to pull his grip away from the pinnacle digging in his face, but the lizaard’s tail was stronger than him, so the tiger blindly dug his crooks down at the ground trying to step back uselessly. The claw finally let go of his face, but before the tiger could see what was going on, a large foot whacked him right on the muzzle and it sent him rolling over to the side.

“Holy shiiit!” The blond boy screamed as he got up on his two legs and started running away.

“What?” He halted for a second, and gazed at his tanned feet and filthy toes, then at his five fingered hands.

“Wohooo!” He shouted as he examined his naked human body, and then blasted off in the night sky right before a pinnacle claw dashed for his heels. “Now to find some spare clothes.” Pascal said, heading for the cliff.

 “I’m a real boy now! Ha-ha!” He shouted as loud as he could, a quote he remembered from that Pinocchio book Cloudfire had read to him in his early years. In that book though, the boy had transformed and still had some clothes on. Maybe he’ll also learn how to do that eventually. The stars were covered by a thick black cloud, and far away thunder started growling, and in a sudden it made Pascal feel how cold it was outside. It made him realize how he had never been cold as a tiger because of his thick fur that could let him sleep outside without the cold, the itching of grass, and the bug bites.

He landed home and quickly ran to a shed while crossing his arms, shivering, and clanking his teeth. He entered the little cabin and dug into a pile of cloths, knowing exactly where to go, and found the bag he was looking for. He put on the first thing he touched, which was a long-sleeved panther skin robe that went down to his knees, and a pair of khaki shorts he had found in a garbage bin on a nearby island. He used the tree vine that was in its pocket as the belt. It wasn’t the most stylish attire ever but it was sufficient enough to get warm. Pascal then spotted Cloudfire sleeping on his grass bed on the corner of the cliff. Cloudfire had a bed inside his shelter, but he had also made himself another bed outside so he could sleep under the stars when the weather was good. The weather was starting to get bad though, so he felt like waking Cloudfire up to warn him it was getting cold. He was about to run towards him, wake him up, explain his embarrassing misadventure and apologize for not having given any news for a week, but then he saw a little farther to the left a very shabby little cabin that looked like it would fall apart any second.

“Who built this shithole? Not Cloudfire that’s for sure.” He started advancing towards the shelter when something snapped in his mind.

 “Bad idea! Oh no, I didn’t think of that. I hope he didn’t see me come here. Cloudfire said we’re not ready to face him yet.” This time, he did listen to Cloudfire. His last experience was enough to determine that the dragon was usually right. He was definitely not ready for the lizaard to find him here.

Little drops of rain started falling, and Pascal blasted off. “I need to distract this lizaard and prevent him from going there." He said as he flew over the island.