The Rabbit

The boar came back.

Not charging this time. It emerged from the tree line about an hour later, while I was still sitting on the hillside trying to figure out approximately how doomed I was (very), whether the portal could be reopened (unlikely), and whether cave moss counted as food (desperately hoping not).

It walked into the clearing with the casual confidence of something that owned the hill and was merely tolerating my presence. In its mouth, it carried — I stared — a rabbit. A very dead rabbit. It dropped the rabbit about twenty feet from me, gave me a look that might have been an apology or might have been a threat, and retreated to the far edge of the clearing, where it lay down in the grass and watched me with its small red eyes.

I looked at the rabbit. I looked at the boar. I looked at the rabbit again.

"Is this... for me?" I asked.

The boar said nothing, on account of being a boar.

I'm not sure what happened between the charge and the rabbit. Maybe the mop had earned its respect. Maybe it felt guilty. Maybe — and this is the explanation I prefer — even wild boars recognize a fellow creature having a truly terrible day and occasionally act accordingly.

I built a fire. This part I knew. Dwarves may not spend much time on the surface, but we understand fire the way fish understand water. I found dry wood, struck sparks from two rocks — it took me five tries, because the rocks on the surface are unreasonably smooth compared to proper underground stone — and coaxed a small flame into existence.

I cooked the rabbit. I didn't have a spit or a pan or any seasoning, so I did what I could: jammed it onto my broken mop handle and held it over the flames like the world's most pathetic kebab. The meat charred on the outside and stayed questionable on the inside, but it was hot and it was food and after twelve hours of mopping followed by a fall down a garbage chute followed by an involuntary trip through an ancient portal followed by a fight with a boar, I would have eaten my own boots if someone had put them on a stick.

The boar watched from the edge of the clearing. I tore off a piece of rabbit and tossed it in the boar's direction. It sniffed, ate it, and lay back down.

"Cheers," I said.

The fire crackled. The stars came out — thousands of them, more than I'd ever imagined, scattered across the sky like diamond dust on black velvet. I'd read about stars. I'd seen drawings. But the drawings had not prepared me for the sheer number of them, or for the way they made me feel small in a manner that was entirely different from feeling small in the Rumbling Deeps. Underground, you feel small because everything was built by someone bigger than you. Under the stars, you feel small because nothing was built at all.

I sat by my fire, my belly full of badly cooked rabbit, my mop broken, my punishment incomplete, my location unknown, and my way home uncertain at best.

Somewhere to my left, the boar snored.

I was a long, long way from the Great Crossing. A long way from the Underpeak Academy. A long way from Duggan, and Gloria, and the desk we shared in Advanced Rune Studies.

But the fire was warm. The stars were extraordinary. And for the first time in a very long time, my school report's assessment of "unremarkable" felt less like an insult and more like a challenge.

I had a mop handle, a new scar on my knee, and a boar that owed me a favor.

It would have to be enough.