Weeks later…
There was a ferocity to his movements, divorced from civilization, time, and general human expectations. It was amazing what a little isolation could contribute to the unravelling of a human mind.
Or perhaps, it was more accurate to say, freeing the mind.
Debts, etiquette, empathy—anything not conducive to the absolute kill intent a strike needed to possess when hunting was discarded. First in bits, then more wholesome.
Steps sunk inches deeper, heel first, then rise again by the tips of his toes—a crab-like stance, setting one foot in the exact place the previous had ventured from.
His breathing curled through his nose, spun in his lungs with the slow grind of the soft-fabric mode on a washing machine, and brought out condensed heat through his mouth.
It was a system—quiet, temperature-controlled, deadly.
Xavier heard it before he saw it.
A soft, panicked rustle—too light to be wind, too erratic to be rain—threading through the undergrowth to his left. He had decided against going that direction, the bushes gave a nasty rash—it was embarrassing it took a genitalia infection to figure that out.
It lasted days.
Now, it seemed such an unfortunate experience helped him to avoid startling the prey this time.
His body reacted before his mind caught up.
Despite the semi-brace, woven from vines, tightened around his shoulder, pain still flared, nerves screaming as he twisted. Too fast, teeth clenching hard enough the torn corner of his mouth opened slightly.
Not a lot, just enough he could taste blood leaking from his left lower and upper gums.
Pain. Good.
Pain meant awareness.
He froze, breath shallow, counting without numbers—it always helped to count. Always keeping something in the mind, since the voice was banned in hostile territory.
The entire jungle was hostile territory.
As he breathed, the jungle around him breathed back—dripping, layered, alive. Southern beech leaves trembled overhead, slick with moisture.
Coigüe trunks rose like dark pillars, their bark veined with moss and lichen.
The air smelled of wet soil, rot, and something faintly sweet—decay turning back into life.
Then he saw it.
A small pudú deer—no bigger than a dog—stood half-hidden between ferns, its dark eyes wide, legs tense as wire.
It had wandered too close to the riverbank.
Too close to him.
A moment that made him proud—when he admired its beauty for a fraction of second, proving to himself there was still a bit of humanity, or at least, vainness, present beneath the indifferent survival-craved hunter he was becoming.
But that didn't stop what needed to happen next.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Man versus Animal.
Animal versus Man.
Xavier's hands shook. His fingers were stiff, swollen, half-numb—he never did recover the same level of dexterity he had before the venom poisoning.
His hand was always a fraction slower, not a lot but enough to determine whether a mosquito would live or die.
He felt the weight of hunger and desperation then—real hunger, the kind that pressed behind the eyes and hollowed the chest.
Real desperation, the kind of a father who knew if he didn't catch prey on the mountain that day, his daughter and wife would miss a couple of days of meals—only, Xavier was, in this case, the mother, the child, and the hunting father.
There was an innate desperation to a hungry man—the more desperate and hungrier he became, the calmer he had to be.
So he killed it. Eyes closed—the panic. Eyes opened –the desperation.
He had to access something quieter.
HE NEEDED MEAT!
He took one step.
The pudú bolted.
Xavier lunged without thinking. His foot slid on wet leaves, his bad shoulder screamed as he pitched forward, catching himself on his forearm.
Mud swallowed his fingers. He gasped, water-slick breath tearing through his chest. By the time he pushed himself up, the forest had already swallowed the animal whole.
Gone.
He stayed where he was, panting, forehead pressed to the ground. His vision pulsed at the edges.
For a moment—just a moment—he laughed.
A short, broken sound that turned into a cough and then into nothing at all.
Too slow. Too loud. Too broken.
His mind was ready. His mind knew what he was capable of, how to move, how to talk, how to corner prey, but the moment he took the first step, the coordination between body and mind collapsed.
Despite the trials and tribulations of survival thus far, Xavier had hardly felt a more disgusting sensation than his lack of coordination.
He forced himself upright and limped forward anyway.
Movement mattered more than success.
The rainforest didn't reward stillness.
As he pushed through a stand of nalca leaves—broad, waxy, taller than his chest—he noticed the ground change. The soil here was disturbed. Small claw marks. Broken stems. Droppings. Fresh.
He scooped up the droppings, smelled it.
Rodents—that, at least, remained the same whether in an abandoned building or endless jungle.
His stomach tightened.
He crouched—carefully this time—lowering his weight inch by inch even as his knees screamed in protest.
Beneath a fallen log slick with fungus, he saw it: a burrow entrance, no wider than his fist.
The smell was unmistakable. Warm. Alive.
Xavier swallowed.
He had no traps. No blade worth the name. Just a sharpened stone tied with vine and his own hands, already half-useless.
Still.
He waited.
There were many strategies cycling through his head—plugging the holes and smoking out the prey, setting a trap in front of every borrow, digging with the faint chance that it wouldn't abandon its burrow.
But all of those solutions depended on one thing—he had to find all the burrows.
There was no way to accomplish that so he decided on a tried-and-true method.
Minutes stretched. Or hours.
Time did strange things when pain became constant.
He pressed his back against the log, ignoring how cold seeped through his spine, and watched the hole with single-minded focus. His breath slowed. His thoughts narrowed. Hunger sharpened him.
There was only one way this would end—the rodent would die (from his swift, opportunistic strike), or he would die (from the exhaustion of waiting, stalking).
Something moved.
A long-tailed rice rat nosed out cautiously, whiskers twitching.
Its fur was dark, nearly black, blending into the loam.
It was a bit thin—probably a couple of bites at most, but even the bones would be chewed. Food was food.
Xavier moved.
He slammed his good hand down hard, missing by inches—sliding his leg to block another obvious path, the rat shrieked and switched direction.
Its fumbling was enough time for his right hand to entrap it, but like a curse meant for the moment, a spasm ran through his muscles—his hand refused to close, freezing… seizing.
The rat shrieked once more, wiggled free in a split second and vanished in a blur of fur and dirt.
Xavier collapsed forward with a sound that might have been a curse if his jaw still worked right—he had exhausted a month of strength in such a swift reactionary movement.
Silence rushed back in.
He lay there, chest heaving, face pressed into wet earth.
For a long time, he didn't move.
The exhaustion was… welcoming. Once upon of time, he would have lost hope in a moment like this, but now, forged in the steel cauldron of survival, the only thing he could feel was a thirst for more life—more excitement, more hunting.
Eventually, he rolled onto his side.
"Stupid," he tried to say, but it came out wrong—slurred, wet, barely human.
He stopped trying.
The comforts of his mind should be enough to stave off the need for verbal, audible commentary.
He pushed himself up again.
Failure didn't mean stop. It meant adjust. Adapt. Survive. Then thrive.
Further in, near a stand of arrayán trees with their cinnamon-colored bark, he found something better.
Not meat—but promise. Pale mushrooms clustered near the roots, thick-stemmed and intact. He didn't know their name. He didn't know if they were safe.
That was the rule now: if the animals ate it, he could try. If the animals died and he was particularly hungry—just boil it first.
So, he watched.
Slugs slid across the caps, leaving silver trails. Beetles nibbled at the edges. Nothing recoiled. Nothing died.
Xavier cut one free with his stone, sniffed it. Earthy. Clean. He took the smallest bite possible.
Waited for an excruciating death.
When that didn't come, he waited for a cripple stomach ache. When that didn't come, he waited for a feeling of discomfort or depending hunger.
When that didn't happen, he decided it was either a silent killer, meaning he would not wake up in the morning, or it was safe to eat.
Nothing burned. Nothing swelled. His tongue didn't go numb.
He ate another.
By the time he finished, his hands were shaking—not from fear, but relief. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. But it was something.
He hunted for a while longer, snatching all the moss, mushrooms and fruit-like round things he could before departing, following his trail, guided by intricately marked trees which said 'Remember, it's this way. Idiot!'
Every time he passed an unmarked tree, a crude line was slashed across its bark. A promise he could find his way back.
He turned toward the river, limping, shoulders slumped, mouth tasting of blood and fungus.
Still alive.
For now.
And in this place—cold, wet, indifferent—that was the only victory that mattered.