Another month passed—he was counting this time.
The jungle never slept and as his awareness of the area expanded, he realized just how much his previous naivety had protected him.
The jungle suddenly felt like a game map, and he had leveled up.
The newly unlocked area—so close, yet to unfamiliar—was the large swampland five miles to the east of his base.
He had discovered it by accident.
If there was one prey he was not excited to partake in, it was the countless snakes which slithered by, on top of, and around his feet half-a-dozen times a day.
Needless to mention where his trauma originated.
But principles, even traumatic-based ones, in the face of survival, was like a stripper refusing to dance for money—Xavier always knew he would have to dance, but he hoped such a time was further away.
How wrong was he?
The first snake was cooked but never eaten.
The second snake—he captured it, nursed it for a couple of weeks, and released it. When it tried to strike him, a fit of madness led to a massacre of the nearby slithering population.
The third snake was undercooked but properly spiced. And if there was any way to overcome trauma, it was to make something tasty out of the offender.
That seemingly did the trick.
So, when snake hunting became a regular thing and he noticed more shed skins as he approached the east, he walked with the stride of a man whose confidence was inch-deep and a canyon-wide.
It was around that time he met the swamp—the place which never slept.
Even when the air seemed still, something was always moving—water shifting under mats of rot, insects tapping against leaves, distant splashes that might have been fish or might not.
Definitely not fish.
The first few nights after he settled near the marsh edge, he barely slept at all.
He lay with one eye open, jaw clenched crookedly from the old tear that never healed right, listening to the wet world breathe around him.
Discomforts kept him awake and alert.
He thought about trying the insects but for some reason, their colorful exterior scared him. From the frogs to the beetles, all of them looked just a bit too exotic for consumption. As if they would crawl back out of your throat when devoured.
He did find some thing which worked.
A patch of prickly grass which, when boiled, attracted insects like moths to a flame—just a small bowl in the night would lure anything buzzing away from his immediate vicinity.
The pain of his shoulder eased a lot near the swamps, and his hands twitched and spasmed just a little less.
Sadly, it was not all good news—everything was new, which meant twice as dangerous.
Nighttime became a game of chance—he had to wait until drawn to move around.
Peak noon was usually when the tests began—varying lengths of sticks confirmed the water was shallow near the reed beds, dark with silt.
Slow and cautious was the name of the game, as he inspected boundaries like a researcher testing for pitfalls in arctic ice.
When nothing lunged for a couple of days, he stepped in.
It was not a full step—it was done with the technique of a maiden testing a tub for the perfect temperature.
The grin, warped by his scar, that sat on Xavier's face as he thought about the absurdity of his action and how it related to Goldilocks and The Three Bears, was genuine for perhaps the first time in months.
Mud sucked greedily at his ankles—it was somewhat comfortable, in a terrifying sort of way. Like the beauty of twinkling stars on your way to oblivion.
Every step threatened to pull him off balance, and once he did stumble, catching himself on a cypress knee and hissing through broken teeth as his shoulder screamed.
Fast movements will be the death of me. He thought.
Still, he breathed through every ache and pain.
Counted heartbeats.
Let the panic burn itself out.
Eels hid where the water barely moved. He learned that by failing first—grabbing at ripples that vanished, plunging his arm into holes that spat nothing back but cold slime.
On the fifth day, he felt something coil under his fingers and reacted on instinct, clamping down hard.
It thrashed violently, slick and powerful, and he nearly lost it when his grip faltered. He slammed it against a submerged root again and again until it went limp.
Even after its movements had ceased, he dared not look at his prey until he was back on solid ground.
There was a paranoia to his every movement—the natural instinct of a hunter who had caught something worthy.
Just how many animals were waiting for him to look away so they could snatch his prey.
A this point, he considered himself just another cog in the natural machine—the puma, which stalked him on occasion, was a competitor in the jungle of life.
And also… he dared say—a friend?
He sat in the mud afterward, shaking, eel laid across his thigh like proof that he still could. It was large, almost ten pounds by his estimate.
It had either eaten something or he was in for a meal that would last days. It was rare to have meals that would extend beyond the immediate.
The future had become a forbidden thought for a while, but now—he dared hope. And ironically, hope dared him back.
Cleaning the catch took longer—patience bled into frustration, and frustration bled into an internal conflict of bomb diffusion. What to cut and what to let remain?
Cutting away even an ounce of meat would break his heart.
Every incision had to be exacting—a failure to do so was a blatant disrespect to all his efforts up to this point.
Still… tears leaked unbidden, turning into heart-wrenching sobs when he ruined the first one. He sliced too deep, gagging at the smell, retching until his vision went white.
The second went better.
By the fourth, his hands remembered what his mind could not fully hold.
And perhaps due to his shallow disposal methods, snaked came that night.
Luckily, he was prepared.
Snakes did not appear often—but often enough that he prepared.
He strung twine between trees and tied dried seed pods and hollow fruit shells along the lines.
When something moved through the perimeter, it rattled softly, like a warning whispered just for him.
It wasn't clever.
It didn't need to be.
It worked.
The idea came to him when a particular bout of constipation led to an hours-long waste disposal—when he recovered from the ordeal, the puma was all but prepared to borrow one of his toes.
Like a cultivator due for a breakthrough, Xavier understood the concept of enlightenment. By that evening, a dozen traps had materialized in his mind's eyes, half-a-dozen alert methods, and a forbidden soap-technique which would make him inedible even to the most desperate predators.
This was the origin of enlightenment.
He started recognizing plants.
Broad leaves that burned when crushed—he avoided those.
Small orange fruit that stained his fingers and tasted faintly sweet.
Pale mushrooms that grew in clusters on fallen logs—he tested them the old way, cautious and slow.
By now, he could identify fifty trees with useful sap and leaves, roughly twenty bushes useful for reducing fever and promoting blood circulation, and mushrooms became an encyclopedia of their own in his mind.
Spices, medicine, direct consumption.
He had a mushroom for every occasion.
His favorites were the ones that almost killed him since, when combined with some of the sap, he got to meet Albert Einsten for a conversation about why golden zebras were eliminated from Darwin's cycle of evolution in the 36th century.
Essentially… psychedelics.
The swamp made finding food easier. That granted him enough free time to do everything else.
He made his shelter better, piece by piece.
Raised it off the ground. Added woven panels.
A place where the damp didn't creep into his bones so badly.
Some days he just sat inside it, back against the wall, breathing, hands twitching uselessly in his lap. Therapy, of a kind.
Learning to exist inside his own skin again.
It wasn't nerve damage as much as it was realigning his body to a new normal—thoughts became actions more easily so he had to control intentions very carefully. That way, twitches started to disappear.
He hunted when he could, creating a makeshift sling.
Once, he saw a bear across the water, massive and quiet.
He froze, heart hammering, then backed away slowly until the trees swallowed him.
It glanced in his direction just before he disappeared into the thicket—his soul left his body for a moment, only to be brought back by a whimper next to him.
The puma—it had been looking at the puma.
For the first time, man and toe-assaulter were united in their efforts for survival. Their relationship became a lot less hostile following the death-scare.
Another day, he spared a fish without knowing why, watching it dart back into the murk—he didn't even get mad when fishes were missing the next day. He knew the most-likely culprit.
The choice surprised him. He didn't dwell on it.
Recovery came unevenly.
Some mornings he woke stronger.
Others he could barely stand.
Time blurred. Days folded into one another.
As his awareness of the area expanded, he started marking trees with shallow cuts once more, to avoid walking in circles, then forgot why the marks were there until he needed them again.
It was during his usual patrol, cautious as always, that a blessing finally descended onto his unfortunate, jungle existence.
A ray of light in the dark.
He saw the first animal not interested in killing him, seeing as it passed mere feet from him, stop and inspected him for almost a minute, then continued on its way.
All the while he was frozen, rubbing his eyes and checking his mushroom supply to find out if he had unknowingly already taken his weekly dose.
Addiction would come slow so he made a rule not to get high on his own supply—he often broke that rule but that was beside the point.
The goat was definitely real.
He followed the goat for a time, lost track of it, found the tracks again and lost it once more near the rocky terrain.
He heard it first this time—stone clicking against stone higher up the slope.
He followed the sound carefully, breath shallow, foot placement precise despite the weakness in his leg.
It stood silhouetted against the sky, lean and alert.
Perhaps, due to being close to home, it had started to sense something amiss.
Food. Real food. He thought.
Hope struck him so sharply he nearly laughed again.
For a moment, the shadows angles just right that his position was no longer hidden—man met eyes with beast, and they both broke into a run.
He lunged.
The goat bolted, sure-footed, and leapt down the mountainside without hesitation.
Xavier skidded after it, heart in his throat, loose gravel sliding under him.
He had set the rules of hunting but as soon as he saw meat—true meat for the first time—all the rules went out the window.
He nearly went over the edge—caught himself on a scrubby root, chest slamming hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.
He lay there, gasping, staring down.
The goat had landed safely below, already moving, disappearing toward a lower valley rich with green.
Xavier followed its path with his eyes, mind racing—not with hunger, but with planning.
He smiled, slow and fierce.
Then he turned back toward camp.
Tomorrow, he would be ready.
Crawling back to safety, standing on a ledge which allowed him to see the mountain, the waterfall, and the swamp for the first time, he declared his intention to the skies. "FUCK JEFFREY EPSTEIN!"
In his mind, a thought echoed. Where did that come from?