The decision to go after the goat did not arrive cleanly.
It came in fragments—half-thoughts that surfaced while he was chewing dried fish, while his fingers worked twine into new seams, while he stared at the pale scar tissue climbing his forearm like something foreign.
It was agonizing.
The goat had grown synonymous with hope in his mind—and nobody wanted to kill hope. But—
Hope would probably taste great. He thought, unbidden.
Days turned to weeks.
His thoughts played hide-and-seek with his mind, but his subconscious was the ultimate betrayer—leading his hand to sharpening knives when it had no business to, grounding spices for meat without his say-so, even dreaming about milk every night.
Thus, he decided.
If he was going to do this, it would take weeks of preparation.
Not a hunt.
An absence—a void in the jungle that barely recognized him.
A slow, deliberate removal of himself from everything familiar, because the mountain did not forgive shortcuts.
He would make this hunt into a religion, working out cost, balancing equations, planning for even the most distant failures.
Because—hope required as much.
And, more embarrassingly—I always wanted to be a GOAT.
He packed with a care that was ritually significant, humming distorted hymns under his breath as if blessing each instrument for an exorcism.
There was no single bag.
He had learned that lesson early—one tear, one slip, and everything was gone.
Instead, he stitched pockets everywhere: inside his shirt lining, along the backs of his thighs, across his ribs where fabric rubbed skin raw.
Small packets of healing powder—crushed bark and dried leaves that smelled sharp and medicinal—were wrapped in oilcloth and tucked close to his body so moisture wouldn't ruin them.
Of course, healing powder was the most obvious of what he packed—truthfully, he brought tubes of medicine wrapped in leaves, crusted-clay with liquid insides of herbs, capsules of mixtures meant to stimulate and paralyze.
Dried fish went lower, weight balanced so it wouldn't pull at his injured shoulder.
Moss, dried but still springy, was folded flat and lashed near his hip where he could reach it one-handed if the other failed him, and it helped that its sweat-absorbent properties would add a subtle later of protection.
He tested each pocket by jumping once, then twice.
Grimaced when pain flared in his leg, adjusted the brace until the pressure felt tolerable instead of blinding. He was not supposed to be putting pressure on the leg but if he failed to move, then he would cease to survive.
Weapons came next.
He sharpened the stone blade until his fingers ached, then sharpened it again.
And again.
By now, he could tell which stones endured the longest, which ones seemed sharp yet failed to slice even a fish, and which, when exposed in turn to sunlight, sap, and water, transformed into weapons precise enough to hold a hairline edge.
It wasn't until recently he learned how to make hilts, allowing him to take advantage of his thinnest, slicing creations.
Each pass scraped away a little more, the sound thin and precise.
He fitted it into a wooden hilt carved carefully to match the crooked grip of his damaged hand.
The balance mattered.
Too forward and it would twist his wrist.
Too light and it wouldn't bite.
When it finally sat right, he closed his eyes and tested the motion, slow arcs through the air, listening to the whisper it made.
The whisper was both threatening and relieving—knowing it would protect you as if you were someone it was tasked to protect against.
Xavier, of course, made needles as well—wooden, polished smooth, sharp enough to pierce skin if he had to close himself up again.
The thought did not frighten him anymore.
It was just another contingency.
The only thing he could do nothing about was his teeth. But in his opinion, the jagged edges of shattered pieces gave him a shark-like ferocity… even if it tore into his tongue accidentally every other day.
The pills came last.
He wrapped them in cloth, then in bark, then hid them where they would not jingle or shift.
It was not despair that made him bring it. It was stubbornness. If he died out there, it would not be as meat. He would not feed the mountain.
The thought anchored him strangely, like a line tied to something solid.
In Hinduism, it was called Ananda—the joy of being. That was the closest definition he could equate the sensation to; the knowing that 'the end' was something you could decide.
Xavier had lived in the jungle long enough to know that, sometimes, death was a mercy.
He left before dawn, taking a different route since this was different from his usual excursions.
He didn't travel through the bushy, thorn-riddled patches to disguise his path, nor did he wade through the swamplands of infernal insects and snakes. Most of all, he couldn't take the path of least resistance usually travelled.
Thus, he took to the trees, using an emergency vine system he had established almost by accident due to extended periods of terror-fueled, fugue paranoia.
Tree to tree witnessed his path.
Then, trees led to logs, logs led to walking atop the roots—everywhere that wouldn't leave an easily discernable trace.
The jungle thinned as he climbed, trees giving way to scrub and exposed rock.
The air changed too—drier, sharper, carrying the faint mineral scent of stone warmed by yesterday's sun.
This was the point he would have to ascend.
The jungle was like that—some parts would abruptly lead up the mountain, and other parts, would just as abruptly dip. Xavier had yet to figure out the best way to ascend the mountain, and a large part of that reason was his unwillingness to.
Such a perspective was working to his disadvantage at the moment.
As he started his climb—experienced due to deadly realities of the waterfall upon his descent—he took out his rope early, looped around natural anchors, tested twice before trusting it with his weight.
Every movement was deliberate.
He moved like someone older than his body, someone who had learned the cost of impatience. His level, by this point, rivalled the best, most experienced, freehand mountain climbers in the world.
Up. Down.
Across the ledge.
Leg folding around the branch as he scooted his way to the other side.
Every step was a potential final possibility.
There were slips between but it didn't weigh as much in his mind—he could see the bottom, though somewhat far, it was visible. Anything visible could not evoke much fear.
He murmured as he went.
Not prayers. Just sound.
Counting steps. Naming holds.
Reminding himself which leg was weak, which hand shook when he pushed too hard.
The mountain answered with echoes that sounded like breathing if he didn't think about it too much. He had learned to phaseout the rushing waterfall in the background but while climbing, it became a soothing sort of melody.
When he reached the protrusion—the place he had watched the goat disappear into—his chest tightened with something close to triumph.
He vaulted over the side with a struggle which bordered on constipation, illegal penetration, and a general hatred for solid things.
For a moment, Xavier imagined the mountain as a perverted old man.
There were the types of thoughts that kept him alive… kept him sane, even in the most unfortunate of circumstances.
When he oriented himself—standing, he saw it properly.
Not a cave. Not really.
Just a hole in the rock, narrow and dark, barely wider than his forearm. He crouched, peered inside, pressed his cheek to the stone and listened.
Nothing. No warmth. No movement.
The goat had probably slipped somewhere deeper, somewhere the mountain kept to itself. That made it slightly easier to manage—he had packed enough for a month, more if rationed properly.
This would either be an ambush or a relentless hunt—and an ambush was more energy efficient.
Xavier laughed once, quietly—the thought of meat moistening his tongue for a couple of seconds.
He did not turn back. He could not turn back.
Digging stone was a lesson in humility.
He chipped away at the edges, bit by bit, hands numb, shoulders screaming.
Each small victory—a thumb's width gained, a corner loosened—felt enormous.
He permitted himself breaks only for essential needs and to reinforce his alarm system—after all, it would be a colossal waste to dig with such diligence, plotting an ambush down to the smallest detail, only to fail because the goat strayed too near, either startling away or turning the trap against him.
He worked over days, resting when the world tilted too sharply, binding his leg tighter when the brace slipped.
He slept wedged against rock, rope tied around his waist, dreams shallow and fractured.
On the third day, the mountain answered him.
The stone gave way all at once.
Not a dramatic collapse—just a sudden absence of resistance.
Inside the cavern—once only big enough for a goat to squeeze through, now wide enough for a man's ambush—he saw only darkness.
Taking a step back so the light could bypass him, Xavier closed his eyes and reopened them to a new world—a terrifying world.
He only needed to smell it once.
It hit like a freight train—one of the only scenarios his planning didn't account for.
And in hindsight, it should have been the first fucking thing that popped into his mind.
Xavier shouted, a short, ugly sound, half-way between a sob and a rage-snort—by now, he really should have been more disciplined but he didn't know all it would take was an uncontrolled stomp.
That was all it took.
The ground shook, cracked… groaned, and then, gave way.
He felt himself slide.
Rock scraped skin.
The world went vertical.
The rope snapped tight around his waist and wrenched the air from his lungs.
He hung there, spinning slowly, staring at the sky upside down.
His leg brace had loosened.
He could feel it immediately—the wrong angle, the sickening tilt as muscles failed to align.
Pain came next, hot and immediate. He clung to the rope, fingers cramping, and forced himself to breathe through clenched teeth that barely aligned anymore.
"Stay," he murmured, to himself or the rope or the mountain. "Stay."
And just like that, somehow, he stabilized.
And he didn't want to hang there for a second more than necessary.
It took him a long time to haul to a protruding rock; then, from there, he began to climb back up. Thanks to the rope, he hadn't fallen far… or at all.
It was more like losing footing at the one place where losing footing meant death.
He could not put weight on the leg properly, so he hopped, dragged, pulled with arms that trembled violently.
Every movement sent sparks through his shoulder.
By the time he reached a stable ledge, he collapsed onto his side and lay there, cheek pressed to stone, tasting blood where he had bitten his tongue without meaning to.
He fixed the brace with shaking hands. Tightened it until his vision blurred, then a fraction more. The leg felt wrong, but usable. That was enough.
He rested only until the shaking stopped—he could breathe again.
Luckily, the entrance he had spent days excavating had been reburied by the abrupt collapse—stone and grit settling back into place as if the mountain itself had decided to erase his work.
His earlier stomping, fueled by anger and exhaustion, had likely finished what gravity had been intending from the start.
"That opening wasn't large enough for a bear," he reasoned quietly. "Which means there's another way in. It won't be coming out from this direction." The thought steadied him.
As for the fate of the goat, he tried not to think about it at the moment.
A dry, humorless chuckle escaped him, more reflex than amusement.
He forced himself to stop thinking about what else might use such passages.
Priorities shifted with brutal clarity.
He turned away, moving as quickly as his damaged leg would allow, eager to put distance between himself and the hole before he encountered something he would regret meeting.
It was easier to climb up than down, so that's what he did.
Not because he was stronger—but because he knew now what the mountain would take if he hesitated. He climbed with a kind of fierce economy, using his body like a tool, conserving breath, choosing holds that would not betray him.
He murmured constantly, a low thread of sound that kept his thoughts from unraveling.
Rock scraped skin.
Rope burned palms as he readjusted his safety every couple of feet.
The sun climbed overhead, indifferent.