[ayase saki]

"Yeah, a whole deer,” Saki said. "Two, if we can swing it—butcher one and dry the meat for you and your, uh, pack, and I take the other back to where I’m staying in town. I’m feeding…” She considered it for a moment. Sato, his son, the one other boarder staying at the shittiest place in town—”four people, counting myself. Should be plenty, but not wasteful.” Arashi no Kuni was wet, so sun-drying the meat wouldn’t be an option, but there were ways to work around that. "You know how to make jerky? It’ll last a while if you do it right.” Boy deer or girl deer? Saki thought back. She had only caught glimpses of it while tracking, enough to know that it was definitely a deer, but she couldn’t recall if she had seen antlers—if the lack of seeing antlers indicated that it was a girl deer, or if she had just missed the antlers entirely. She shrugged. "Dunno,” she said. "We’ll find out when we catch up to it, I guess.” Kota getting caught off guard by her questions about the doll caught Saki off guard. He didn’t know what haunted was? She thought all kids were afraid of ghosts. "‘Haunted’ is when someone dies, and their spirit possesses a physical object in this world instead of passing on to the afterlife,” she said. It didn’t even cross her mind that he might not know about death or the afterlife or that this was too grim a topic for so young a child; he was old enough to turn into a wolf and bite what would undoubtedly be an infection into her, surely he was old enough to know what death was. "It’s probably not real, but that doll really freaked me out. I’ve never seen something move on its own like that before.” If hauntings were real, then she would never have known a moment's peace, Saki thought distantly.

Kota -- 316

LAIKA OF THQ

[Kota]

Oh ashes, ashes, Dust to dust The devil's after both of us "Two?" Kota repeated, dumbfounded. "How would you even carry two?" Kota certainly couldn't help with that. Maybe if it was a couple of foxes, or some birds--but a deer? There was nothing he could do to help transport a deer, and he doubted she could drag two around easily. Though, he found it a bit of a surprise when she explained how many people she was feeding. "Four?" Well, it made more sense that a deer would do her plenty good, then. If she had that many people to look after. "Are they your family?" A mom, a dad, and some kids sounded likely to Kota. At least, what he knew of families. "Or are you part of a pack, too?"     If so, her pack was certainly bigger than Kota's was. More like an actual, proper pack, really.     When the woman asked if he knew how to make jerky, he shook his head. He knew how to burn meat, but wasn't really sure how to store it other than that.     If she knew something he didn't, he would be sure to try learning from her. Having food last was--well, valuable information. He knew a lot, but he didn't know everything.     "Well, if it is a boy deer, I want it's head," Kota said simply, looking ahead as they walked. When the woman explained what "haunted" was, Kota glanced up at her from the corner of his eye. Her explanation made enough sense to him, though he was sure he'd never seen anything of the sort. Though, he didn't spend much time in civilization, and nothing he had was haunted... per se. So the idea had been foreign to him, though it sounded believable. "Well, Boda is kind of haunted, I guess." Not exactly what she'd described, but not entirely not what she'd described, either. Not in his understanding of it all, at least. "He's my best friend I have, but he isn't possessed by a dead person's spirit. He's possessed by magic."

✜