It was cold today.
Colder than usual.
Jake was up and about in the forest, trying to check if the traps had turned up something. But it seemed as if nature wanted to test the boy, asking him to prove himself be worthy eating food.
With today being the fourth day of finding nothing in the traps, and the food left was only going to last him for a few days.
Jake went back to camp and sat down thinking, the only thing he would remember are his parents that taught him everything he knew.
As he was thinking, his eyes fell upon the worn and crude how lying nearby his backpack.
"I should've thought of that sooner, and father always told me that when food is scare, hunting is my best choice."
But a pang of sadness went through the boy's heart. "He was supposed to teach me when he got back from the trip". But he steeled himself, a silent promise to his parents that he will do whatever it takes to survive. For them.
The next day
The cold wind tugged at Jake's sleeves as he crouched by the dead campfire. His stomach cramped again — another reminder he hadn't eaten since yesterday. The traps had been empty for days, and even the berries he'd found last week were starting to dry out and shrivel.
His hand brushed the crude bow leaning against a rock. It still felt strange in his grip. Not like the toy one he had back home. This one was rough, its string frayed, the wood slightly splintered at the grip.
But no arrows.
Jake stared at it for a long while.
"What's the point of you if you can't even shoot?" he muttered.
Still… it was something. And in this world, something was better than nothing.
He wandered through the forest for a while, scanning the ground, thinking. He'd seen enough movies and games to have a vague idea of what arrows looked like — long, straight sticks with sharp ends. How hard could it be?
Turns out, pretty hard.
Most of the branches he found were either too thick, too crooked, or too brittle. A couple of times he thought he had a good one, only for it to snap the moment he tried to sharpen it with the dull pocket knife he carried.(N1)
His hands ached from scraping wood, and the cold made his fingers stiff. But he kept at it.
"Better than nothing," Jake grumbled.
By the time the sun started dipping low, he had two halfway-decent sticks, each roughly the length of his forearm. No proper fletching. No arrowheads. Just sharpened tips he'd hardened over the fire.
He started eating the half-shriveled berries to satiate the hunger, even for a moment.
He nocked one onto the bowstring, pulled it back experimentally — and the stick promptly cracked in half.
"Ghk!"
He let out a quiet sob and hurled the broken piece into the bushes. His throat burned, and for a second it felt like the tears might come again.
But he bit them back.
"It's fine. I'll… make another one. And another one after that. I'll figure it out."
Because what else was there to do?
That night, as the fire popped and the wind howled, Jake sat beside it, carving another stick, his hands clumsy and cold. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't even good.
But it was a start.
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N1: He got the pocket knife from the basement