Sometimes, the cooler Rien air was a blessing. The flies didn't like the cold much, so Arkash didn't have to worry about them getting at his food, or in more recent developments, the enormous, skinned dire wolf that rested on the floor of his home. All the freshly exposed, cold muscles and organs shined in the dull amber glow of the hearth's fire, which Arkash had freshly stocked with the firewood that Liu had to collect.
Earlier that day, Arkash had skinned the wolf. In his claws, he held the raw pelt and the creature's severed head. Was he at all concerned about the skinned wolf resting on the floor of his run-down wooden home? A little, but as a family, they had eaten produce found in the feeding troughs of pigs before. All their stomachs were strong, too. A little dust wasn't worth worrying about, at least not too much. Besides, he couldn't even hope to lift the wolf, and he doubted the beams that supported their shack could hold the massive beast's weight, either.
So, it rested on the ground. He and Liu would cook and eat it in time, but until then, he had the hide to treat and repair. With dirty, bloody claws, Arkash held the wolf's head and looked down at it while he straightened the quilt-like flap of skin that was the creature's pelt. For a moment, the young rathari remembered that he was holding the head of something that had once been alive, and he looked to the wolf's dead eyes.
It was unsettling, particularly because Liu, his mother, shared the same wolf-like features as the monster. But also because the last time he'd looked at the wolf so deliberately, it had been trying to eat him. Morbid curiosity got the better of him, and his eyes fell to the monster's jaws. Carefully, he grasped the upper and lower rows of teeth with his claws and parted them. The wolf's long, black tongue fell to the side, and arkash stared. Venom began to fill his mouth and his hands trembled a little.
He didn't immediately know why the sight unsettled him. Perhaps it was the image of the wolf snarling at him? The dread of being hunted? The idea that the same jaws he held could have easily ended up tearing him up? For a moment or two, he'd been nothing more than food in a creature's eyes. He was powerless to stop it. Was that what frightened him? His weakness?
Alternatively, he might have just been frightened because he was staring into the black jaws of a larger predator, framed by yellow teeth. The rathari decided it best to stop and lowered the head. He averted his gaze upward and drew a deep breath, one that filled his lungs with a much-needed reminder that he had survived. He was not wolf food. He was okay. There was no sense worrying about what could have been, only what would come to be. And if he continued to stand around like a dunce, Liu would be coming home to more chores.
So, the hypothermic lizard moved to the countertop, and dragged the wolf's pelt along the floor on his way. The first order of business was to get a hold of the wolf's brain. So, he placed the heavy head on the countertop and held it there while he lifted the heavier pelt onto the counter with it. A shiver ran down his spine as he clasped his knife with his stiff fingers. After a momentary pause, he began to saw through the fur that connected to the head. He'd only ever watched Liu and Cojack treat hides without helping in it himself, so a lot of it was guesswork. When the pelt came free, he set it aside on the counter and looked over the wolf's head.
He didn't want to damage the brain, not because he needed it intact, but because he'd always seen Liu and Cojack use it whole. So, he lifted part of the wolf's scalp and slid his knife under to cut any blood vessels that connected the skin to the skull, then carefully sawed through to form a flap atop its head. The cut was messy, but Arkash didn't care for the pelt of the beast's head. He wasn't going to use it for anything, and there was so little meat on the skull that it wasn't worth saving. With the wolf's head exposed, Arkash found something curious. The brain wasn't covered by bone, it was resting there beneath some sort of pale film, different in hue to the red on the inside of the skin.
Arkash furrowed his brow, then exhaled deeply as he felt over the resting spot of the brain. It was cold and soft, pliant to the press of his digits. It made him squint in the amber light of the room, but he could sort-of pinch the tissue with his index finger and thumb. With the film held that way between his digits, he carefully eased the tip of his knife into the surface, and the stretchy material broke in an extended tear from the pressure of his pinch alone. The rest of the film peeled away with ease and revealed the beige-grey matter beneath. Arkash furrowed his brow, then put down his knife before he carefully drew the brain from its casing, and put it down on the counter. For the rest of the head, he placed it with the other parts he didn't use, namely the paws and the tail.
The brain was dropped in a pan along with some water from the well, then placed over the hearth to boil into a stew. He'd need the oils to treat the hide, but while it broke down, Arkash had some preparations to make. So, he laid out the copper half of the hide on the countertop as the full thing was too long to fit, and began to cut down the side of the pelt, which Arkash had torn in a few different places while he tried to skin the beast.
The edges were a bit tattered. It took a lot of work, particularly because the weight of the pelt tried to pull it from Arkash's bloody hands. He had to fight with the thing while making steady progress through the beast's side. It didn't take long for Arkash to lose his patience and bring the pelt to the ground, where he cut through the rest and opened the pelt into a large quilt-like sheet.
By the time he exposed the red-pink interior of the pelt, he was already quite fed up with the oversized skin. He had to flesh the inside next; remove all the caught pieces of blood, gore and dirt. Without thinking, he took his dagger to its surface and ran through the first stretch fo skin, only to poke through the hide with his blade, and create yet another hole.
Arkash visibly cringed and immediately withdrew the knife. It was too sharp. He needed something dull, something just to scrape the gunk off. Distressed, he climbed to his feet and returned to the countertop. There, he found a fleshing knife; the tool Cojack and Liu normally used while preparing hides. He brought his bloodied, cold hand to his eyes and sighed in frustration. In his anger, he wasn't thinking. It didn't matter too much, he supposed. He'd already torn up the edges of the pelt; what was one more hole? So, Arkash calmly put the blood-spattered knife down, then collected the fleshing knife.
The Rathari got down on his knees to lean his weight into the pelt, then aimed the curve of the dull place at the fleshy underside of the animal's skin, pressed firmly, and pushed hard to guide it across the surface. With every stroke, more gore and gunk was scraped from the pelt, and it didn't tear or cut as it had with the dagger he was using. The process took the young rath the most part of an hour, which he considered to be relatively quick when he considered his own size and the size of the pelt. He'd lost his cool with some time earlier, but overall, he was proud of the results at that point.
Then, the door clicked and swung open. Liu was there, eyes barely open and fur plastered with grime and soot from the mines. She was hunched, tired looking. Arkash would be too if the welfare of the house suddenly depended on him. Her gaze lifted a little when she saw the pelt on the ground, and the gore-splattered lizard with the fleshing knife in his hands. Her bewildered stare looked then to the wolf's carcass, which laid out across the floor beside her. "Arkash?" she called, almost displeased?
"Yeah, mom?" he asked with uncertainty.
"What is this?" She quizzed with a notable degree of hostility. It put Arkash on edge.
"I skinned the wolf-"
"-Why?"
Why did he skin the wolf? That was a good question. The cold Komodo dragon paused and looked over his work while he tried to remember. He was also tired, after all. "-Because you were tired, and I thought you'd wanna rest when you got home," Liu's eyes softened a little with his reasoning. Arkash pressed; he was only trying to help her. Why did she sound so angry with him? "...Was I not supposed to?"
"No, no it's not that..." Liu shook her head and sighed. Then, a smile broke her lips and she approached the kneeling lizard. Her paw met with his head and gently pet over him while she glanced over his work. First, to the discarded parts, then the carcass itself, then the hide. Her gaze lingered on the fringes of the pelt and lightened with a smile while her mind worked. "It's not bad, Ark you did pretty good."
Arkash smiled widely, his eyes were alight with pride.
"But-" Added the wolf, and Arkash deflated a bit. "You made a hell of a mess, Ark," she spoke with a gesture of her hand. It was only then that Arkash looked to the floors, which had pieces of gunk and flesh scattered all about the place. Blood spatters decorated nearly every floorboard. With an uncomfortable, apologetic grin, Arkash looked up to his mother.
"I'll clean it up, I promise-."
