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The deer's fur was smooth and a bit coarse to the touch as Charles let his hand run along the animal’s flank. He knew it would be soft and still warm if he let his fingers sink into the fur, but he left it undisturbed. The doe was beautiful, a distinct red tone clinging to her even though fall was well on its way. Charles sent out a thanks to her, for the meat and skin and sinew that would sustain him for a good while in his solitary roaming.
He gave her one last stroke before putting his hunting knife to the skin around her ankles, just like his mother had shown him when he was a child. He didn't think about her much anymore, he hardly remembered what she looked like, but it felt like she was with him when he used the skills she had taught him. Sometimes he wondered if she had somehow seen the long stretches of loneliness her son would have in his future and therefore equipped him with skills that were traditionally mastered by the women of their tribe. Or maybe she had just sensed that their lifestyle was coming to an end. Either way, he was grateful for her foresight.
The sun was setting by the time he was scraping off fat and fur from the hide, his bare forearms bloody and sticky from the work. Golden rays painted the remaining fur in a dazzling fiery hue when a now familiar weight settled unbidden into Charles’ ribcage, pressing on his heart and hurting his throat. A few years ago he would have found it overwhelming, filling him with an urge to yell until he was hoarse or go look for a fight in the nearest saloon, but now he knew to let it wash over him, to just feel it for a while before letting it go.
So Charles put down his scraper and sat on his haunches, cataloguing the way the lump in his throat ached and his lungs worked under pressure. How his heart felt impossibly heavy but continued its steady beating nonetheless. He closed his eyes and let himself feel it wholly, in all its finality. It had taken him a long time but now he even found some comfort in his pain — it meant what he had lost had been real, had been good.
After a while he began to feel how the late autumn sun still warmed his skin and how the dried blood pulled on it, itchy and a bit gross, so he got up, dusted off the knees of his pants and went to put ground coffee into the kettle by the fire.
Because that was all he could do.
That is what grief was to Charles 𑁋 the sudden surety that Arhur was going to walk up to him any second now, put a heavy hand on Charles’ shoulder before helping him with tanning, or that if he just waited for a bit longer he would see Arthur riding back to camp with tired eyes and that small smile Charles liked so much 𑁋 always closely followed by the unavoidable truth that he would have to wait for the rest of his life.
So all he could do was get on with his life and make a cup of coffee.