Easter Egg Hunt Gone Wrong

Who: Cael and Zania
Where: In The Forest
When: Afternoon

It wasn't until Zania took a break from her work that she began to notice the Easter eggs. There were little colored eggs all over the place, hidden and waiting to be picked up. At first she'd thought they were just painted raw eggs, but once she realized they were hard boiled, the search became much more important. They were instantly edible, and even if she had a small supply of chocolate back at her tent, the more eggs she could find, the better. It seemed a bit crazy, hiding all those eggs, but she was enjoying the hunt, especially as a break from building things.

It didn't occur to her to watch where she was going. Besides the wolves, the forest had always seemed fairly safe. They'd wandered through it without trouble while looking for Greg's body. She thought nothing for it now, and it wasn't until she was falling that she realized that might not be the case any longer. Zania screamed as she fell, the ground knocking the wind out of her completely. For a moment she just lay there, trying to get her bearing straight. She wasn't hurt, not really. She may have twisted her ankle, but it was hard to tell right now. No broken bones, though her whole body ached. Pulling herself to a sitting position, Zania looked up the slope she'd fallen, immediately realizing it was a trap. A trap for an animal, perhaps, but still a trap.

Her first thought was to climb out. It seemed simple enough, until she actually began to try it. Her twisted ankle failed to hold her weight properly, and her hands kept slipping in the dirt. With a sigh of frustration, Zania began to dig, deciding she'd have to dig her way out. "Help!" she called out. "Somebody help me!" It would be so much easier if she hadn't fallen at all.

Caél woke up far later than he would have liked, the afternoon sun shining on his face. It bothered him that he was waking up in the PM rather than AM, but he figured if something had warranted his attention he would have woken up earlier. He shifted against the trunk of the tree and fumbled at the basket on his lap as it threatened to fall. “Now I know I would have noticed someone putting this on my lap,” he thought to himself, picking up one of the pieces of candy and running his fingers over the foil wrapping with the barest of smirks on his lips. Well that explained why he’d slept so long, hell, why he’d slept at all. They’d drugged him in order to give him an Easter basket. “Quaint,” he whispered with a grin, unwrapping the chocolate and popping it in his mouth. Normally Caél didn’t like sweets but these…

He unwrapped another one and pressed the chocolate egg between his lips. These were from the scientists. These were different. Caél hung the basket on an upper branch of the tree with an expression akin to adoration before jumping out of the tree. He was barefoot, covered in dried mud and dirt, with nothing but jeans and leather jacket in the middle of the wilderness and he fucking loved it.

As he went around in a spiral, checking the traps he had set, his love for the current challenge, the experiment itself, and, most of all, the scientists, just increased exponentially. As he collected dead squirrels and rabbits a grin grew on his lips. “I make Boyscouts look like Paris fucking Hilton,” he mused, stringing the dead animals together and slinging it over his shoulder.

Caél would’ve continued on his circular path but he heard…screaming? He veered off to see one of his larger traps triggered and excitement bubbled up inside of him. Did his deadfall get an animal? Or even better…a person? He quickened his pace, almost to a run, slowing only when he realized the was no dead or wounded animal or person. The thrill in his muscles promptly vanished and he practically pouted. Nothing was there.

Or rather, he thought nothing was there. As he approached the triggered deadfall he noticed the hole. “That’s…curious,” Caél muttered, leaning against the tree with a frown, ignoring the screams as he tried to string together just what had happened and how. If the trap had been triggered accidentally that would’ve been one thing…but he hadn’t dug a pitfall…which means someone probably triggered the trap on purpose and dug the pitfall with intention of…

“That trap was made for me,” he whispered and furrowed his brows in thought, trying to remember who else the Banshee had set on trapping duty. Laila came to mind…but she wouldn’t, no, couldn’t do this. Then there was someone else he was sure he’d never met. This was done with malicious intent, he doubted a stranger would do it but…

“Aamir,” he growled. That Muslim pissant. This had to be his work, his petty act of revenge for their lovely outing together on the ATVs. He held back a laugh as he stared at the second of the man’s epic failures and wondered how many times Aamir would lose before finally giving up. Caél smirked. Oh Aamir would regret this, perhaps even more than challenging him on the ATV.

“Hey, you alright,” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned as he leaned over the hole. Ah. Zania, the red-headed wreck of a girl at the house meeting. A small, innocent, broken girl...and now Aamir might have broken her more with his dangerous, malicious trap. If anything was more enjoyable than running him over with an ATV it would be making the religious man eat himself alive from the inside out with guilt.

It was true that Zania had been falling apart the last time Caél saw her, but since then she'd glued herself back together a bit. Without ghostly visions creeping around her, without dolls threatening to steal her eyes, Zania had been able to put her head back on, even if a little crooked. Unfortunately, that didn't mean she could pull herself out of the ground alone, her troubles due to her twisted ankle rather than her lack of brain cells. "I think I twisted my ankle," she said, looking up to see who had found her. She'd seen him at the meeting and he hadn't impressed her with his charm, that was for sure. But if he could pull her out of the hole, he could be her knight in shining armor, at least for the next ten minutes. "Can you help me out?" she asked, raising one hand towards him.

“That’s good,” he said, and then mentally hit himself for it. “Better than what could have happened,” he quickly amended to the previous statement. Caél knelt down on by the edge of the pit, testing the strength of the ground near the edges. It was soft from the previous rains and would probably crumble if he put too much weight on it. He glanced at Zania, trying to estimate her weight based on her proportions. Of course he would be happy to help her if it meant humiliating Aamir…but not if it meant getting dragged into the pit with her. That would just be pathetic. “Yeah, I think I can,” he finally said, reaching towards her with both of his hands.

Zania frowned for a moment, trying to understand what he was saying, but then blew it off, deciding maybe she'd missed something. What was important was that he was going to help her out of the pit. "I just can't put all my weight on it," she said, taking his hands. With him providing a bit of the pull, Zania put one foot up, quickly bringing the other to join it. The sharp pain that shot through her leg told her just how useless her left leg would be in the process, but she was halfway there. Another hop and she was pushing against the ground, finding herself far more dirty than before and practically on top of him. "Thanks," she said, trying to sound apologetic when she was rather grateful.

“That’s alright,” he said, slowly and carefully pulling her up. Zania was a lightweight, and it was easy to pull her out, especially with her walking up the sides instead of being just 120 lbs. (he guessed) of dead weight. Anyone else would have told her not to use the hurt ankle, to let them do all the work. But the more hurt she was, the more leverage he would have against Aamir.

Caél became lost in the thought for only a moment, but when he returned to reality there Zania was, right on top of him of all places. He looked up at the woman, just the slightest bit of confusion and unease playing in his eyes. Caél had been in this situation once before, and it still did nothing for him. He hated it even now. But he was playing Mr. Nice Guy, so he bore through it. “Yeah,” he grumbled in reply, the best and closest thing to a “your welcome” as he could get.

Zania moved quickly, not all that eager to be close to him. He might have pulled her from the hole, but all that meant was that he had at least a shred of human decency. Climbing to her feet, she looked down at the hole as she brushed the dirt off herself. "Who the hell dug a hole big enough to trap a person?" she asked, annoyed. It wasn't the kind of question she expected an answer to, but one she just needed to throw out there for good measure. "I thought we were trying to catch rabbits and squirrels. That things big enough for-- for a bear." Or maybe not. It was the first animal she could think of off the top of her head.

Caél was infinitely happy that Zania appreciated personal space as much as he did. The close encounter brought back unpleasant memories and he cursed his younger self for picking a red head instead of a blonde or brunette. He never thought he’d run into a girl with hair like that again. “Never mind that,” he snarled in his head, cracking his neck to rid himself of the pointless thoughts.

He quickly got on his feet and carefully picked up the rather tangled mess of wire-bound dead animals. “Someone who wanted to trap a person,” he said dryly, an unsaid “duh” lingering at the end of the sentence. “It’s far too small for a bear. That’s a single man, or rather, in this case, woman, pitfall.” Caél picked up one of the dead rabbits that had fallen off his vine of wire and began to rebind its feet to it. “Someone dug that with the intention of trapping, but not killing, a person.” He tugged on the rest of the deceased woodland creatures to make sure they were all secure. “Stranded in the wilderness and we still have a sadistic little shit pulling pranks,” Caél growled, sounding righteously pissed off, as though he had been the one to fall in the hole.

As Zania listened, she stared back at the pitfall, annoyance growing. It was true, they had at least one amongst them that was looking to hurt people. She'd known that much for a while now. At least the intent had not been to kill, but that didn't make it all that much better. She could have been hurt worse. She could have broken something. And what if the person who found her had been the one who dug the hole? What was their final intent? "Should we fill it? Or mark it?" she asked. "I don't want someone else to accidentally fall in. We should at least make it more visible to someone passing by." Zania then began to uncover the hole completely, trying to think ahead. She couldn't guess who might have done this, but she'd try to prevent it from happening again.

“Filling would be a waste of time and, more importantly, a waste of energy. Especially without shovels.” Caél searched around, grabbing a few long, dead branches and sticking them upright around the hole. “Just marking it should suffice. Besides anyone who manages to fall in to a hole this blatant,” he shook his head, “let Darwin claim them.”

Finding no more readily available dead branches he began to break and saw off live ones. “What are you doing out here anyways,” he asked, thankful his curiosity provided him with small talk.

To Zania, the hole wasn't all that blatant. She hadn't seen it, and even if the trap had been sprung once, it was easy enough for someone else to stumble across it accidentally. But since he'd decided to mark it with sticks, Zania didn't fight him. At least he was doing something to mark it. "I was collecting colored eggs," she said, picking one up off the ground where she'd dropped it. It was pink and purple, painted for Easter. "They're hidden all over. And they're cooked, so I thought we could eat them later." Unfortunately, she hadn't realized just how dangerous her Easter egg hunt would be.

“Easter eggs,” he said, sounding a bit incredulous. Then again, they had left them Easter baskets after burning the whole fucking house down. Looking over at the brightly colored egg, it suddenly wasn’t as far-fetched as it had originally sounded. “That sounds good, though cooked eggs don’t last terribly long. If you want them to be edible, collecting them ASAP and eating them now would be best.”

Caél stuck the last branch into the ground, a sort of twiggy fence now surrounding the hole. “I could simultaneously help with your hunt and finish checking the rest of my snares and traps. I don’t think it would be terribly efficient, to go wandering around the woods with that,” he gestured towards her ankle, “or safe for that matter.”

She couldn't argue with him on that matter. Her ability to walk was pretty much shot, at least for now, though she knew that twisted ankles mended fairly quickly. Unfortunately, it wasn't an instant thing. Zania nodded with a sigh. "Can we hit up the traps on the way back to camp?" she asked. She certainly didn't need to wander deeper into the woods with her ankle like this. "I can pick up any eggs I see on the way. We can all have them for dinner." She knew they wouldn't last all that long, but she expected the scientists to continue providing little things along the way. At least, she hoped they would.

“Fair enough,” he said, adjusting the string of dead animals along his back. He had gotten most of the ones farthest from camp anyways; he’d come back for the others later. His feet suddenly began to ache. “No, even better, leave them as a test,” he thought. Yes, he would leave fresh meat out for whatever carnivorous animals made the forest their home and make more traps accordingly. That was much more efficient, he felt, and one less mile to walk made his bare feet happy.

“Can you walk alright on your own?” Caél looked over at the redhead and his stomach churned uncomfortably, bile tickling its way up his esophagus. He really didn’t want to be a human crutch for this girl, but it fit in his current character to offer such assistance.

Lucky for Cael, Zania didn't like to ask for help when she didn't need it. She felt weak enough hobbling along and anything else would have made her feel like a burden. "I'm okay," she said, biting through the pain at any pressure she was forced to put on her left foot. She hadn't gone three feet when she stopped and grabbed a stick up off the ground. It wasn't perfect, but it would work as a crutch, at least on the way back. "There," she said with a little smile. "So... you caught dinner?" she asked, looking at his string of dead animals. It was slightly sickening looking, but at the same time, they needed the meat.

If Caél hadn’t hated any and all forms of religion he would have praised the god of one of them as she turned down his offer for help. He should have pressed the issue, all the caring types he had known would have, but he chose comfort over coercion. “Let her try putting up a strong front,” he told himself. “Let’s see how long it lasts.”

He returned her smile, though certainly not in response to her cleverness. “Small, furry rodents, dinner of champions,” he remarked amusedly, rolling a shoulder to make them sway their snapped necks in unison, covertly watching Zania to see her reaction.

The motion brought Zania's eyes back to the animals and another scene flashed in her head-- that of a live rabbit, it's skin peeled off, running around the fourth floor. She remembered the way the animal had screamed. It had been disgusting, horrific even, and she'd wondered who could do such a thing. "Do you like to hunt?" she asked. She'd never had anything against the sport, but it wasn't one she practiced herself. Of course, where was one to hunt within a city?

As they walked, Zania looked for other sticks to support her, her ankle throbbing in pain. It made it difficult to hold the eggs, and she used her shirt as a little basket, holding it up on the edge. Now she wished she'd sewn herself together a bag. She certainly had the material for it.

“I prefer having my food slaughtered, processed, and packaged, really. Worked on an Amish farm once, school project, had to do all the slaughtering by hand so hunting feels a bit like that, like work,” he lied, kneeling down by one of the snares, being careful not to block Zania’s view of the faintly twitching creature. “But I don’t really mind, not if it’s crucial to my continued existence.” Caél, rather than slicing the rabbit’s neck from the outside towards the inside, implanted the blade into the middle of the creature’s throat, causing it to screech loudly at the sudden, new pain. “One does what one must.” He sighed wistfully and tore outwards, abruptly silencing it and causing nothing less than a terribly bloody mess. "Why, do you like to hunt," Caél asked, staying knelt by the creature, his back to Zania, fighting to keep the smile in his mind off his face and out of his voice as he watched the rabbit bleed out in rhythmic gushes.

Zania flinched as he cut into the rabbit, it's screams of pain loud and clear. When she'd found the skinned creature outside her room, she hadn't been all that sure what it was. It was hard to tell with it's skin cut off. Now she knew it was a rabbit, and with the way Cael handled it, she was rather inclined to think he was capable of making the mess she'd been gifted with. The only thing she didn't know was why. Of course, she had no evidence at all, only the fact that he was able to gut a live animal as easily as she would cut into a cake. "I've never really hunted," Zania said, her voice a touch softer. "Not for animals." Eventually she had to look away. All that blood... She'd rather not watch. "My father sometimes did, but I never went."

"You hunted for things other than animals," Caél asked, slightly amused not only by the remark but also her discomfort of the situation. "It's not called hunting if your 'prey' are plants you know." Sure that had probably been a comment best left in the confines of his head, but he couldn't help but let it slip and subsequently laugh about it. Once the rabbit had bled out Caél looped a bit of free wire around its hind feet and stood. "It's a good experience, learning how to hunt. How come you never went with your father?"

Zania felt like she should point out that she'd been hunting for people, not plants, but that would give the wrong impression. She'd pick-pocketed quite a bit and that wasn't something she wanted to tell him, so she let him continue believing she thought picking berries constituted as 'hunting'. He seemed pleased with himself anyways. "It wasn't my place," she answered, and that was the truth. The women wouldn't have gone hunting in her culture, but it was for the better, as she had no interest in it anyways.

Caél turned about and gave her a good look, analyzing her for a moment before turning back around. “Interesting,” he simply said. Zania hadn’t said it was her father who told her it wasn’t her place. She simply said it wasn’t her place. Did she believe it?

“Do you believe that,” he finally asked after a few moments of silence.

Did she believe the way she was brought up, everything she'd known and everything she'd left behind? It wasn't a simple yes or no question. When it came down to it, Zania done what she needed to survive, and then afterwards she'd done what she wanted because who was there to tell her not to? Now look where that got her. Her mother had been so ashamed, she hadn't been able to live with it. "I don't know," Zania said with a frown, unhappy with the topic. "I don't suppose I can pass judgment on something I've never done, can I? How am I to know if I'm never allowed to try?"

“They say there’s a first time for everything,” he said, stopping beside the flailing rabbit in the next snare. Caél turned the bloodied switchblade around in his hand and held it out to Zania, handle first. “You’re allowed to try now. If you want to know, here’s your chance.”

He kept careful eye contact with her, actually intrigued as to whether or not she would take the knife from him. Caél did agree with her father; hunting was a man’s job. In his opinion, Zania had been raised well to believe it wasn’t her place to do such things. It was a pleasant change from the majority of the women in this experiment. But he couldn’t help but be curious, was he tempting her now, or not? Had she been raised well enough to keep her place?

There were plenty of things in the world that Zania wanted to try, that she didn't care what other people said she could do or not. Cutting open a fluffy little bunny was not one of them, nor was chopping up a squirrel. It wasn't like wringing a chicken's neck, which she'd done on her grandmother's farm once. That didn't seem quite as ghastly. While she believed there were women out there who could hunt and were fine with it, Zania felt no draw towards the activity.

"No thank you," Zania said, shaking her head. This time she looked away, allowing him to do whatever he needed to do to the poor animal. She knew they needed it to eat, but, like him, she preferred her meat processed and packaged. Seeing the real thing with the fur still on made her less likely to want it for dinner. "I think I'll head on back," she said, deciding she'd rather not witness him collect any more of his catchings. She could pick up more eggs if she wanted to, though she wasn't feeling all that hungry at the moment anyways.

Caél shrugged and flipped the blade so the handle was securely in his hand. He wasn’t sure whether he was disappointed that Zania hadn’t taken the knife. On one hand it meant she knew her proper place as a woman, and that was good. On the other hand, the fact she knew her place as a woman just drew more lines of similarity between her and the only other redhead in his past. Just the thought of the memories quickly incited anger and suddenly Caél felt the overwhelming need to hurt something, her, to scar her. Yes. He had to get in a solid blow to her psyche.

He knelt by the snare and seized the rabbit’s feet with his free hand, yanking them out to keep the creature somewhat steady. The rabbit screamed and thrashed about. “Are you sure you’ll be alright walking back on your own?” He looked back at her and, seeing she was pointedly avoiding seeing the thing, casually pressed the knife into the rabbit’s throat, but did not slice it. Caél simply left it there for a few, painstaking seconds to let the creature cry out. If Zania would not look, then she would hear and her imagination would surely fill in the lack of visuals. “It’s a long walk, even longer hobble,” he chuckled, though it was barely audible over the rabbit's screams, and then finally put the poor thing out of its misery.

Zania was just about ready to turn back around and kill the rabbit herself when it finally stopped screaming. She shut her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, continuing on her way. "I'll be fine," she said, hoping he didn't rush after her to make sure. She wanted out of his presence and she wanted out now. There was nothing quite as disturbing as a man who liked to torture animals. It was only one step away from a man who liked to torture humans, and that was a man Zania thought it best to avoid.