It must be either dawn or dusk. I’m not sure which. I’m alone in the tent, on top of my sleeping bag. My backpack is next to me. Without sitting up, I rummage in the pouch and pull out my water. I drink the whole dirty bottle. I sit up slowly, trying to avoid the headache I can feel throbbing in the back of my skull. My stomach rumbles and then turns as I touch my head. I’ve got rat guts sticking the hair to my skull. This side of my face is swollen and the brow over my left eye is tender. I unzip the flap and stagger from the tent. I don’t see Bud, but there’s a fire smoldering a few feet from the tent. I limp over—my ankle is swollen too—and sit down next to the fire. “How are you feeling?” Bud asks, from behind me. I turn to see him approach. He’s carrying fallen branches he has collected. He breaks one in two and adds it to the fire. “I’m a little sore,” I say. My speech is slurred from my swollen face. “Me too,” he says. He sits down opposite me. He has managed to clean most of the blood from his shirt, but it has a number of holes in it now. “Did you really fight a lion?”
