By a hill in the woods

Alex watched silently as his hand was examined and suppressed a shiver when he learned she had no body heat. "Thanks", he replied to her comment. When she then offered her hand, he looked at it blankly and just grabbed her by the wrist and shook it, unsure what else to do. He liked this way of shaking hands much more than what was standard, even if sometimes it startled people. It felt more personal, he thought. "The lake's just up ahead, will you be all right on your own from there?"

"A knife?" He raised an eyebrow at the remark, not fully grasping the connection. He then nodded at her declaration. "Good." He stopped, putting a hand on his waist. Suddenly he turned his head to the side, sniffing. "Hey... I think someone's bleeding over there..." He pointed. "I'm going to go and check it out."

_____End of session_____

Alex had went too far away on today's walk. He was cursing himself as he walked homeward, thinking about the early morning birds that had made a habit of waking him hours before he wished to. He unknowingly passed a few slashed trees, his eyes not being very useful in the dark. But as he approached the area surrounding his camp, what he considered his territory (a radius of some three kilometers), his trusty nose, by which he currently navigated (in addition to a decent sense of direction and a vague idea of where the moon was), registered firstly that he was finally on his territory again, and secondly that apparently someone had dragged something dead in mud and then carried it around for a month and just recently entered his territory.

"That's odd." He thought to himself in Russian. He stopped and sniffed for a few seconds. Whatever had left this scent was feral, he decided. No normal human would move around like that, with the instinct that made tracking hard. Only animals did that, as far as Alex knew. Not even he had that instinct. A moment later he started sneaking around the outer edges of his territory, planning on entering his camp from the opposite direction of where he had noticed the scent. He was curious and reckless in nature, but he was also not liking the idea of walking into traps. He had done that enough times. On his way, he was extra cautios of snares, bear traps and the like.

Alex immediately felt the change in the atmosphere. A shiver went down his spine, and he was amazed, again, by how animal instincts worked. He could not help but grin, even though he now realized he was being hunted. "What is this thing?" he thought, now reverting to his native tongue of Swedish, as the adrenaline filled him, "This is unlike anything, it's so surreal." His mind was literally throbbing with the fight-or-flee instinct, but he was no animal. He was in control. He remembered some very gory encounters, and reminded himself that he had managed to get out of some pretty nasty situations. This would be no different.

He knew that whatever was out there didn't know his exact position, because it'd already be upon him if it did. But why had it been this close to his camp? Animals would normally stay away from his territory, so there was no prey here, apart from Alex himself. And if whatever was out there was an animal, it'd know by now that there lived another predator here. This wasn't natural behaviour. Maybe, he thought, there's some degree of intelligence? If so, then the fact that it hadn't jumped him yet didn't actually mean that it didn't know where he was. It could be looking at him right now, he thought, as he swallowed.

Alex spent another few seconds before deciding that it was either a predator which hunted predators, in which case it'd find him eventually no matter what he did, or it was an intelligent creature. And if it was intelligent, it could reason... he hoped. So he stood up from his hiding place on what he hoped to be the safe side of his camp, grabbed his trusty knife and walked slowly into the camp, grinning all the while (and thus displaying both his weapons of choice: his knife and his teeth) and listened very carefully for any sudden movements.

Alex heard the hiss and he immediately turned his head towards it. The creature was fast, and it had antlers. "Down!" was Alex' first thought. As he lowered his stance and braced for impact he had time to register glowing eyes and a humanoid shape. "Demon" he thought, but he had no more time to think. A charge was a charge, luckily it wasn't a boar or anything massive. If it had been, he would have been in big trouble.

What he was about to do was something he had only done in self defense against oncoming reindeer, and at best it had resulted in a stand-off. Clashing directly with antlers hurt, Alex knew that from first hand experience, and so he had developed this 'tactic'. He would recklessly tackle diagonally upwards, from a very low angle, towards the creature's chest, thus avoiding the antlers and ideally directing its momentum over himself. He had never succeeded in throwing a reindeer airborne, but it had been enough to stop the charge and remain on foot, leading to other options. This time the opponent was bipedal, taller and significantly faster, so it was possible to succeed in a throw. He cared little for its claws and fangs, all that mattered right now was to stand his ground, and remain standing. His last thought before impact was not with coherent words, it was more of a mixed feeling between "I am not prey" and "This is my territory", and he clenched his teeth.