This is a bizarre romance story with very light horror elements, and even worse, awkwardness. Enjoy!
~~~~~ ~~~~~
Completely lost, his whole body aching, missing half of his supplies, and not muscular enough to give up on finding home and just survive in these chilly woods, Henry climbed out of the ravine and into more of the same endless stretch of mountainous forest he had been stuck in for a whole week.
A rustling came from one of the countless bushes nearby. Hoping it was a delicious creature of some kind, Henry stayed still. He had no weapons whatsoever, but maybe he could jump out at the thing and kill it with his bare hands.
Something started to emerge, and Henry almost jumped at it, when he realized it was a human girl. A blank-faced girl with a head of long, black hair poked out of the foliage, and she looked at Henry with her large black eyes.
All she said was "Hi."
"Hi? Are you also lost?" he asked.
She seemed to think for a moment.
"Yes."
She stepped out of the bushes and into view. Her plain black dress was much too clean for someone in the depths of this forest, and as fragile and short as she looked, those were some honkin' huge tits. Maybe if the circumstances were different, he'd have things to say about them.
Now that he thought about it, those eyes were way too big. Maybe it was the eyeliner? No, there wasn't any eyeliner.
She was holding and carrying nothing, unless there was a pocket on the inside of her dress with a snack bar in it. "Are you hungry? Do you need anything?" Henry asked.
"No."
"Okay then? Um, do you know where I can find civilization?"
"Human civilization? That's sixty miles North. You'll find a road there."
How was she lost if she knew exactly where... Henry dropped the thought, happy to have received any directions whatsoever.
"We're both lost, how about we go together?" Henry said.
"Okay."
~~~~~ ~~~~~
They walked in silence for about a minute before Henry spoke.
"So even though I don't have the physique for mountain climbing, I like to do it sometimes, and uh, this time things went poorly, I lost my phone, a lot of my supplies, and I got horribly lost."
"Why are you out here?"
"Adventuring, exploring, all that business."
"The mountains are mostly normal. At least the ones near here. Exploring here isn't a good idea."
"Yeah, mostly trees and dirt. There aren't even any good views, the trees block most of them, and if you try to peek out, it's just trees... Why are you here anyway?"
"I live in the area. Then some mistakes happened and I got lost."
"So uh, what's your name anyway?"
"Rose," she said much too quickly.
"Right, I'm Henry."
"That is a good name."
"And you said you lived in the area?"
"I hear something," Rose said. She crouched, and Henry did the same.
Indeed, there was more rustling coming from ahead, and a deer popped its head out from behind a tree and munched on some foliage.
"That's a good deer... I wish I had my knife..."
"It is a good deer. Just a moment."
Rose darted off far more quickly than she looked capable of, and the deer started sprinting.
"Wait!" Henry said, reaching out to her and starting to run, but she was already off. And she was fast too--both she and the deer vanished from sight in moments.
Henry kept running after them, following the vague sounds of running at first, and then the sound of ungodly screeching, and then he lost the trail.
"Rose? Rose!"
He kept shouting and frantically looking around for a minute, hoping he could find her. This small girl and a deer? The deer might win...
After turning around one more time, he saw her standing fifteen feet away, holding several pounds of deer meat in her blood-soaked arms.
"I brought a gift. I didn't expect you would be worried during my absence."
He stepped back. "Rose? How did..."
"I believe you might want to cook this over a fire. I don't know how to make a fire. I never needed such things so I never learned."
"Right, I... I still have my lighter. And there's plenty of... sticks... How did you even do that?"
She set the horrifically acquired pile of meat on the ground.
"It's simple. You catch up to the deer and then you disassemble them. Pray for their spirit as you take what you want from the body. Slice out whatever you find unsuitable at the moment. A more or less ordinary technique."
He wanted to ask more, such as, "No really, what the fuck was that," but he didn't say it out of fear. Nobody disappears for a minute and returns with that. Not even the best outdoorsmen could do it that quickly, let alone without tools, and that's completely ignoring how she landed the kill...
The bigness of her eyes was really starting to worry him. Who was this girl, really?
"I'll build the fire," Henry said. The only reassuring thing was that she had the chance to butcher him earlier and didn't. Maybe that meant he was safe. He didn't feel safe, though; the meat in his body, particularly his internal organs, felt vulnerable and afraid.
Ten minutes later, they had a small fire starting; it would be a few minutes before it was large enough to cook anything. He looked up at a gap in the trees; it was probably almost sunset. Henry decided to brave some chatter.
"So I'm really curious about you. You haven't said much, and, well..."
"Is that unusual?" Rose asked.
"No, not necessarily, it's just... I don't know, maybe you could tell me more about yourself? Your childhood, what you do when you're not lost in the forest..."
Hopefully those weren't the questions that would get him harvested for meat.
"I think my childhood started when my mother gave birth to me. Not particularly pleasant to go through for either of us. Later, she taught me some things, and then I got a job and a car like a normal person, which is what I used to do."
"Where do you work?"
Rose thought for a long while.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"That's fair. My dad was military, there was a lot of stuff he couldn't talk about."
"Sometimes I wish I had a dad. My mother did something to him before I was born and I'm not sure what but I have a couple of guesses."
That was not helping Henry overcome any of the fears he was having.
"If you don't want to talk about family, you don't have to," Henry said. "I just want to say... thanks for the deer?"
She seemed to cheer up considerably upon being thanked.
"I'm glad you like it. I'm sure it will be delicious! I made sure to cut out all of the unpleasant parts, such as major arteries and connective tissue."
"I don't know anyone who can do what you do so... quickly and efficiently," Henry said.
"I thought most hunters found deer and then removed the meat," Rose said.
"Yeah, but not this well... I've never done it, I think it takes an hour to cut out all of the good bits? And you did it in a minute, apparently..."
Rose thought again.
