My thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a wave of fire that swept the whole body. Having hissed, I did not notice myself how I was on my feet and opened my eyes, evil looked up from under the folded visor to the sky - the dawn came. He was completely relaxed, you fool, but the feelings were shouting. I got carried away, ignored...
When I threw my clothes where I was, I dived into the cave, feeling like my skin was swollen with blisters and almost smoked.
Aakhshssssssssssss... - It does not hurt as much with boiling water! Once inside, I pull on myself a shield-door woven from a lapel, convulsively closing slits. Now I'm two weeks away from burns, I'm lucky to get caught naked - damn wolfhound...
Having already sat down in the far corner, leaning painfully against the cold stone of the wall, in a futile attempt to remove the burning back, I realize that, in a short moment of running, I managed to see the culprit of this situation. The wolf's gray body was lying there lifelessly, he was met by my eyes...
When visiting uninvited people, it is better to knock on the door first... With the buttstock of the machine gun.
Folk wisdom
The month after the incident went by almost imperceptibly. Gradually it became clear that the local autumn was coming into its own; the heat and heat finally waved goodbye with a pen, the forest crowns were blossoming tired yellow, the birds were leaving their nests, and the visibility through the undergrowth was only improving day by day. The snow had not fallen yet, but the puddles were iced a couple of times in the morning. The question of survival was once again becoming a burning issue.
The cold itself didn't bother me much, of course, I didn't take any chances on a 30-degree cold, but the practice of sleeping on a cold stone in a frozen cave gave me some confidence in my ability to survive the winter. Moreover, I had a stock of skins as well. Even if their dressing could not be called even the minimum acceptable, and the first experiments even on the mat at the entrance was a shame to use, but if you press and dive into the manure pit to warm up. And this is never an exaggeration - I have read about such cases.
I was really worried about the same question of food. Most of the local animals I saw in person corresponded to their earthly analogs, allowing, to a certain extent, to count on the predictability of their behavior. But it didn't mean that in winter I had enough prey to prove the opposite; someone would migrate, someone would hibernate, and the rest would go on a hungry meal. To experiment with my own organism on the theme of falling into the hibernation, praised by various fantasists, something did not pull me into hibernation and so... I had enough experiments.
A new facet of psionic abilities, whose awakening began with spontaneous empathy and ended with "reading" the wolf with simultaneous frying of his brain, turned out to be more difficult to "pierce" than the old, kind and native telekinesis. I killed gray, by the way, that time almost consciously; the key was anger and desire to get rid of it, and then by myself there was a raw psionic blow, and as I did not control it at all, I got a "contrasting shower" from, by foolishness, the torn out memories. I understood all this later, so to speak, by the method of pumpkin. And praise to the Great Darkness that it happened only to the wolf and not to the man, and even more praise to her that I had an opportunity to train further on small animals with quite a tiny brain, otherwise I'm not sure that I would have kept my sanity. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure I'd kept it, because it was like a migraine that was just killing me forever in my head. The first few "random guesses" were particularly sensitive, not because with the "forest attendant", of course, but for a good, I would even say, deep session of seasickness on a pair with the opening of a forge shop somewhere in the frontal lobes, was enough with an excess.
With this kind of tension and blood consumption increasing noticeably, I had the only painkiller available, and I wasn't going to put up with it just to endure it. Luckily, the experiments were quick enough, just for the third week, to bear fruit and I was able to finally separate mind reading from the crippling impulse.
Hunting made it easier right away.