This is Chapter One of World Apart. Critiques are welcome!! This is my first serious novel. Please tear it up!!
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Crouching in among young ash trees, Jayden followed a large bobcat, who was stalking a decent sized squirrel. Suddenly the cat stopped, tilting his disc-like ears forward. Jayden stopped moving. He watched as the bobcat tensed, preparing itself for the kill. Jayden also tensed, carefully measuring the distance between the bobcat and squirrel. He nodded, the bobcat would definitely catch it's prey. Jayden held his breath as the bobcat leaped through the air, landing neatly on the fuzzy rodent. It bent down and snapped the squirrel's neck between his teeth.
Jayden smiled. He put his index finger and thumb at the corners of his mouth and whistled loudly. The bobcat swung its' huge head around, the squirrel hanging from his mouth. Jayden laughed as it ran eagerly towards him. The bobcat dropped the squirrel when it reached Jayden and covered him in wet kisses.
“All right, all right!” Jayden laughed, pushing the wide muzzle away from his face. “Okay so what did we catch today?” he asked the bobcat, bending over and picking up the squirrel's limp body. He opened up a leather pouch that was on his belt, dropping the squirrel inside. “Looks like two grouse, three squirrels, and a mouse.”
Jayden, looking at the bobcat playfully, whipped the mouse out of the pack and tossed it high in the air. Giving an excited yelp, the bobcat leaped up and chomped down on the mouse. Then the bobcat looked at him with it's large green eyes, which reflected Jayden's own violet-gray eyes. Jayden sighed and tapped his friend's muzzle, letting him know it was okay if he left. Giving a grunt, the bobcat turned and bounded into the foliage.
Jayden tuned in the opposite direction, and started to walk towards his home. He walked through the trees alone, the wind flowing through the forest, blowing his shaggy black hair into his face. The late afternoon summer-sun casted rays of sunlight through the thick canopies of ash and maple trees. As he reached a small brook that was gurgling happily, he stopped next to a large oak. He placed both hands on the tree's rough outer bark and found the familiar hand holds. Jayden slowly started his climb to the top of the ancient tree. As he found the pattern of the tree's natural foot and hand holds, he climbed faster, until he was a blur on the tree's side. Jayden soon found the large branch he'd been looking for.
The branch was thick and wide, wider that two of him longways, and thicker than he was tall. In addition to that, it reached out one hundred feet or more, pointing into the east. This was where Jayden lived. A rough, hand-made blanket lay in the midst of the branch. Without hesitating, he stepped onto the branch and went over to sit down on the blanket. There, he emptied out his pouch and sorted through the animal's bodies. Jayden slipped out a flint knife from his belt. He took the first grouse he and the bobcat had caught that morning and started to pluck it. He hummed softly as he was taken into the rhythm of preparing food. As the day wore on, he finished skinning, gutting, and setting out the meats to smoke on a spit over a small fire he had made. The fire was inside a medium sized pit that he had carved out of the tree limb and lined with stones, to make sure th tree wouldn't burn. Branches and twigs were what fueled his fire, and since everything on the oak tree was huge, they made perfect logs.
Just as Jayden was about to settle down and eat some food that he had prepared the day before, he caught a noise below him. He froze instantly. The noise wasn't like anything he had heard in the forest before. The noise was loud and clumsy, like an injured deer trying to run through the undergrowth. But this noise wasn't a deer, nor was it any kind of animal in the forest. More sounds came from below, and all of them similar. The color drained from Jayden's face. For ten years, ever since he was six, he had lived in this forest alone with the wild animals. But now there were many things, people, walking below him.
Jayden crept to the edge of the branch, peering cautiously over the edge. He forced back a gasp as he saw what he had been dreading. Four humans were trekking over the ground noisily, two carrying heavy artillery guns. But they were all around his age, he supposed, and among them, two out of the four were girls. They all wore clothes that looked like they were one piece, closely fitted black things that covered them from the neck down. He looked down at his own clothes, a loosely worn leather tunic, with baggy leather pants underneath it. These people were so.... Strange! The girls had their hair tied up, and the young men had their hair cut neatly around the top of their head. Jayden decided he would follow them. He quickly ran to the tip of his branch and jumped silently down onto the nearest tree. He stealthily followed them, jumping from branch to branch without a sound. He noticed they were staring at the ground intently, every once in a while stooping to investigate something. They were tracking something, he realized.
After they had went aways in front of him, Jayden jumped down from the tree he was in and went to see the tracks they were following. When he saw the prints, he froze in horror and his throat went dry. The prints were four-toed, the pad of the paw wide, one of the forepaws had an indent were a scar was. The pads of his bobcat friend. They were hunting the bobcat!
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