Once I walked a good distance from the settlement, I was finally all by myself again.
Alone again, naturally…
Anyway, first thing's first—I need to go back to my home.
After like, what, a month of leaving it alone, I'm pretty sure most of my stuff's been nicked.
But the valuable things—the ones that are actually important were in the deep parts of the cave, where no monkey or tiger or bear or elk would want to venture into.
Making detours using my Survivalist's Instincts and activating my Intimidating Presence ensured a safe and quick trip back home.
And, suffice to say, it had been absolutely terrorized.
Damn beasts.
Took my damn animal meat.
Took my hides.
They even took my carved wooden spoon I made!
…And from the looks of it, the chicken-peacock fella was also taken away by the wild beasts.
They killed Kenny!
Those animals!
Well, I pay my respects to you.
You did your unintentional task as my alarm clock well.
Nodding my head to the tree where it once nested, I moved on and entered my cave.
Fortunately, there weren't any pesky things that made their home here.
In an anticlimactic fashion, all the important stuff was indeed inside the cave.
As I did before, I left and grabbed what I did or didn't need.
I questioned myself whether or not I should leave Silver's merchant token here again or if I should keep it, but I decided to just let it be for now.
Wouldn't want it to get lost because of the funky behavior of the core of the forest.
As I went through all my stuff, I spotted something—an egg.
For a moment, I thought it was something I brought as a souvenir somewhere from the forest in the past, but as I inspected it, it looked to have some life, still!
Since I wasn't feeling all that hungry, and also in honor of a fallen comrade (the chicken-peacock), I stored it somewhere safe and warm; put a lot of leaves on top of it and twigs underneath to simulate incubation.
Feeling proud of myself for being a wildlife defender, I gave one last overview of my cave and stuff, and finally departed to meet with the Void-Stag once again.