Chapter 84: Jealousy
"No, not like that. Gentler. You aren’t killing the arrow. You’re helping it shed its skin," Nuir told Nick.
"..." Nick frowned and looked at his crooked and jagged stick. No matter how he tried, his knife would get caught on the fibers and halt, creating lumps and nicks in the shaft.
Nuir, on the other hand, had already turned several of the branches on the tree Nick had taken down into fine, straight, arrow shafts ready to be tipped and fletched.
Arrow-making. That was what they had settled on doing when Nuir woke up again.
Nick was happy to learn something new, and Nuir wanted to do something, but was limited by his injuries. Making arrows was a little straining, but he was used to it, so it was more relaxing than anything.
However, Nick wasn’t doing so well.
At first, he blamed his knife, so he shamelessly asked Nuir to trade. It didn’t make a difference.
He just didn’t understand how Nuir could take a few strokes here and there on the branch to suddenly make it straight and balanced.
He tried to look at Nuir and copy what he did, but looking away while playing with knives was a little risky, so Nick missed half of what Nuir was doing while he tried to keep up.
"I’m starting to think this isn’t my thing," Nick said after ruining four perfectly good branches.
Nuir rolled his eyes. It wasn’t because he had already made almost a dozen arrows. It wasn’t because Nick was complaining, either.