I woke up with the sound of a heart rate monitor in my ears. I slowly opened my eyes and saw that I was in a hospital room, with equipment on my left and to my right my… mom! It was her, she was here. When I looked over at her, I saw her put her phone away and walk right up to me. “Hey, Aiden. How do you feel?” she asked. “Fine. What happened?” I asked.

“You were found near the event horizon with an arrow through your head and your friends as well. They called in an ambulance and you were taken to the hospital. Luckily, they got that arrow out of your head.” she said. I smiled. “I’m sorry I went into the woods and endangered my friend’s lives,” I said. “Don’t be. You're a hero. What you and your friends did will make history.” she said.

Suddenly, a doctor walked in. “Hey, sport. How you feeling?” he asked. “Good,” I said. “Well, you might be wondering what happened to that arrow?” he asked. I nodded. “Well, you're extremely lucky. The arrow narrowly missed most of your brain. Though, it did strike your amygdala which is the part of your brain that registers emotions, especially fear and memory.” he said. I listened very carefully.

“Now, the section of your amygdala that was hit was the area that registers whether or not you should be scared, meaning…” he said, but I finished his sentence. “You mean that I can’t feel fear anymore,” I asked. “Well not completely. You still can, it’s just extremely suppressed. Your instincts will not be the first thing your body will use to defend itself” I asked. “Well, yes and no. You can feel fear but it’s very suppressed. We also believe that it may impact your instincts as well and your brain may not use your instincts unless it truly needs to.” the doctor said.

I was just sitting there, dumbfounded. My brain had been shorted out. I can’t feel fear? That’s a joke. Right? But it kind of makes sense. I wasn’t really that scared when I was facing Inka. I was close to pissing my pants for real when we approached the temple or when facing the purple plant. But I felt quite calm and centered when I was facing Inka.

“That’s amazing,” I said. “Now, we don’t expect any other sort of major side effects, but other than that, you are in good shape.” the doctor finished. “Are my friends okay?” I asked. “Yes. There’re in the room next door.” the doctor said. I sighed. They had made it back okay. We had made it back okay. We were safe.

THREE DAYS LATER…

Have you ever had one of those moments where you wonder, what the hell happened? I was just living my normal life and then everything went tits up for about 16 days straight. Well now, things are mostly back to normal.

I gathered all the footage from my friends and I have been editing a two and a half hour video on our adventure. I call it, “The Hunt”. Original name right. I still have a while left to go on the video though but I should finish it in the next few days.

I have been swarmed by reporters asking me questions about the adventure and the creatures we witnessed. I have decided to hold all the questions off till the movie is released and then talk about it in detail. This has kind of ticked off the reporters and the scientists wanted the info, but I assured them they wouldn’t be disappointed.

I also planted my piranha plant in my backyard and I call it “Petey”. I was amazed at how well he survived without any soil or water or anything to keep him alive. His body must have a way to store food or something like that. However, I am worried about a problem that comes with this plant. It needs to eat animals to survive. Not only that, but Petey likes his animals alive as well. While this isn’t too big of an issue, the bigger Petey gets, the bigger his prey needs to be to clench his hungry. My worry is that I will either run out of food for Petey or he will eventually try to eat me instead.

I guess I have to try and get on Petey’s good side if I don’t want him to eat me. I don’t want end up as plant pudge, like my dog. Speaking of dogs, I’m gonna get a new puppy in about three days, which is nice. Still, this whole trip was one of the most amazing and scary times of my life. I was able to reflect on a lot over those 16 days. I learned a lot of my role in our world and in nature, especially from Inka.

Speaking of Inka, I really don’t know what Inka’s gonna do with us. Is she coming to get us? Is she pissed off about us escaping? Was our mad skills the thing that got us back or was nothing more than a giant pot of luck? I guess I’ll never know.

Well, the only real change to my house after all this is that our windows and doors will always be shut and locked during the day and night. We finally install a heater and air conditioning in our house so we wouldn’t have to open any windows and the doors can only be open via passcode. That passcode requires fingers and the last time I checked, Inka has no fingers.

One thing that he also changed is me. I feel a lot bolder and powerful. I used to be so scared of projecting my voice or giving my own opinions, as I thought people would cast me out for it. Now, I speak freely and unrestrained. I no longer panic when I need to do a big assignment. I’ve come clean about a lot of things I could never say before. I’m a changed kid and I’m happy about it.

All in all, this whole journey changed me. It changed the way I see the world and how my friends see the world as well. I’m just happy to be back in the place that I belong...home. This really has been the best summer ever!

---

Welcome to the 42nd and final chapter to my "The Hunt" series, which is ongoing gift art for the amazing Inkanyamba.
*sniff* I always cry at happy endings.

Inkanyamba belongs to https://www.furaffinity.net/user/inkanyamba/
Multiple characters and one superhuman belong to me

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