He was a failure, through and through.

The thought echoes through Yuri’s mind as he grips his plate tightly, struggling to cut into the fish on it with his plastic knife.

“Here.” a voice beside him says.

Yuri looks up and sees Brull, one of his childhood bestfriends sitting beside him, with a fork in his outstretched hand. “Brute strength won’t solve all your problems.” 

Yuri grunts, taking the fork from Brull and nodding in gratitude.

“Unless the problem is an eight foot grizzly running straight for you, eh!?” Kaide exclaims from the other side of the campfire, lifting both his hands above his head to imitate a bear. 

“Shut up you oversized ogre,” Jokic – the man sitting beside him – scowls. “Can’t you see the man is going through one”.

Jokic gives the log Kaide was sitting on a gentle nudge, shifting the man’s weight atop the log as his equilibrium met imbalance, toppling him to the gravel floor.

The four friends all share a quick moment of laughter. But Yuri’s laughter is short-lived as memories of the day quickly return.

“Get out, Yuri.” a voice beside him whispers.

Yuri turns again to his friend to see Brull gently tapping a finger to the side of his head. 

“You need to get out of there. Today was just another incident of life. Inevitable as it is painful to accept.”

Yuri considered lying to his friend, but found that he had neither the will nor the capacity to do so convincingly. Brull may have been right in his words, but Yuri’s mind was still hopelessly in tatters from his mistakes today.

“I’m just tired I suppose.” Yuri finally sighs, placing his plate and cup by his seat, his apetite had all but vanished now.

“No, Yuri, tired is a word travelers wear after they have survived the storm.” Brull answers, placing a hand on Yuri’s shoulder. “It is no word to describe a traveler still caught within it.

Brull give’s Yuri’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “Speak your mind, brother. Release your demons into the night and let them be swept away in the breezes that come. Before they distort you from within, into someone even you will not recognize.” 

Yuri falls into silence as he turns away from his friend, staring into the campfire as memories from the day continue to churn within him. It felt like a freshly opened wound, pulsing with pain as the body’s adrenaline did its best to numb the body and keep it unaware of the pain. 

His friend was right, Yuri admits once more, his mistakes today had brought on an influx of negative memories from his past, and it was slowly engulfing him in dread. Memories of guilt, regrets, doubts, and words of spite from the past were now knocking on the walls of his conscious mind. Scraping for the chance to be allowed inside.

Yuri casts a quick glance at Brull’s other arm, which had been bandaged from the shoulder down.

My doing. Yuri thought to himself with a sigh as he closed his eyes, lowering his head into his hands.

The crackling of the campfire fills his ears as the sound of Kaide and Jokic bickering in the background fades into the darkness.

Yuri recalls the events of the day. A day the four friends had planned to go hunting. A plan they had been anticipating for weeks.

He remembers what sparked the plan. How the group had caught wind of the sightings of an elegant white deer that had ignited their town into a frenzy. 

A creature said to bear antlers more magnificent than any crown the Eleven Kingdoms had ever forged, and eyes so piercing that a gaze into them was enough to reveal to any human the things they needed to see most.

In fact, the four friends had even caught glimpses of the deer during their scouting of the hunting grounds the week prior.

The four friends had been so prepared to hunt and bring the deer back alive that to say they were excited. . . would have been a severe understatement.

But when the day finally came, when today finally came, of course it had been Yuri who brought it all into shambles.

Yuri flinches as the realization stings his mind once more.

He forces himself to remember the scene of the group cornering the deer at the edge of a lake.

There had been no direction the creature could have possibly run without facing one of them. Together they had formed a perfect crescent in front of the creature. Yuri stood on the deer’s left, by the water’s edge, just as Kaide did opposite him, on the creatures’ right, with the two larger men, Jokic and Brull, covering any exits into the forest. The only place the creature could’ve possibly ran was into the lake, which would’ve guaranteed its capture.

They had it right where they wanted it.

Yuri briefly snaps back to the present, raising his head from his hands – his eyes still closed – as he flexed his palms, recalling how tightly he had clung to his rope when the group had begun closing in on the deer. Yuri remembers how quickly his heart had beaten and his body had shook from the adrenaline despite his efforts to compose himself.

The creature had been everything the rumors said it would be and more. It had been so much larger than any of them.

Significantly larger.

He remembers his lips quivering the closer the group moved towards the deer, anxiety seeping into his body and mixing with the adrenaline that was ran through his body.

He remembers the unease that had coursed through him as the deer turned towards him and he stared into its deep blue eyes.

He remembers faltering, as a wave of fear briefly took hold of his mind in the following moments. 

Fear that the creature had smelt.

Because what followed had been a blur of motion as the deer bolted into a charge straight at Yuri, causing him to panic and drop his rope. As Yuri had hurriedly bent down to gather it, he had looked up to realize the creature had closed the distance too quickly for him to react, it would sure enough pierce Yuri with its massive antlers.

It would have impaled him. It would have killed Yuri, without hesitation. 

Had Brull not collided into Yuri, shoving him into the lake and saving his life.

Getting his own shoulder gouged by the deer instead.

Just like that, the creature had disappeared into the trees. And the hunt ended. Just like that.

All because of his mistake.

All because of his inexperience in a situation that he was certain his friends would have been able to manage perfectly.

All because he was a failure, through and through.

Yuri’s eyes burst open as the thought rang through his head once more, sending a feeling of helplessness through his body and causing him to shiver and twitch.

He glances back at Brull to find his friend staring at him, his hand still on Yuri’s shoulder and an eyebrow raised in concern. 

Yuri looks up to realize Kaide and Jokic had also fallen silent to look at him too. 

Yuri exhales heavily.

“I am sorry for what happened during the day.” he whispers in guilt. “Sorry that this is how we must now spend the night.” 

His friends immediately open their mouths to retaliate, but he raises both his hands to stop them. He knew what they were going to say, and he would not have it.

“In your eyes, my failure might have been insignificant, but in the eyes of my mind, I am unable to see it so,” he continues. With a scoff he adds, “After all, how can a man, be such a burden to those around him? 

How can a man, be so useless and incompetent that his footprints sprout nothing but disappointment and grief? 

How can a man, be so incapable of being?”

Yuri lowers his hands, resting them on his lap with his palms faced toward him. He stares blankly into them as he carries on:

“In these moments, there are parts of me that begin to wonder if people were right. To regard me as an ugly stain on an already hideous world. 

In these moments, other parts of me begin to wonder if my past failures are not a testament to the belief that I am not just inevitably prone to mistakes, but inescapably made of them?”

Silence engulfs Yuri for a moment as he considers what he is about to admit.

“In these moments, there is a part of me that still wonders if my parents might’ve been right.” he whispered, just loud enough for his friends to hear him. 

“To deem me their greatest error, and the act of loving me their only mistake…

…In these moments, the rest of me can only sit and wonder, if I am prepared. To accept that the answer is what I won’t admit. 

To accept that their eyes can see me as mine will not. See me, as I truly am.

A failure, through and through.”

As the final words leave his mouth, a heavy hand slaps the top of Yuri’s head as pain rushes from the top of his head to his feet.

 Caught off guard, Yuri whirls to see the hand of Brull’s uninjured arm resting on the top of his head. A giant smile was spread across his friend’s face. 

“Perhaps it is not that you are not prepared to face the truth, but rather that you will not accept that it IS the truth.” his friend warmly booms. “Perhaps it is not that your mind is unwilling to embrace the sharpness of other’s hatred, as a definition of who you will be when your days are up and your nights have been all but spent.”

Brull ruffles Yuri’s hair as his friend turns towards the campfire to face the rest of the group. 

“Do you know, Yuri? What makes us human?”

Yuri opens his mouth to answer but is interrupted by Kaide’s voice which pierces the night air from across the campfire:

“Our ability to thrive! In the presence of chaos and catastrophe.” Kaide exclaims, raising his cup above him. “Rising not only above the doubts that surround us, but also the doubts within us.”

“Our willingness to endure!” Jokic adds from beside him, raising his own cup and clanking it against Kaide’s “To stare down thunderstorms, soar through blizzards and walk through desserts with a grin.” 

“Yes, you fools, yes!” Brull exclaims heartily as he turns towards Yuri.

“But most importantly, Yuri. It is our ability to think for ourselves.” Brull whispers. 

“The ability to recognize our very existence, as beings of this world.

The ability to recognize our presence upon this lush-filled world, pulsing with life around us.

The ability to choose, for yourself, who yesterday will remember you to have been today.” 

Brull lifts his hand from Yuri’s head and leans it against Yuri’s shoulder instead.

“Yet day after night, so many of us spend, hopelessly lamenting over the images of us that others have painted for us. Believing them to be the one true representations of who we truly are.

Why must you doubt that you are enough, Yuri? Questioning the reality that any of us will ever be, for anyone, even ourselves.

Why must you dwell upon the words of others, whose eyes seek only to fall upon the mistakes you have made, letting your successes fall into the silence?

“But there must be some truth to the words of others.” Yuri argues, “After all, the eyes are never reflective of the self, only of others. Even if all they ever perceive are mistakes.”

“Yes.” Brull agrees, “But what else can better teach a man to appreciate his arms, if not a freakishly massive excuse of a deer who puts holes into them, eh?” Brull jokes as he gestures at his bandaged shoulder, causing the group to erupt with laughter.

As the laughter slowly fades, Brull raises his cup towards Yuri, as Jokic and Kaide do the same.

Yuri allows himself his first smile since deer as he bends down to pick up his plate and cup, clanking it against the cup of his friends and taking a sip of his drink.

He found his shoulders a little lighter than before, and his mind less clouded than it had been all day.

As his friends fell into conversation and laughter, Yuri couldn’t help but think to himself that perhaps this changes nothing. 

Perhaps he was still nothing more than a bundle of mistakes at heart.

But perhaps it didn’t matter, so long as he could wake tomorrow with a chance to prove otherwise.

Because his friends had been right. 

What else could better define them but their mistakes?

What else could better define them but their triumphs over those mistakes?

What else could better define them all, if not the idea that they were all nothing more than the product of their failures, through and through?