[PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes

[katabasis]

The bread that is over-baked so that it cracks and bursts asunder hath not the form desired by the baker; yet none the less it hath a beauty of its own, and is most tempting to the palate. Figs bursting in their ripeness, olives near even unto decay, have yet in their broken ripeness a distinctive beauty.

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[katabasis]

It's all nonsense. The philosophy, the sentiment, the fairly useless question of how anyone becomes a crack shot having last fired a gun decades ago - every piece should have very little hold on them as they travel through the wood. Or maybe they do. Maybe it's the place which is incidental and these questions and their shared fondness are the points by which the rest is tethered. The shape of being kissed is as solid as the trees around them, the question of what comes after as the smell of encroaching rain in the stale late summer air. And Thomas, though he is easy and brittle by turns, seems more true than the gunshot.

CRACK! The report murmurs afterward, a hum of the sound lingering in the air. James realizes his own stillness only after Thomas speaks. He turns his face to him, ear cocked still toward the hole in the afternoon punched by the sound.

"It's possible."

Though unlikely? He isn't certain. What does he know of hunting or the habits of people who live in real, proper places? Next to nothing. There's a fleeting thought for the fact that they might have brought a rifle along so as to craft a better lie for their presence here, but he can't imagine it would really lend them anything but the smallest measure of legitimacy.

So: after a moment, he walls on again - along more or less the same line they've been traveling. "We should keep moving." They'll either find out or they won't.