Straighten Up Little Soldier

Allegro gave a wistful and amused grin when Balthier thanked the doe for feeding them and nodded his approval to the simple and effective thanks. He affectionately nosed the top of his son's head before turning the focus to the doe and the lesson at hand. He watched Balthier run full tilt toward the den and his ears flicked with worry, but he didn't want to dampen the boy's enthusiasm so he bit back a follow up warning or scolding for going too enthusiastically after the sharp knife. Luckily, his return trip with the tool and how he held the tool itself was far more careful so Allegro was able to relax again with a soft chuckle. He was always so afraid of the pups getting hurt even though he knew that to a certain extent there was only so much he could do to keep energetic fur balls from getting into trouble. However, he just knew that if Aranea found out Balthier hurt himself on his skinning knife after Allegro asked him to fetch it... he'd never get her forgiveness for that.

"Perfect, thank you, son," he commented before carefully taking the knife from him. He walked back to the doe's neck and set the knife down agai off to the side, using his paw to trace a line through the deer's fur around its neck where it would connect to its head. "A good clean cut right around here will get us a good starting point and then we can start working our way down its body. I'll show you how I do it and then you can give it a try, okay?" He picked the knife back up and turned the doe's head so that he could get to the underside of it's neck. He wanted to get the hardest parts out of the way first so he cut a line from the front of its neck and around the side that was laying on the ground and then around the back of its neck, leaving an uncut portion around the side of its neck that was facing toward the sky. The blood started spilling out over the ground, but luckily for them the cold weather and the fact that the doe had been dead for a while now kept it from being as much of a bloody mess as it could have been. He sat the knife down in front of Balthier and gave him a small nod toward the deer. "Go ahead and give it a try! Just be careful with the knife and if you have any trouble getting it to cut just pass it back to me. If you start pressing too hard the knife could slip and cut you."

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