White flakes slip delicately down. Dusting the glow of graceful moss-clad forest relics rotting back into the ground, they illuminate the few giants still standing — majestic Japanese yew and lofty Korean pine. The ancient trees are silent; the only sound is from the hustle of our camouflaged legs on the game trail.
A blister is nagging my heel, but I'm desperate to keep up. The man I'm following, Kolya, moves dangerously fast through the woods. At any moment he could stumble across a lurking carnivore, and then what? A gnash of 10-cm canines and he'll be history.
Doubts about my own mortality creep into my mind. I glance suspiciously at clumps of long grass. Predators usually take the slow and infirm: of the two of us, that's definitely me. Am I sweating? Can the monster smell my fear? What happens if it pounces from behind? I'll never hear a thing, and Kolya won't see a trace — just a last bootprint and a few spots of blood, swiftly covered by tumbling snow.