By the time Tommy climbed the hill back to the camp, Lauren had her fish cleaned and roasting.  She had equipped herself with a forked green branch to get it in and out of the coals, and it was cooking nicely.  There would be plenty for the two of them even with the one fish, but they should clean and cook Tommy’s catch if only to show her how it was done.

But then, she was going to have to show everyone how it was done, and hopefully there would be a lot of fish to clean and cook--but also a lot of fires on which to cook them.

“Any trouble?” she asked.

“Well, it’s not as easy as you make it look,” she said, “and I would guess that half a dozen people splashing in the lake did not help, but I wasn’t the first to catch one.”

“I hope they figure out a way to bring them all up here.  I’m going to have to teach them how to make baskets, but I’m not so good at that.  So many things they have to learn--just trying to keep it organized in my head.  When I was teaching the parakeet people, they already had the skills they needed to survive, and I was just enhancing what they could do--in fact, I probably learned as much from them as they did from me.  Here, if I can’t give them basic survival skills--”  She let the thought hang.  Of course it wasn’t her idea to bring them out of the caves; on the other hand, it wasn’t Mister Beam’s plan to be killed trying to open the door.

Well, one step at a time.

“I think the fish is ready.  Shall we eat?”  And with those words she removed it from the coals and started serving portions.

There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #465:  Characters Wander.  Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter.  It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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