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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 4: Takano 85
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 1
Tommy sloshed water into her aluminum pan, and kept some. Getting it boiling over her campfire, she went back into her nest home. Removing the leaves lying on top of the food shelf where a bloody bit of venison lay alerted buzzing flies, but she had the wide fan shaped leaves back down on top of the meal hunted yesterday, and her handful in her right hand before the flies could strike. Coming back, she tossed it into the heating water. Washing her hand off back at the spigot, she came back to find the pan water boiling.
After a bit more, she went into her nest again, and removed covering leaves from half-rotted peaches. There were few left, and the taste was not ideal, but cooking it together would make it and the venison taste better. Finishing up, she wished for salt or bread, but they had what they had. The food was definitely not as good as what she and Lauren had eaten in the underground, which had been nicely spiced, properly cooked and everything by the System that ran the place. Unfortunately, that System was breaking down.
Licking her fingers, she took the pot back to the water fountain and cleaned it. On her way back she waved at a hunting party heading out. They were armed with arrows, and bows. The local deer herds were being plundered. Waving at her with smiles, the five men went to find a few deer.
Deciding to put deeds to her words, Tomiko gathered up fallen wood. This she dragged to her campfire first. After that, she moved her gathering area, and dragged brush to the bathroom to be used to start fires in the water heater. Coming back, she saw two young men dragging ten-foot long hand-wide logs through the woods to her campfire. They plopped them down and smiled at her almost like little puppies she thought.
“Thank you,” she told them with a forced smile even as she frowned inside. Just how was she supposed to burn a ten foot long log, even if it was only a handwidth thick? She had a lot of chopping to do with her hatchet--well, she couldn’t expect others to do everything for her. As the two young men silently walked away with more smiles and looks back than strictly needed, she knew that they had even less clue than she did. It would not be fair to beat on them for not solving all her problems, even if she had seen girls who did that.
A quick test of putting a new log over her log seat and trying to break it by standing on it revealed the futility of that plan. She would have to deal with this later. Not sure what to do, she took a bag (donated by one of the women of the tribe) and went looking for fallen fruit and nuts. She thus was far afield when suddenly she heard pelting feet coming her way. The first hunter, minus his bow, his arrows askew in the quiver on his back, ran over a hillock and saw her.
“Run,” he yelled with wide eyed fear. Grabbing her bag, she followed him, and soon enough three of the others passed her. But the last one paced behind her, perhaps concern mixed with his heavy, gasping breaths. She shouted to them to stop at her campfire. Whatever it was was unlikely to like fire. If it was vampires like Lauren had told her--well, it was daylight so it probably was not vampires. Fire was good whatever it was.
They followed her suggestion, and when she arrived she saw worried men picking up sticks as weapons. The four were breathing hard. The man behind her arrived, and threw himself to the ground.
“No more running. Just kill me instead,” he said as his whole belly and chest shook. He was older than the rest. After several minutes of nothing, she realized that whatever had scared them was probably not arriving.
“What did you see?”
“Oh, it was terrible.”
“Its eyes glowed yellow.”
“It was four legged.”
“Six legged.”
“Tall as Vi here.” Vi was the shortest of them.
“It had claws.”
“It was in a tree.”
“It screamed at us. Then it jumped from the near top of the tree to the ground. We ran for fear of our lives.”
“I see.” She did not. “I think you--we--are safe now. But I think you should tell the council.” They agreed, and set off with the largest peeling himself off the ground to trail after the rest.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #498: Characters Restart. 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:
