Trek For Survival

"He"s still watching us," she whispered, moving into her place.

"Dear, stay near Vonn, and don"t give him a chance to be with you alone," said Tom. "Just watching us won"t get him anywhere. If you stay nervous from him watching, eventually you will crack. Just stay calm. Remember, you are stronger now than you were when we left our home so long ago."

She sat down, with her knees pulled and nodded thoughtfully. Her dad was right. If she stayed cool headed, and aware of her surroundings, that man couldn"t do anything to her.

"Mikey, we can"t trust any of the people around us, so you need to stay close to an adult at all times, okay?" said Carla softly, tucking the boy in.

"Okay, mom," he sighed, already half asleep.

Gia would have to remember to remind him in the morning not to wander off. She didn"t want to risk him going missing because a lizard took a fancy to him. Laying down with a shudder next to Vonn, his warmth seeped into her cold body, calming her down. All of the tension fled as his warmth chased away her chills, and she was soon asleep.

At some point in the night, she woke up, wide awake, and sat up straight in her sleeping blanket. There was a figure outlined on the wall from the moon outside. She just knew it was Geth and her throat closed up in fear. What was he doing outside her tent? Was he going to come in and attack them? Was he going to try and kidnap her? All sorts of terrible things flew through her mind and she jammed a fist into her mouth to keep from uttering a sound.

Jabbing down, the figure lifted up a long thin wriggling shape, and she realized it was a snake! Breathing hard, she watched as the person cut off the head and shoved the reptile into a bag before moving a few steps and repeating the process. Shuddering in fear, she watched as he slowly moved around the tent, stabbing over and over again, the sound of the weapon hitting the ground with a thump alternated with a soft occasional hiss.

How much time pa.s.sed, Gia wasn"t sure, but Vonn woke her the next morning from her strange hunched over position, where she had fallen asleep at some point, still clutching her knees in fear a snake might bite her toes. She sat up and rubbed her eyes groggily, realizing everyone else had already left the tent. Scrambling out into the sunlight, she glanced around to see if there were disembodied heads laying around the tent, but she couldn"t see any.

"Good morning!" chirped Sudar cheerfully. "I hope I didn"t wake you in the night. I used the heat you guys were putting off to hunt the snakes that were attracted to you. It can get pretty cold at night, and they don"t like that. It makes them slow, but oh so easy to hunt."

She looked over at the rack he had erected to dry the snake meat, and rubbed her arms to try and get rid of the gooseb.u.mps that were racing up and down her arms. Those things were huge!

"Good morning," she replied in a soft voice. It had been him killing the snakes last night, not Geth! She felt kind of silly for her fear, but at the same time, seeing the sizes of those snakes, she was grateful for his thoughtfulness. "Thank you for keeping us safe last night."

"Oh, I didn"t hunt them to protect you," he laughed. "Snake meat is delicious when dried and will provide us with plenty of good meat while we cross to the orcs."

She swallowed the bile that was trying to rise in her throat and nodded to him, afraid she would throw up if she tried to say anything. Vonn rose up from where he had been taking down the tent when he saw her strangled face and came to her side.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly. "Do you want me to come with you to use the bathroom?"

"Please," she managed, looking at the ground. She was so scared of Geth and ashamed of herself for thinking Sudar was Geth, she wasn"t sure what to feel. The thought of eating snake grossed her out beyond words. The thought of protecting her chast.i.ty from Vonn was far from her mind.

"You seem really subdued. Did you have bad dreams?" asked Vonn, sneaking looks at her as they walked towards the trees.

"I woke up and thought Sudar was Geth and freaked out. I was too afraid of a snake biting my feet to lay back down, and didn"t sleep well because of it. Did you know Sudar plans to have us eat snake while we travel with him?" she finally managed to choke out.

Vonn was quiet as she stepped behind a tree to relieve herself, and when she returned to his side, they walked silently back to the others. When they finished getting the tent set up, Vonn said he wanted to talk to some of the lizardmen before they left that day and headed off. Gia watched him go, until he was out of sight.

He returned shortly with a large heavy sack that he set down at her feet.

She looked up at him curiously, feeling better after sitting in the warm sunlight for so long, and reached for the bag. Inside was a pile of b.l.o.o.d.y meat.

"What"s this?" she asked, looking back up at him.

"We"re going to start a fire and cook it, so you don"t have to eat snake meat," said Vonn, gathering some sticks together and pulling out his fire starter.

"What?" asked Tom and Carla as Gia gaped at him.

"Gia doesn"t want to eat snake meat, which is what Sudar has for us to eat, so I got us some wild pork from the lizards," explained Vonn as if it was the most sane thing in the world.

"Oh Vonn!" gasped Gia, a smile lighting up her face. "You are the most wonderful man in the whole world!"

Rushing to his side, she knocked him to the ground and gave him a hug.

"We still have plenty of the rations from the elves," said Tom, confused as he watched them for a minute before returning to his carving with a shake of his head.

"You would have done the same thing for me," said Carla softly, winking at him.

"You know I would!" replied Tom with a fierce nod. "But we"ve had snake before."

"It"s delicious if cooked right," agreed Carla.

"Is it?" asked Mikey. "I like pork, though."

"Oh, no! That"s for Gia. You"ll eat the snake like the rest of us, and then we"ll eat rations after that," said Carla.

"You"ll really like it," said Tom, turning his carving around and examining it carefully before holding it up in the sunlight. "This bone seems to glow in the sunlight. I really like the effect. I"m afraid to carve it too thin, because I don"t want it to break."

"That"s beautiful," said Carla, taking the little elephant from him.

"I just wish I had seen some of the other things we"ve run into, so I could carve them," sighed Tom, taking out another piece of bone. "I bet Sudar would have gotten a lot of trade value out of them."

"I can draw you a picture of them in the dirt?" offered Mikey.

"Would you?" asked Tom, watching as the boy quickly started sketching.

"Wow, that"s really good," said Carla, looking at the dirt at her feet.

"I know," said Mikey, looking at the sketch for a moment, adding a little here and a little there. "I used to draw pictures in the mud for little Susy before we left. She really liked it when I used different colors of mud to make the pictures more real-like."

"Which little Susy?" asked Carla, scrunching her brow. "I don"t remember a little girl named Susy."

"She was the daughter of the pig farmer. She was supposed to be inside doing her lessons with her mom, but her mom liked to drink until she fell asleep and then Susy would come out and play with me. She didn"t like touching the rats, but she would help me chase them where I could get them. I miss her. Do you think we can see her again someday?" asked Mikey.

Carla looked over at Tom, and he cleared his throat. "Son, the reason we left the city, well, is because bad men were coming. I don"t know that we can ever go back.��

"What kind of bad men?" asked Mikey. "Like those bad elves that tried to kill Luan?"

"Worse than them," said Tom. "But very similar."

"Do you think we"ll ever get to see Luan again?"

"Probably not. She lives a long way away," said Carla.

"She said I would live a really long time because of Sprout. Maybe she"ll come visit me some day, or maybe I can go visit her? I know the way after all!"

"Maybe someday," agreed Tom. "Now, about that sketch."