Painin busied himself in cleaning out some of the leavings of some of the previous tenants of the cave. Thankfully none of which seemed to be that fresh and consisted mostly of bits of broken bone and scraps of fur. With the cave floor cleaner, he went and gathered some firewood and set about making a small fire contained within a ring of stones. Moving back outside he began to break off branches full of pine boroughs that he laid next to the small fire and began to scatter the rest around the cave floor to help them dry and ease the chilly hardness of the cave floor.
Painin awoke his body stiff from its position against the cave wall to find the cave flooded with warm light. Wiping his eyes, he pushed himself to his feet and moved towards the small pool of water located in the back of the cave and noticed that it had not grown over the previous night. The water looked gross from the previous resident and he would not allow them to drink from it. He tossed a couple of bits of wood onto the embers of the fire and quickly blew them to life.
He moved quietly as he passed the small pile of items located towards the back of the cave, and soon realized that Kobi was not among them. A quick scan of the rest of the cave confirmed that she had seemingly disappeared. Painin moved out into the morning and began to look for her making sure to keep as quiet as possible in case something had captured her. He finally found her kneeling along the edge of the stream still swollen with rain runoff.
Painin stood there within the trees as he watched Kobi drink from the stream and slowly began to wash the mud from her arms. She used tuffs of grass dipped into the water to slowly scrub at the mud. Her movements became faster until they reached an almost frantic pace. Great sobs racked her body as she continued to scrub the now long-gone mud that had been replaced by angry red scratches.
Feeling embarrassed and slightly ashamed at watching such a private thing Painin stepped further back into the bushes before making his way back towards their small camp within the cave. He decided to pick up some more deadfall from the surrounding area to add to their meager supply of wood. While picking up the wood he recognized the Sebal tree and its hard-to-miss growths that covered the branches of it. Placing the wood down he took his knife and with a bit of hardwood began to cut into one of the branches.
He used the hunk of wood to strike the back of the knife helping it to bite into the branch and cut into one of the growths. Finally, after a couple of well-placed strikes and the top of the bulge came free revealing the grub that had caused it within. His father had explained that the grubs and the tree had a relationship of sorts both getting something that it needed from the other. Also, when in a bind the grubs could be eaten by people once they had their head and guts removed and were cooked by a fire.
Painin had only tried them once before and the taste had left something to be desired, but it was silly for them to pass up some food when presented by the Great Mother. He continued to harvest more of the grubs and began the process of cleaning them out which required biting just behind the head with his teeth and giving a solid tug to break it free and pull out the guts still attached to the head. The head and guts were tossed into the bushes and he began to place the still-wiggling bodies of the grubs on sticks which he arranged around the fire to cook.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
About this time Kobi returned from the stream with some berries which she carried in the hem of her shirt which she ate half of with as little movement as possible. The remaining berries she left for Painin before going and laying down with her back to the fire. Despite his best efforts she refused to eat the now-cooked grubs and left them sitting on the sticks. Painin nibbled on the grubs which ended up having a taste that was kind of fruity before having some of the berries the rest he left for the morning. He propped himself up against the wall and watched as the smoke lazily climbed up to the roof of the cave before disappearing.
His dreams that night were a bizarre group of different moments all smushed together without seeming rhyme or reason. Every time he awoke, he would check on Kobi who lay there seemingly entrapped by her dreams before tossing a couple of sticks onto the fire and going back to his fitful sleep or simply lay there staring at the fire until sleep overtook him.
They did little during their time in the cave with Kobi sleeping most of the time. While she slept Painin busied himself gathering food, and wood, and keeping a lookout for more of the men that he had taken to calling raiders. When he did see the raiders, it was often at a distance moving along the road heading North. Sometimes when the wind would change, he would smell heavy smoke on the wind, and at night he could see the glow of distant fires burning towards the eastern horizon.
He harvested more of the grubs and after removing their guts which he used as bait inside a small fish trap made from thin supple branches. Soon they managed to offset their food supply with some small fish which he cooked on the fire. Kobi continued to sleep and barely eat. She only communicated with either looks or hand gestures. Seemingly gone was the young girl whose smile filled his heart with glee when she and her family came into town to celebrate a holiday. She had been replaced with someone that had either been hurt or seen such horrible unmentionable things. He could only imagine the things that she had been exposed to and he cared enough about her not to ask.
Kobi was tormented in her dreams by the faceless men as they killed those that she loved and then began to hurt her as they touched her. She awoke to find that Painin was sleeping against the wall talking softly in his sleep across the cave. Getting up she stretched and grimaced as her wounds pulled tight. She lightly splashed the toe of her boot in the puddle of water and then tossed a branch onto the fire before walking outside. She took in the night and went into the bushes to relieve herself before returning to the cave.
There were sticks propped up next to the fire with grubs still on them. Kobi grimaced at the thought of eating one of them and couldn’t understand how Painin managed to do it. She had seen him at holidays running around with the other kids though she had caught him on more than one occasion staring at her. Moving to the back of the cave she checked her injuries as best she could and then went back to lay down next to the fire. Sleep was a long time coming for her as she stared into the depths of the fire and promised that she wouldn’t let anyone hurt her again.