Alan and Aaron hauled rocks. Lots of good, twenty pound or so, smooth stones from the edge of the river. Aaron was huffing and puffing but managing to keep going. Alan was… trying really hard not to puke half digested fish, taking lots of breaks, and generally cursing himself for agreeing to this. He wasn’t out of shape! His shape was just a bit too round and wibbly, that’s all!

They hadn’t quite finished widening the pit, now more of a four foot long trough, to Aaron’s satisfaction when John and Lucy returned dragging huge bundles of sticks lashed together with braided grass ropes. They were both red faces, presumably from the exertion. They both had bits of leaf litter and pine needles stuck in their hair at the backs of their heads and there was smudging from the ground on the back of their grass ‘shirts’. Uh-huh, red faced from exertion. Both looked exhausted but very satisfied. Bastards.

Nobody commented on the obvious nature of their condition, rather John was crazy excited to see the amount of fish they’d secured. In no time they finished widening and lining the ‘pit’ with a lot of the smooth river stones. The leaf litter war pretty damp, but it was also very deep and so clearing it in a large area was impractical. They instead were using a thick barrier of rocks to try and mitigate a lot of the risk of drying out and lighting the forest floor on fire. It had been working so far just fine, though they hadn’t really sustained a hot fire for very long.

They really weren’t planning on building a big hot fire for long anyways, this should be more of a low and slow one. The idea of smoking was to sterilize the fish, not really to cook it. The smoke was made by burning green or somewhat green wood, which would burn cooler and mostly make lots of smoke rather than heat. It would saturate the fish and kill off any pathogens or parasites in it, theoretically. If stored carefully so it wasn’t just re-contaminated, the fish should be ‘shelf stable’ for at least a few days.

They could still cook it more, but it would be ready to eat otherwise. For this, they’d skinned about half the fish and left the skins on the other half. They didn’t know which was going to be the best method and they could catch a lot more fish, they figured, if need be. The biggest issue was going to be fuel. While John and Lucy had collected a lot, it would probably not be nearly enough. The bulk of it was softwood that was half rotted or small sticks, chunks of things, etc. Not the nice split firewood you would normally think of. None of the trees were particularly large except a very few specimens.

It dawned on Alan that this could be a warning sign, since many of the trees were fast growing. Was there something that was killing off larger trees? No single tree trunk was too big to wrap your arms completely around. The tallest was probably not more than thirty feet. In Alan’s experience, a mature full size tree was a good sixty feet, or more. That would be something hardwood and about thirty to fifty years old. The conifers were also all small and conifers were apt to grow very large. A difference in lifespan or growth habit versus Earth, perhaps. More likely something would cut down larger trees.

There weren’t even stumps though, or the rotting logs of larger trees having been felled. Seasonal winds? Flooding that washed away the bigger trees? Maybe none of the trees had been here for very long? The leaf litter was very well established in some places, loamy soil at least a foot deep that you could basically dig into with your bare hands, full of insect and mycelium life. That implied decades or more of establishment and given the single year growth from the branches on the softwood trees, there should be some good sized ones in that time.

This all made Alan think that getting moving soon was a very good idea. No reliable source of fuel, they would probably run dry on firewood today or tomorrow. Food, sure, but without fuel you can’t reliably cook it. The flooding hadn’t come yet, Purleo had suggested it would though very soon. Maybe the flood washed away the larger trees? The leaf litter was very thin up nearly to the more level ground at the top of the tall banks, but it wouldn’t still be there in the bulk of the thin forested edge if it was washed away by floods.

The most logical culprit was the monster beaver. Rather, that was the only scary tree destroying thing that came to mind other than natural disaster, which didn’t fit the evidence. If not that creature of an engineer’s nightmares, then some other animal. What other animal would cut down larger trees? Only beavers and humans… or Talor perhaps? Alan decided to voice his concerns and everyone agreed to keep an eye out in particular for any signs of logging, recently or otherwise. They were no experts, but if the Talor really kept their grassland clear, it was likely they also harvested from the forests at the edges. If this was within Talor territory, then why make an effort to hide the evidence of your logging?

So they went as close to the monster-beaver area as they dared and as far as they could manage in the other direction, which was already now over a mile out, managing as a full group to harvest about one more large load of sticks and bits of wood to burn. Alan had been right, they were essentially tapped out of local fuel sources. Everything else now was the wet leaf-litter or the living wood of the trees.

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“Regardless of how the smoking turns out, we’re going to need get ready to relocate tomorrow. Purleo said they would return tomorrow as well, but if the smoking doesn’t work out at all, I think we should move at least a couple of miles upriver in the morning, bring some fresh fish with us and as much of the lean-to as we can. That will give us most of a day to rebuild it.” Aaron left out that if they didn’t have any of the smoked fish, it would be a very hungry morning, perhaps night tomorrow. They should at least have fish to eat tonight, even if they had to half bury it in the coals to cook it.

“We’re pretty lucky we haven’t started to get sick.” They were damned lucky they hadn’t gotten sick so far, drinking the raw river water, eating raw fish that one time, being unable to completely wash their hands. Their sanitized city constitutions were not adapted to this level of inundation and who knew.

“Aaron, I’m genuinely glad you think about these things to the point that we can mitigate the issues. I mean it. Even though it’s echoing my own concerns and I don’t know what to do about it, it means a lot that you think about and worry about us all.” Aaron gave Alan a nodded and a small smile as they carefully worked together to start another fire. There had actually been some hot embers left where they’d buried the fire from this morning and they were carefully blowing on it and feeding bits of very dried kindling to it. The little flame grew and grew and pretty soon it was spreading to the thin layer of dried wood and sticks that was now covered with a layer of mixed fresh and somewhat green wood.

Together they had been able to break some branches off that were about as thick around as Lucy’s wrist. They were longer than the pit so they had worked together to snap pieces off to make them shorter. Most of the branches were pretty straight, so it was easy to build up enough green wood to make the ‘smoke’ layer. They hoped.

In the end they had to feed quite a lot of their supply of dry wood before the green really started to burn, but once it got going the slow burn kept going, the wood bubbling and sizzling and spitting. They hadn’t put in any green conifer wood, John had said it was a really bad idea, some kinds would explode and send hot sap flying.

Slowly the fire built up and they kept feeding it dried wood when it seemed to get too low, keeping it going but not getting a real blaze. There was… a lot of smoke. It was unpleasant when the light breeze blew it towards them, but after almost two hours, as the afternoon sun started to dip low, the fish was taking on a different color. Aaron took a piece of one, it was almost too hot to handle easily. They might be cooking it, or might not, but it wasn’t turning the paler color of a cooked fish. It was a glossy, deep pink.

Aaron tasted it, volunteering to take the risk.

“It’s… hell if I know, it seems right? I’ve only had smoked salmon a few times and it came from a package. The texture isn’t like raw, but it’s not really totally cooked either? The taste is pretty smokey. I’m gonna say… success?” There were some cheers all around and they decided to let it go longer to be sure. The ones with the skin seemed to be not as thoroughly smoked as those without, which made sense, they had that extra barrier layer. Still, it seemed to be working fine. Fantastic for a first attempt!

Evening really started to fall and everyone took their last chance relieve themselves before it got really dark. No moon and no clouds meant there was still just enough starlight to see by, sort off, but under the leafed out canopy layer it was pretty damned dark. Nobody wanted to get lost or worse, step in someone’s leavings, in the dark. They also took their last trip down the river edge and refilled the water bottle Purleo had given them one more time. Going as a group let them all just drink right there and bring a full bottle back to camp.

Everyone was feeling anxious. The fish seemed to have worked out. Assuming that something didn’t come in the night and eat it, or them for that matter, then they would just need to secure it for travel and they could break camp tomorrow, heading upriver. Purleo was also supposed to return tomorrow, maybe. Assuming they had understood the Talor correctly.

“Why don’t we tell ghost stories?” John offered. Everyone seemed mildly surprised, but the mood almost immediately brightened at the distraction.

“We are sitting around a campfire.”

“No marshmallows though.”

“I never even went camping as a kid.” Nobody was terribly surprised at Lucy’s admission, her parents were both working professionals and she was an only kid and a daughter. Gender stereotypes aside, camping just wasn’t a common thing in their generation. That the three men had done it at least once was more a testament to their parent’s wanting them to experience it at least, rather than not at all. John and Aaron had gone backpacking. Hell, hadn’t Lucy gone with them too?

“Not the same. We never had campfires, all of the places we went were no-burn zones, your propane or butane single burner stoves only. We just cooked and ate and then used rechargeable lanterns until we went to sleep.” That made sense to Alan. Drought was a generation long issue in California and most state and federal areas no longer permitted campfires except during specific parts of the year due to fire concerns.

“Alright then, I’ve got this good ghost story.” Alan decided to be first up. “It begins on a dark and stormy night. Steve was working late at the data center, trying to resolve network connectivity issues on the company cloud servers when he suddenly heard…” Even Alan felt a tingle in his spine at the beginning of his own tale.