With the slabs of meat in hand, the dwarfs were hard at work using their stone knives to cut the meat into small bits to cook. And as the fire in the ground fire pit settled down Uria and Ariel put the deer ribs and legs on the ashes then covered them with large leaves. Then took turns shoveling dirt over and from Urist prediction should be done in a few hours.

The stew meat was placed into the pot with Lun overseeing the cooking, stirring the pot and cutting up taro roots. Urist dealt with cooking the tenderloins on the back of the deer on the nearby camp rocks grilling the meat he seasoned it with some mashed up Woozoo flower petals creating a fruity and mellow scent to linger out as the meat sizzled.

A line of dwarfs was cutting into the neck meat, heart and liver making strips of thin meat with their stone knives. Since this was their first dissection Urist wanted everyone to have a hand on experience cutting up the meat, after showing how it was done once he left them to their own devices.

Before letting them cut though he had everyone wash their hands with some water and used a shirt to dry them off and reduce the dirt on their hands. He didn’t want the meat to have much if any foreign residue that could affect the taste of the meat.

It pained him to use a few bottles for this but it needed to be done, for any fat left on the deer it was thrown into the pot for cooking. Fat had many uses such as waterproofing for example, but they had no need for that method and instead use it for nutritional usage.

In about a half-hour the processing was finished and cooking was in full swing. By now the tenderloins were done so Urist cut it up into pieces after having everyone wash their hands in the river to get rid of the geese and blood.

As they ate and enjoyed the tenderloin Urist was slowly savoring his pieces one at a time letting the flavor sink into his tongue while in thought. Right now with the smoked meat of the fish, squirrel, and deer, they had about two days of preserved food they could eat.

For today they would eat the soup, tenderloins, ribs, and legs which would be enough to feed them today no problem. Although he wanted to wait forty-eight hours before considering the smoked meat to be done because depending on the thickness of the slice it could take a longer or shorter amount of time to cook.

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And with their stone knives cutting in question he didn’t want to take the chance and have someone get sick because of him. They had some herbal medicine collected, yet he didn’t want to rely on such a thing in haste.

They had fish they could still catch, they had their squirrel hunting grounds, the mushrooms which were growing and if push came to shove they could eat the hares as an emergency food source. If there was no way out he would eat the dogs as the final straw, which was one of the reasons he hadn’t named them anything and called them dog 1 and dog 2.

Sure they could keep hunting for their food, but what of when winter comes around and they have nothing to eat since they have no storage? They had no farms to speak of as well except for some taro plants they would harvest could that sustain them throughout such a time?

No! They would starve in the cave if they didn’t plan. The question is how they could store food items throughout the winter to eat. They also needed new clothing to use in the winter meaning they needed to get their hands on salt.

So many things to prepare made Urist frown at what an uphill battle he would have to face from now on. After all, he did not know if there was any civilization nearby to trade with, they knew nothing of their surroundings except salt that might be down at the river's end.

How far was it?! Just the thought made Urist feel helpless what could he do.

“You ok boss? Did you not like meat? It’s so tasty.”, The bulky Urat replied with a cheer using his fork to stab another piece of meat into his mouth in glee.

Urist woke up from his thoughts and looked Urat in the face and turned to the rest seeing their cheerful smiles made his heart feel light at the sight. He knew that he had to do better for their survival and keep thinking of new sources of food to make sure they lived rather than surviving.

Enjoying their small snack everyone got back to work while Urist tended to the fire and soup stirring it with a carved wooden spoon every so often to make sure nothing got stuck to the bottom which would make it a pain to clean.

While cooking he multi-tasked in burning come more bowls as they couldn’t have enough of them for eating and storage. A plan was forming in his brain of the next step to take in this wilderness creating and discarding plans as they came out of his brain.

Until he decided on one thing that was one of the most important things in civilization before the modern world created machines to do it for them.

A forge.