26 FEBRUARY, FRIDAY, CONTINUED
When things settled down, Wilhelm came over to report, "Apologies, Alpha and Betas, Prince River is likely to remain unconscious for a while more. I can carry him on my back..."
"Can you?" Ben challenged, and then he sighed, "Forget it, Will. We'll just wait for EJ and Cobra to return."
"Okay, change of plans." Ben walked off towards the rest of the team, "Barry, can you hunt? Get a couple of guys and go hunt food. Fluffy start a fire and refill the water."
Wait, were we going to set up camp? Like here? No way... I didn't want to stay here. I looked around but couldn't tell the time of day by the fake lighting in the tower. Was it night already? It still looked clearly daytime, but we had been here for a while now.
No!!! I wanted to get out ASAP!
Then again, River was down, Ki probably should rest up after healing all day, and everyone had to be physically exhausted and starving. I know I was.
This had to be the new worst day of my life. Isn't it funny how you think you've hit rock bottom, and then you find out that there were lower ground to fall on? I blamed River. Who else would've been able to stumble into such new lows?
EJ and Cobra got back to us quickly after our team building exercise. They had seen the light explosion and rushed over to assist.
"It's was like BuffffftttttooosshhhieeEEE!!!" EJ explained. Yes, that would sound exactly like the ultimate move of the Alpha Snow Wolf. Real elegant.
I realized I've been sarcastic for a while now. I couldn't help it.
Even the magical snow had become a detestable thing - because all snow, no matter how magical, fell to the ground. And once on the warm ground, it melts so that the leaf litter and dirt underfoot became muddied, and the earthy smell mixed in the humid heat was like... if hell was looking for a signature scent, it might want to consider this one.
Oh! And while we were at it, why not combine it with the corpse flower scent? That would be heavenly - not. Actually, quite the opposite, so it would really be perfect for hell.
Anyway, I was left to sit on Ki's bag and sulk on the side. No one thought to bother me. Either they were too busy preparing the assortment of jungle game for our dinner and setting up camp, or they were still reeling from the awkwardness of my speech.
Fluffy had found a pool of fresh water. I overhead some of them saying there was a small waterfall and parrot sightings, but I was too tired to go check it out. Anyway, most of what I overhead was of EJ insisting he saw parrots and the other guys not believing him.
River was up by now too. The humans had gone to check out the waterfall. I think River wanted a bath.
"Just don't bath in our drinking water, Prince." Ben warned before they left.
"Watch out for small crocodiles, and water snakes, and large lizards, and..." Barry called out at their departing backs, but I knew they heard because Keanu's worried voice drifted back to our camp, "Did you hear that, River? I don't think taking a bath is a good idea."
Yeah. Please listen to your wiser and more knowledgeable friend, River!
What would I give to sit and soak in my bath at home though! Oh the luxury to soak till the stickiness and dirt and residual embarrassment of my speech washes away. That's what I was going to do when I got home. Soak in a bubble bath till I was pruney.
The snow gradually became a light shower. Oh great. #ihatewarlockland.
I sat, like a grumpy stone gargoyle, refusing to leave my perch. Ki came over to adjust the hood of my cape over my head. He also arranged my cape to cover more of me from the rain. I just sulked and let him.
Yes. I agree... I've been really spoiled since Ki appeared in my world.
And then the rain slowed to a drizzle before stopping with an overwhelming humidity as if the earth was trying to push the wet back into the sky where it came from by sheer force of evaporation.
It was like the jungle was doing everything in its power to make me hate it.
I remembered a travel show my mum once watched on TV. It was to some far away exotic tropical island, I don't remember which one, but the natural scenery was supposed to be second to none, and this couple sampled everything the tropical paradise had to offer on the viewer's behalf.
They enjoyed the balmy tropical breeze. But their tropical breeze didn't feel like an airplane engine blasting hot air in your face or smell like the earth's got body odor. The heat didn't make them break a sweat or melt the smiles off their faces.
They visited a jungle trail, bathed together under a waterfall, fed cockatoos, and ended with a romantic dinner under the stars. It was just the two of them, the stars in the sky, and a waiter whose sole duty was to keep their glasses filled with champagne.
At the time though, my attention was focused solely on the logistics, "How did they get the table up on that cliff?"
There was a candle lit table, chairs, and white table cloth and everything.
My mum tried to explain something about a camera crew and a truck but I insisted that the two of them plus the waiter were alone - the narrator said so!
"And how did they get the kitchen there?" I asked.
"Maybe they didn't bring the entire kitchen..." Mum tried to explain.
"Then how did they cook?" I demanded.
I don't remember how mum answered but eventually she ended up telling me not to mind any of it.
"Wouldn't it be nice to visit a beautiful tropical island for a holiday?" Mum sighed later that day.
I shook my head, "I don't want to eat on the cliff. That part looked boring."
Adult dinners were always long and tedious to sit through. Plus it seemed like a lot of trouble to have to transport an entire kitchen to the middle of nowhere so that you could eat and enjoy nature.
I could eat and enjoy nature right here in my backyard. Which was what I tried out that weekend. I told Dean about it and we had brought biscuits and juice packs out to the woods behind the pack house to eat and enjoy nature.
I was right, it wasn't very exciting. So after that, I roped in Savy, Ben, and Lizzy. Dean got Drew and Darlyn to join too, and we did our own jungle trail. There wasn't a waterfall to swim in, but it had rained quite heavily the night before and there was this really large ditch in the woods, just behind the big log by the hiking path, and we splashed in that - fully clothed of course.
We all went home soaked to the bone. Which was bad because I think it was autumn then. My sweater shrank for some reason after that and Mum put it in Savy's closet.
Dean caught a cold because we "really shouldn't have been running around wet in that weather." This was according to his mum, Florence, but no one else got sick.
Ben did get in trouble though. He had left his wet clothes on the carpet and it soaked through and left a permanent stain (because brown ditch water and white carpets had an affinity that cannot be denied.)
"He's such a bozo sometimes." Lizzy had complained. But at least he was a bozo who knew how to keep his mouth shut because Lizzy was not implicated in the slightest. In fact, I don't think Beta Lucas or Mrs Willow ever found out about our tropical jungle adventure.
Because he kept mum, Beta Lucas hit him with the stiffest penalty and Ben was down raking leaves in his backyard every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of the season.
Beta Lucas had to borrow our backyard on Sunday so Ben would have enough leaves to rake. I felt sorry for him and tried to help him clear some ahead of time but Ben caught me doing it, "Don't, Sam. If it doesn't look like enough work, Dad'll make me rake at the Packhouse too."
Which was bad because the Packhouse had really large trees lining the backyard just so that when the wind blew, everything from the woods would be blown over. There was not an hour in fall that the backyard of our packhouse was leaf-free.
In contrast, our backyard didn't have any trees disrespectful enough to drop their leaves into Alpha property. The only reason why it had as many leaves as it did was because nobody ever bothered to rake them.
So I helped Ben by not helping him and Ben took his time and stretched the work across the rest of Fall.
Sigh... Why did I even leave home? This had to be what running away felt like - I meant the part where you feel miserable and homesick and realized how good you had it, not the initial exhilarating part. But this understanding was also based on what I had watched on TV. I had never technically ran away from home myself, at least not on purpose.
So I was sitting under a drippy tree, hungry, wet and cold, feeling sorry for myself, when I realised that I could smell meat cooking.
Oh! Dinner! My mouth watered and my stomach churned. But outdoor cooking with an open fire wasn't something that could be rushed, I've done it before at Lycan Study Group camps. Practical survival training was taken pretty seriously in Lycan Study Group. I was pretty good at it too. I could get a nice blazing cooking fire set up with a single match stick within half an hour. That was my last record anyhow.
But outdoor cooking sesh at camps were not quite the same as really surviving outdoors. For one, I had always snuck in dried pine leaves to use as tinder. My secret to success was dried pine leaves. We didn't have a lot of pine trees in our packlands, but there were four large ones in a nearby park. I'd collect and dry them a week before camp, pack them into two brown paper lunch bags - like I'd stuff them full, and then bring them to camp with me.
When it was time to set up our outdoor cooking fires, the other pups would start looking for tinder and kindling... ah, because store bought firewood was already provided, which I guess was the other stark difference to a real outdoor survivor situation. Anyway, I would just use my special tinder pack from home.
It was very easy. I empty one bag of pre-made tinder in the center of where my fire should be, stack the sticks and firewood around it like a tepee, making sure to leave generous gaps for air to flow through the structure. Then I twist up the empty paper bag. One match stick to light the rolled up paper bag. This caught fire very quickly. Now stuff the blazing roll of paper bag into the tinder. Everything would catch fire inside the wooden tepee.
Now wait for the fire to start licking into the firewood. Once the fire was biting the wood for real, collapse the structure, empty the second bag of tinder over it and fan like your life depended on it (plastic plates or camp folders worked great.) Fan till the flames leap outwards, then throw on good large pieces of firewood, the fattest you've got.
I only need 15 minutes to start a fire. Keep feeding the fire, it needs to be super hot - like a glowing red white ash hot. Then spread it open (with a spade), stick in the chicken (which had been marinated and wrapped in aluminum foil) and cover the entire thing with the red and white hot stuff. Now wait for a long, long, time. I forgot how long. Maybe an hour or two, but don't take my word for it... I usually just waited till our instructor said, "Okay! Lunch time!"
Then you gotta dig out your aluminum wrapped chicken, and it would smell so good. Like da bomb.
Yeah, but we were in a real jungle right now. There was no store bought firewood, no pre-marinated chicken... There wasn't even aluminum foil!
For all the survivor skills that our instructors had imparted to us, I would still not be able to survive the real outdoors unless the real outdoors grew rolls of aluminium foil.