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Somewhat refreshed by the short respite Larra
trotted on behind the marching warriors.
The air about her seemed very close and she estimated that it was
probably somewhere around
Larra found herself beneath a massive tree
with huge spreading roots. With
her were three of the warriors. She
had no idea where the rest of the party had gotten
to. All of them tried to find
some shelter, moving as close to the tree as
possible. The rain was coming
down so hard that it actually felt like small pebbles striking against
Larra’s skin. Larra had
experienced storms like this before, but usually from a more sheltered
location. Being caught out in
the open in so violent a downpour was absolutely
frightening!
As she huddled against the tempest, Larra
noticed that no one was watching her.
All of the warriors were too caught up in trying to look after
themselves. Surreptitiously,
she edged around the back of the tree, away from the others. There was no
way that she could be heard in the tremendous cacophony of sound generated
by the storm. All she had to
do was get out of their line of sight.
Reaching the other side of the massive tree,
she ducked and scurried off into the forest as quickly as she could in her
bent over position. She kept
on moving as far and as fast into the forest as she could, desperately trying
to put as much distant as possible between herself and her
captors before the storm
ended.
Half an hour later Larra found herself alone
in the forest. She was free,
but wet and cold. Her clothes
were soaked through and she felt completely helpless and
bedraggled. Somehow, she needed
to find some warmth and some shelter.
Her mind went back to her
training. It seemed so many years
ago that she had been in
“A warrior must be trained to survive,”
he told her, “Otherwise such a warrior would be useless to his
master.” To that extent
he had shown her some basic techniques of
woodcraft. She knew how to start
a fire without matches and how to forage for food – provided she could
recognize what plants were food. Of
course, the forest had a myriad of non-plant lifeforms as well, but she preferred
not to think that she might have to eat them.
The shades of night were now beginning to
fall. Larra knew that she should
act quickly. “Where to find
some dry wood?” she wondered.
Without it she could not hope to build a fire this
night. The thought of enduring
a night in the forest without fire was one that held little appeal to
her. With a flash of inspiration,
she got down on all fours and crawled under the spreading roots of one of
the great rainforest trees. The
roots flared out from the trunk forming an elaborate latticework surrounding
the base of the tree. It created
a natural shelter that might have some dry wood beneath
it.
“Ah!” she cried, as her hand closed
on a pile of dry leaves and twigs sheltered under the buttress
roots. Quickly, she arranged
the leaves and twigs into a potential heap of
firewood. Scrounging among the
roots she came up with some larger pieces of
wood. These could be added once
the fire got going. Next, she
carefully selected what she thought were the two driest pieces of wood and
piled small pieces of powdered bark and leaves on the larger of the two
pieces. Taking the smaller piece
of wood between her hands she began to rub her hands on both sides of it,
while pressing the base of the stick into the larger
piece.
“I hope this works,” she
muttered.
She kept up the process for several
minutes. Every now and then she
checked the two pieces of wood to see if the friction between the two was
having any noticeable effect. The
wood felt warm, but not hot.
“I need some way to make the stick rotate
faster,” She thought. Then
she had a flash of inspiration.
“Of course!” she exclaimed.
Quickly, she unbuttoned her blouse revealing
her tight bodice. “I always
did hate this thing,” she
thought.
Hastily, she undid the
laces. Her high, full breasts
fell loose. The cool night air
caused her bare nipples to pucker.
She shivered and hastily pulled the lace from her bodice, freeing
the uncomfortable garment. Pulling
it form beneath her shirt she tossed it into the
brush. “Good riddance,”
she muttered as she rebuttoned her shirt.
Grabbing hold of
a sapling she snapped about two feet of it off the
bush. Then, taking the lace from
bodice she tied it to both ends of the green stick making a crude
bow. Returning to her fire-making,
she looped the bowstring around her fire-making
stick. Now by moving the bow
she was able to make it spin much faster.
Within a few seconds a curl of smoke came up from the base of the
stick. She blew gently on it
and was rewarded by the sight of an orange
flame. Carefully she fed larger
and larger pieces of wood into the fire.
Five minutes later she sat before a roaring
blaze. It was now quite
dark. She would have to wait
until morning to look for food, but in the meantime, the fire would keep
her warm and keep the insects and wild animals
away. It would mean that she
would have to tend the fire throughout the night, but she could catnap between
refuelings.
Exhausted, Larra dropped off into a heavy
sleep. She had not actually realized
how tired she was. She did not
wake to refuel the fire until light was creeping back into the
forest.
Shivering with the early morning cold, she
got up and moved about, trying to restore her
circulation. She had escaped
and survived the night. Now she
had to get back to
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