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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DMO" data-source="post: 1427560" data-attributes="member: 16324">Confluence, Part 4Naja awoke, but not to the afterlife. His hand was swollen and sore where it had been bitten. There were small stones on his chest and stomach, with several more on the cave floor around him. He raised his head and looked over just in time for the next one to strike off his temple. "Ouch!" Naja shielded his head with his hands. The large man whose cave Naja shared was sitting in the corner with a pile of rocks gathered beside him. As Naja propped himself up, the next one sailed through the air towards him, skittering off the cave wall when Naja ducked out of the way. "Why are you throwing stones at me?" Naja asked. "I'm hungry," the man responded, somewhat indignantly. Naja sat up and rubbed the stinging from his temple. "I appreciate the consideration, but you are welcome to begin your meal without me." The man shook his head. "My food is outside, and you're blocking the exit." "Well, there are other ways to rouse a person." Naja glanced disapprovingly at the pile of rocks. "Listen, I'm not coming anywhere near you with that thing sitting there." Naja glanced over and then smiled ruefully at the snake coiled near where his head had lain. He scooped it up, carefully returning it to the bag around his neck. The young man grimaced. "Besides, if you don't like the hospitality, feel free to find other accommodations." Naja couldn't tell if the man spoke in jest, or if his preoccupation with breaking the evening fast made him irritable. "Why do you conceal your food outside the cave?" Naja inquired as he stood, careful not to hit his head on the low ceiling. "No, I'm not concealing my food. It's packed on my horse." Naja frowned. "Outside," the man clarified. "A horse is too large to fit in here. I had to leave it outside." His voice had a tone of exaggerated patience, as though he was giving instructions to a dolt. "Yes, I understand," Naja said, "but there is no horse outside the cave." A look very close to panic came over the young man's face. "Sure there is," he insisted, getting up and pushing past the small-framed medicine man. "I left it right ... over ... here...." He looked around, squinting in the morning sunlight, pacing here and then there. Troferian's horse was nowhere to be found. "It's gone." He shook his head. "It's just ... gone." The man wavered for a moment, then dropped to the ground like a poorly balanced sack of potatoes. "I never should have left Brigade. What in the world do I do now? I may as well go back to the cave and wait to die." Naja stood at the cave entrance taking in the young man's melodrama with curiosity. Such statements were rather overblown. After all, Naja was five days' journey without a horse, and many more lay ahead. "Friend, do not fret. I assure you, you can travel without a horse. It simply takes longer." The young man stared at him helplessly. For a moment it looked like he might even start to weep. "I don't care about the horse," he said desperately. "I'm alone in the wilderness. I'm days from civilization. And all my food is gone!" And then he did.   "Do you not know how to forage for food, Kylax?" The young city dweller sat across the roaring campfire, plucking absently at a cluster of wild berries. Having located the berries in short order, the medicine man now busied himself with cooking a squirrel he had succeeded in shooting from a tree. "Sure, but it typically requires a pantry." Kylax offered a wry grin. Naja smiled back. This mapmaker was truly unprepared to fend for himself in the wild. He could not hunt. He could not forage. And he traveled like a loaded pack mule. "Well, at least you have no trouble making fire." Despite the wetness of the wood, Kylax had quickly goaded a fire to life that now popped and hissed in complaint. From one of his many pouches Kylax had produced a strange powder. From another, a lens. He sprinkled the powder upon the gathered pile of wet branches, then focused the sunlight upon it through the lens. The flames leapt out so suddenly that Naja fell backwards, smelling the unpleasant odor of his own singed hair. Kylax had sported the eager expression of a fire-fascinated child. Long moments passed while Naja roasted his game and peered thoughtfully at the flames. At last, he handed half the steaming squirrel to Kylax. "You see! With a little cleverness, the wilderness is your pantry and the earth is your kitchen." Kylax gratefully devoured the squirrel meat, and Naja watched him with satisfaction. "Kylax, I think it is not an accident that the wily low bellies have led me to your cave." The medicine man seemed to declare this to himself as much as to the cartographer seated across from him. "Particularly that it should be just as you have lost your horse ..." he tried to be delicate "... and your way in the wild." Kylax continued to work on the squirrel. "Moreover, you tell me of this errand of yours, that it is of great urgency and your friend is in danger every moment we delay ... you delay." Kylax sucked the last of the juices from the bones and leaned back, his gaze now fixed on Naja. "What I'm trying to say is, I think that I should accompany you, at least until you have aided your friend. I can help you along the way, to find food and so forth. And then, after your friend is safe, we can see where our paths lead us." Kylax squinted at Naja as though sizing him up. With food in his stomach, Troferian's protégé seemed much more certain of himself. Naja held a hand up to the sky. "What do you say?" Kylax pointed at Naja's other hand and smiled. "We should really get going. Are you going to eat that?"</blockquote>

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