Whoo-hoo!!!
I finally hit and surpassed my daily word goal!!! (ok, so I am about 10,500 words behind for the month, but I gained ground today!!!))
I am posting excerpts, but Elisabeth liked this part.
Please note:cub and mother are a hybrid grizzly bear and procupine. Lon is psionically gifted.
ExcerptJon accidentally opened a can of food. The smell of Terran tuna permeated the cave.
“JON!”
“IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!”
“Jon, quick, give me that can! Lon, get up here.”
A strange dancing shuffle took place. Lon, who had been in the back of the cave, squeezed past Jon, his backpack and Lon’s partially packed backpack. He tripped as he had almost cleared the mess. The elder camper caught Lon who had started to catch himself using his left hand, but instead pushed mentally with the hand instead, allowing Mr. Martin to slow his decent.
Pulling Lon next to him, he asked him question, “Feeling up to seeing how far you can repel this can of food from us? We need to get it out of here and fast.”
Lon nodded and took the can in his hands. It weighed next to nothing so it didn’t cause him any discomfort. Placing his hands with the heels of the palms touching and resting the offending can between them, Lon focused on sending the can as far away as possible. In one mighty burst of mental energy, the can sailed through the opening of the cave and landed about half a jepirot away.
~*~
The cub stopped crying when he smelled something wonderful. Underwater prey! His favorite! He started to head toward the source when the smell came to him. He quickly ran to the prey smell.
It looked odd. It didn’t look like underwater prey, but it smelled like underwater prey. The thing that it was in had an odd hard dirt smell. Hard dirt usually hurt the teeth when you chewed it. But sometimes it was worth it to get what was inside.
The cub picked up the can in it mouth and started to chew it. Oh, it was good underwater prey!
The cub made happy sounds.
This seemed to confuse the mother, but she didn’t slow done her pace. Quills were flying off of her left and right, but she was going to get her cub!
Then she too noticed the underwater prey smell. And she was hungry. She bellowed that she wanted her share.
~*~
The animal cries outside the cave were getting closer.
“Quick, give me some of the dryer sticks and that dried out dung. I’m going to try and build a fire in the mouth of the cave.”
The boys scrambled to obey. Jon in his enthusiasm, accidentally wacked Lon’s left arm. “Ow!”
“Sorry, Lon.”
“Come on, boys! We may not have that much time!”
~*~
The cub bellowed back that it was all gone. It would try and get more.
~*~
Mr. Martin started building the fire. He hadn’t looked up in a long time. He was just getting ready to light it when Lon stammered, “M-mr. M-Martin?”
“Sort of busy here, Lon.”
“Dad? We have company.”
Mr. Martin looked up into the face of a Mertzel cub. It had grin. It was not a very happy grin.
~*~
