I was still remembering or dreaming about being with the guys that looked like they were from the clan of the cave bear movie. We were traveling. Each had a pack like mine, and as we walked, we would pick up food. It was the whole group I’d seen before. There were about twenty of us. The hunt leader from my last dream was scouting out ahead, and the tribe leader was walking at the front of the main group. I was on the right side. I watched as the women of the group would stop every so often to dig up a few plants and put them in bags they carried. The men all seemed to be on edge about something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but everyone kept looking around.

As the day wore on, it soon became apparent that we weren’t near the cave we had been in before. We were moving someplace else, but we also weren’t sure where we were moving. I could tell because we kept sending scouts out who’d run ahead to look around.

As I walked, the young lady in front of me tripped. I reached down and helped her up and smiled. “Arn, Thank you.” She said as she stood. “When do you think we will make it to the gathering?”

“I’m not sure Lorrie, Clan Master doesn’t seem like he is excited so I’m thinking we are still a ways off,” I replied.

“Will you walk with me?” Lorrie asked.

“If you’ll have me I’ll be here,” I replied

We walked and talked for the rest of the afternoon. As we walked, Lorrie would stop to pick herbs and vegetables. The next day we had the same walk this time; we started in the morning, talking as we walked.

“Lorrie, how is it that you can tell one plant from the next and you know which grass tastes good? They all appear to be the same to me.”

She laughed and said, “I’ll show you as we walk through the other hunters think it is below them to know.”

The next day started off just about the same. First, I woke up and ate, and then after that, it was time to do some work. I’d food for a day, so that meant that I could spend some time seeing if I could make some better tools. I figured that if I could get Primitive tools a bit higher, that would mean that I’d be able to have a slightly better life. So I set out to hopefully make myself a stone knife, a stone hammer, and a stone axe to replace the hand axe.

I got to work and looked around the river for suitable rock types. I thought that if the survival skill kicked in yesterday to help find food, then today, the tools skill or the survival skill hopefully would kick in and lead me to what I needed.

I ended up finding about a dozen rocks that I liked. I thought that two of them would make good heads for hammers or axes, and a few looked like I could work them into a knife, and I even found one in the right general shape for a spearhead.

After I got the rocks, I knew that I’d need the right-shaped branches, so I went back to the woods and started looking. After a bit of time, I ended up getting three of the right shape. I had to cut two of them down with the hand axe, so I was tired and sat down for lunch. I’d forgotten to start a fire and have food cooking, so I only had dried fish and freshwater.

I made one more trip out to the forest because I remembered that I’d need to get some vines to tie the heads on to what I was making since I still hadn’t killed anything I could turn into leather.

It was kind of odd to me to even be thinking that way since before I got here, I’d only ever fished a little and never hunted. As I was thinking about making the tools, I was also thinking about how a rabbit would get me enough leather to tie on one hammer, but if I could get a deer, I’d be able to finish all my projects.

I was almost back to the river when I saw a hoof print in the soft dirt. It looked fresh, so I went to grab my spear and drop the vines. I thought I might be able to kill the deer, and then I’d be able to process my projects better. Better tools meant a better life; after all, the reason for tools was to make things easier.

I hurried back and dropped the vines near the rocks that I’d picked out, grabbed my spear, and headed out. I quickly found the hoof print again and started down a small game trail.

After about twenty minutes of walking, I came to a small clearing and saw that the animal that I thought was a deer wasn’t. Instead, it looked like one in build, and everything was right but the color and the horns.

This deer, and it wasn’t the only one, was a reddish-orange with large strips down the side like a zebra would have. The horns, however, made me rethink my whole game plan. I was looking at real horns, not antlers, and they were straight.

Looking at the field, I saw that there were at least 10 of these, not deer. I wanted to call them Orange Unnts, but I didn’t know where that name came from. I also somehow remembered that those horns kill if you weren’t very careful, and they would make great weapons if you could get them off.

I did what every sane person would do at this point. I turned around and went back to my work on building my stone tools. I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to take the animal, but I was very risk-averse since there was no medical center that I knew of.

I spent the next few hours working on my tools, and as I worked, I kept having problems not daydreaming. In the end, I broke two of my knife blades. I was thinking too much about how to build a trap for the Unnt.

I ended up giving up on the knife. I’d already finished the hammer as that was just lashing the stone to the stick and making sure it wouldn’t come out. So more time went into finding the stone and the stick than fashioning the hammer itself.

The axe had taken me a bit more time as I did knapp some of the stone off to give it a wedge-shaped head. I knew it would never be near as good at the axe I’d back home, but I also knew I was very unlikely to ever get that axe again.

I took my time working on the spear tip; this could make the difference between life and death even more than the other tools. I knew that I was pushing my luck to make this at such a low level, but I thought that I might be good if I took the time and did things slowly.

I ended up taking three breaks when making the spearhead. The first was to start dinner cooking, the second was to eat, and then the third was to move everything I’d worked on back up to my ledge.

It was as I was cleaning up my work area that I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was getting dark, and I heard a deep chirping sound, almost like a squeak toy but with a little snicker in as well.

I whipped my head up and looked around. The branches near the shore rustled, and I saw a shape start to move in the shadows. I couldn’t tell how big it was because it was just on the other side of the undergrowth, but it was clearly larger than the squirrels I had been seeing. It might even be smaller than the wolf, but I couldn’t tell in the failing light.

I wasn’t super worried because it seemed to not want to come at me like the yellow jackets had. I was working on the premise that if I didn’t mess with it, then it wouldn’t mess with me. It was also getting dark, so that meant that animals were coming out for water.

“It should be fine, there’s nothing to be worried about.” I mumbled.

“Unless it is those yellow jackets, or the snake. Those are worth worry. But this is nothing just something that wants water. Could even be the orange unnts.”

I was heading for the path to the ledge when the chirping stopped. The rustling in the bushes stopped. The birds in the area stopped singing for just a moment before I saw a pair of glowing red eyes looking at me from the shadows.