Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 13 by Patrimony

Author:Patrimony
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-01-26T20:23:27+00:00

The consequent flash and crackle that jumped the gap between seed and boot seal brought the first smile to his face in a long time.

Though not strong enough to ignite something as dense as a branch, the spark was more than hot enough to ignite the pile of powder that had resulted from his heretofore futile stick-rubbing. Quickly piling first small and then larger punky branches onto the flames, he soon had a respectable blaze going. Carefully watched over and maintained, it would allow him to cook the small predators Pip had brought down.

Choosing the largest of the deceased carnivores, he shoved the sturdiest branch he could find down its gullet. Gripping the remaining exposed length of the stick in both hands, he held the incipient meal out over the open flames and settled himself down to wait until it was thoroughly cooked. It was hard to be patient. The pungent aroma that arose from the fire as animal fat dripped into the flames and was incinerated was almost overpowering.

Happily, the small carcass did not take long to roast. Torn from the cartilage-like internal support structure, the meat tasted faintly of bad fish. He devoured it nonetheless, wolfing down mouthfuls as if he were dining in the finest restaurant on Earth itself. Fur that had been crisped but not burned off added an attractive crunchiness to the rudimentary meal. Forthrightly omnivorous, Pip was happy to clean up those parts, such as the predator’s diminutive organs, that despite his hunger her master simply could not stomach.

When all but the last of the deceased, crumpled aerial predators had been roasted and consumed, he shoved the remaining well-cooked corpse into a pocket to gnaw later and prepared to continue following his chosen path downriver. He was careful to scatter and douse with pink snow the remnants of the cook-fire, making sure not to leave so much as a single glowing coal or warm ember behind. Given the spongy composition of the woods through which he was hiking and the higher oxygen content of Gestalt’s atmosphere, it would take no time at all for a forest fire here to rage violently out of control.

While such a conflagration might attract distant observers to his present desperate situation, the attention would prove moot if he was incinerated before anyone could spot him.

His one lump of heavily carbonized “trail food” made for a bland supper. Although no stranger to cooked food, Pip would not swallow any but the least burned pieces of meat Flinx stripped from the modest carcass. After that, there was nothing. Two days later, she killed and consumed something small and dazzling that she cornered in the upper floral spread of an unusually narrow growth. It left her weak and listless, barely able to fly. Though Flinx’s own body demanded sustenance and his belly was once more growling ferociously, he thought hunger the better part of expediency and declined to try the remaining fragments of glistening meat his smaller companion had eschewed. If the

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