Pushed Back: A Time Traveler's Journal by S.A. Ison

Author:S.A. Ison [Ison, S.A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2018-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

As it turned out, we didn’t see Eve or anyone else. Though I was disappointed, I wasn’t surprised. As for the skins, that is another story. It took me a long time to scrape the skins of the rabbit creatures.

“You have to get all the connective tissue off.” Harper had instructed. The animals appeared to be rabbits, but they had shorter ears and a bit of a longer tail. The meat was wonderful, and our stew turned out great and tasty, it was a nice change from fish. I used the small shoulder blade of the animal to scrape the skin. It was a sticky mess, but I did it. Harper helped me; he’d staked the skins out to keep them taut.

After we scraped them, we washed and then rubbed sand into them. Now this is the gross part, and I puked. He took the brains out of the skulls, and he mixed with some of the wood ash. We then rubbed it into the skin side. Yeah, he made me do it and I puked. It smelled horrible. But I did it. We let it sit, but we did bring it into the cave. We were afraid something would come by to eat it.

Once that was done, we washed them again, and then Harper set up a rack to smoke the skin. We worked the skin in the evening and after a while, the skin was soft and pliable. I was amazed. Each skin was big enough to make its own pillow.

“I love that this feels so soft. Your pillow is almost finished.” I said, my legs hanging off the edge of the cave mouth.

“You’ve done a great job. I like your pillow, so I know I’ll like mine.” Harper had rocks in his lap. He was knapping them with what he called his hammer rock.

“How does that look?” He asked, holding up what looked like a spear head.

“Looks good, nice and sharp.” I admired.

I was nearly finished with his pillow; I had stuffed it with the cattail fluff. It took quite a bit of it and I was glad I’d collected a lot of them. Grabbing some of my fronds, I used my small knife to make small holes into the pelt, and then wove the fronds in. It was nearly closed, so I shoved and stuffed more of the cattail fluff into it. Then closed it.

“Thanks for the idea about soaking the palm fronds in hot water, that has really helped make them more pliable. So much easier than fighting it.” I sighed and looked out over our valley. I was beginning to think of this valley as ours. We were getting to know our animal neighbors. The mastodons were weekly visitors, though they kept their distance. They did in fact have fur, though not as thick as the wooly mammoths, least ways I think so.

“It works great with the rope you make; I’m surprised at how strong it is. I’ve been able to catch more in my snares.

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