Sorry I'm late - fell asleep - chapter 2

As dawn brightened and the morning bird songs grew louder Bob stirred and blinked awake. Confusion snapped to awareness and something close to despair. Then the pain of hundreds of scratches and bruises brought more visceral pains to the fore, dulling for the moment the mere pain of memory. Then the more subtle urging of hunger asserted itself. At least this had an immediate remedy. Bob waded into river and slowly, with hands under the water approached a trout swimming motionless in the current. At just the precise moment when his hands were close enough to effect the motion but not spook the fish, he scooped under from behind and up. A spout of water and trout arced up onto the bank. The trout thrashed and flopped, surprised by its sudden relocation. Bob scrambled to his breakfast and, with a quick wack of fish head against stone, dispatched the trout.

The list of Bob's material possessions:

• A tattered tunic
• A leather pouch containing a flint stone
• A crude metal knife, handle wrapped with tanned brown leather strips, in a leather sheath tied to a long strip of raw hide.
• Worn leather sandals
• A fish

Bob gathered a pile of dry bleached grass and brittle twigs He pulled his knife from its sheath that hung from his waist and the flint from the pouch that hung from his neck. A sharp glancing blow from the back of his knife against the flint sparked the pile of tinder into smoldering embers. Bob blew on the embers until they sprung into a hot blaze. After gradually adding sticks of increasing size, the fire was as self sustaining as a living thing.

Bob deftly slit open the fish and pulled the guts out with two fingers. He carefully separated the sack of yellow roe from the rest of the gooey mass and set it on a broad leaf.

"I apologize to you, my sister, for ending your life and to all of your children for their lives not lived. I thank you for providing nourishment so that I may continue my miserable life."

Bob said the words as tradition required and as his heart directed. Not many still followed this ancient rite, instead buying and eating flesh regardless of the life so recently animating it.

The trout was soon suspended over the fire by a green branch, the roe sack snugly tucked into the body cavity and the belly flesh sealed with sharp splinters of cedar.
The smell of roasting fish and wood smoke filled the cool morning air.

At the same time the village began its mechanical daily routine. Shops opened, livestock was fed and milked,children woke to the call of their parents, and no one noticed that a nobody was missing.

No one except Benny.

--- Jerry