Between The Crystals

Ch 18 A Cat Came By

I stretched and limbered up as my group gathered around me.

"Stay safe," the elderly porter in the corner told me, slowly rocking in the rocking chair as he had been the entire time.

I nodded as hands rested on my shoulders. "I'll try. Home."

The desert viewpoint hazed over and was replaced by cliffs towering over us. Grant was sitting on a rock, studying his notes. He got up and came over as the hunters immediately jogged to the supplies room to get more bows, arrows, and knives since they had abandoned theirs when the Saursunes appeared.

"Saursunes?" Grant guessed, watching the hunters as someone else came to take the bananas from a gatherer.

"Yeah. First place was claimed, so we went to Elephant Charge and stumbled into a rather elaborate trap. We'll tell you the story tonight, but make sure no one goes there for at least a few weeks."

"Elephant Charge..." he murmured, tilting his head in thought. "Oh, Yellow Bird Bamboo Forest."

I grinned at his ability to remember the various names we used for some locations. We usually tried to keep the same ones but occasionally deviated if we had a stronger memory tied to that spot.

The hunters were already returning, so I said, "I rested plenty at the Guard Station, so I'm ready to head out. Any suggestions?"

Grant sighed but instead of telling me to sit for five minutes, he said, "Most places will be occupied by now. You can try Golden Oak Forest. It's a two hour walk from some large fields, but it was an earlier crop rotation. They should have finished harvesting and reseeding a couple of weeks ago."

After my recent brush with the Saursune trap, I would have preferred a more remote location, but there weren't many of those, and they would be occupied by now. Most crystals were located near fields and farms, courtesy of distant ancestors who preferred gleaning the remains of the Saursunes' harvests.

It wasn't easy to build up safer locations, not when it took a shard at least three years to grow enough for us to port to. Even if we were able to use a new location to leapfrog farther away, we only found a handful of shards a year.

"That location will work," I reluctantly agreed as several hunters nocked arrows onto strings as a precaution. Others held onto them and my shoulders.

"Be ready to bounce," Grant advised me solemnly. "Even if Saursunes aren't around, bears are common in that area."

I rested my hand on the crystal, the gentle shimmering at complete odds with my trepidation. "Golden Oak Forest."

We tensed up as the porting haze obscured our view. A squirrel's chattering became louder as the haze cleared to reveal a sparsely treed forest with a couple of oak trees nearby. All eyes scanned the grassy undergrowth and shrubs.

The hunters lowered their bows after a couple of seconds. At that sign, the others began spreading out. When a small shrub rustled, they skipped back, ready to leap to my side if we had to bounce.

A cat poked its head out from under the shrub and meowed at us. The hunters began fanning out again, ignoring the light brown feline, who watched them suspiciously. The gatherers glanced at the oak trees, which only had hanging pollen and flower strands. Any acorns not harvested by humans would have been claimed by the squirrels long ago.

A hunter followed the chittering. I hoped he'd be able to catch the squirrel. There wasn't much meat on them, but it was still something to take back, and it would be one less rodent competing with us during the next acorn harvest.