Undiscovered: Book One: The New Jungle

Chapter 12

The group had awoken and they were ready to start the day. Randal was standing by their shelter widdling a new spear. Christine was standing by the edge of the clearing and Chris was using Randal's snake whacking stick to beat trees.

All of the sudden the beast cat burst out of nowhere. It launched, pinning Chris to the ground. The stick was thrown to the ground, and before Randal could get to it to fight the cat off it was too late. The cat was about to drag off Chris' lifeless form when it yowled and loped off. Randal was about to run up to try to help his friend when he heard Christine scream.

He was about to grab the stick to fend off whatever this was when his heart jumped into his chest. The thing was simply a black cloud. It had somehow gotten ahold of Christine and was dragging her into the brush. He tried to swing the stick but couldn't, his arms were frozen in place. He screamed and began to feel the pain of whatever this thing was. His face began to sting and he felt the air being sucked from his body.

"Wake up Randal, it's morning, what in God's name has gotten into you." Christine shouted.

Randal then realised what had happened. He had been dreaming. When the dream began to get scary he he had screamed and then the others tried to wake him. Christine was sitting on his chest and slapping him to get him up.

"Thank God you got up, I was about to pour these water bottles on your face." Chris said, trying to joke even though he knew the worry was clear on his face.

"Wait, that was a dream, how, it felt so real." Randal exclaimed, panting.

"What happened, in your dream I mean?" Christine asked worried.

Randal quickly explained the contents of his dream to his friends.

"Wow, that must have been awful." Chris exclaimed. "But why did I die first. You seemed to have tried pretty hard to save Christine."

"Chris! What is wrong with you." Christine said punching Chris on the arm.

"Well, whatever, we need to start the day." Randal said. "Well, I'm going fishing, you all may want to find some fruit. We can't live long eating only fish."

Randal walked tentatively off. He brandished his spear and began to spear fish. He saw the place the carnage occurred when they saw the death of the dolphin snake. The leftovers of the skeleton were at first barren. This changed when an odd fish appeared. It looked like a pleco, a species of catfish that is known to clean algae off of things. They are often called suckerfish and is in aquariums often as a tank cleaner. This catfish, though, was sort of different. It had short whiskers, plecos have small whiskers and this one's were only about an inch long, quite short for it's six inch body. It was an odd brown color with fanlike fins. It, instead of eating algae as expected, went to the skeleton. It began nibbling at the bones and, by doing this, earned its new name, bone-eating catfish. He speared a few more of the fishy fish and set off for home.

"Hi, Randal. I found some fruit. I think they're edible." Christine said, holding out a large oblong fruit with thick leathery, bumpy skin.

"Cool, but how did you find it, and how do we open it?" Randal asked.

"Well, it came from that tree over there." Christine said, gesturing to a thick twisted tree, it was short, but full of the same fruit. "And I don't know exactly how to open them. They are like avocados, or at least they look like them. I call them leather fruit."

"Hey, I found out how to open these things." Chris shouted from the tree, his head covered in the pink flowers of the leather fruit tree. He took his knife and split the skin of the fruit. It's flesh was the same pearly pink of the flowers and once Chris bit into one he was surprised by the flavor. He nearly gagged at the surprise of how much it tasted like an orange. He had expected a taste like a banana, or a melon, but instead it was tart and sweet.

"Wow, that's good. Thank God we found fruit. But I suppose we should still cook the fishy fish." Randal said.

"Hey, Randal, why did you even call them fishy fish anyway."

"Well, the first fish I speared was a monster fish. When I speared a fishy fish I realised that it, unlike the monster fish, was like a fish." Randal answered. "I think I might actually go fishing again today, I usually only go once, as you know, but that just makes us all hungry."

That night, while the group ate they began to hear noises. It was like the screech of a hawk but much quieter. They looked over and saw a group of dragons. The group was flying around, catching insects, when the noise started again. A bird, only the size of a crow, swooped through the air. It grabbed a dragon in its mouth, flew to a branch and began to eat it.

"Wow, well, that's another new species. So now we have fishy fish, monster fish, kaleidoscope parrots, dolphin snakes, vampire fish, beast cats, dragons, bone eating catfish, and leather fruit trees." Randal said, as if bored of discovering me animals by now.

"Well, I wonder what will happen tomorrow." Chris said. "Well, I'm going to sleep."