Lost in Transit

2

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I'd like to say that my life flashed before my eyes. That I saw all my mistakes and all the people I'd ever loved and a whole bunch of other sappy shit that secretly makes me smile when I read it in books.

But no, none of that happened. My only thoughts consisted of explicatives, incoherent screaming, and more explicatives, plus some mild whimpers for flavor, as we ran from the falling ~145 tons of metal.

Luckily, even with our late start, the metal took a bit more time to fully reach the ground than we took to get the fuck out of the way, so it crashed into the shelf with the force of all 145 tons and 50 feet of acceleration from zero. Needless to say, there was something of a 'Boom'.

The shockwave was visible, throwing dirt off the ground and swamping us with it, but all things considered I was happy to take a bit of unsteady footing and a face full of dirt over being crushed by an oversized tin can.

The man to my left spat out some dirt, and grumbled in German for a moment, but sighed. "Alive and Dirty is best." He conceded the same point I had, albeit begrudgingly.

"And it didn't crush the food, so that's good." I agreed, and cracked my back. "Well... lets get to work, again." I began tying rope around the shoulders of the Wyverns creatures, so they could be dragged up to the top for us to dissect them, and stopped when he shook his head. "What?"

"The stomachs... leave them." He mimed their stomachs, and then the blood on the ground, and I slowly Understood; there were people in their stomachs, and no one needed to see that.

"Dammit... but their stomachs are our best vessels for water... I'll gut them over the lake, then, feed the fishes with all the... bits." I sighed, and dragged the creature over to the edge, sitting in front of it and pulling a box-cutter out of my back pocket. It was all I really had in the way of blades; my work didn't really require sharp edges for anything.

He nodded and hauled over the rest, one by one, and then went back up to inform everyone that we weren't dead while I worked.

The stomachs were emptied into the lake, (luckily mine was already empty, because that was Vile,) and the intestines were likewise emptied and set aside. Tendons were also saved, and the hides and wings were kept as intact as possible; They could all be used, after all. The bones and meat were of immediate use, however, and didn't require drying or tanning first, so those were given precedence.

It's anatomy was not entirely foreign to me, as I treated it like a chicken; a very large chicken, but still the same basic structure, if you added in its neck and tail, which both had gorgeous meat which would've been perfect for stewing, if we had a stew pot.

The lake was not very big, but with four rivers leading away from it and no visible intake, it was likely fed by an underground spring, and considering the amount of shallows full of roots perfect for hiding or laying eggs, as well as the small waterfalls and downhill-streams leading away, it would be prime fishing for migratory fish like Salmon, most likely. Already, there was a feeding frenzy forming, as all the fish in the lake snapped up the banquet that'd just been served to them.

As I worked, the mechanical tasks of moving and cutting and sorting the animals was a simple one that I could understand; my mind that had been swimming with Chaotic and confused thoughts was capable of calming down to the level I usually showed as an act, which is to say very calm. Acting calm was easier than you'd think, as all you had to do was not react reflexively to anything; this prevented mix-ups and mistakes that are caused by snap judgments. But still, it was nice to actually be calm, not just act like it. Sure, there were things I didn't understand, like, how we came here, why we came here, who brought us here, where is here, and so on, but as I currently didn't possess the ability to find out, those could be set aside, for now.