SABIS the SURVIVOR

Chapter 10: A Lesson From the Elders

Chapter 10: A Lesson From the Elders

When the beast toppled to one side, he landed on the bone pyramid causing an audible crack in one of the ribs. Sabis picked up the instrument that had subdued the beast and with his honed blade he expertly carved out the exposed bone marrow from the cracked rib's interior. Then he pasted the fatty and waxy material over the beast's gaping hole from where blood spurted forth.

The beast did not protest nor could it do so. With its breathing barely perceptible and limbs lying limp, Sabis felt he could study his foe more closely. The brown scale-covered eyelids remained closed and small puffs of steam exited its long curved snout.

"You seem at peace now," he whispered into the beast's small ear.

"I will make sure that your strength and resources are put to good use and the rest of you is returned to Mother Earth."

While the beast slowly approached its final breath, Sabis transported his mind to another place and time...

------------------

His Father, named Davis, had been diving in the underground hot springs and lake, searching for the usual mineral-rich earth stones that could be crushed and used for fertilizing the plants and crops. In this 'Sea of Salinity', warm mineral water streamed through cracks in the underground to form a lake full of various mineral and ore deposits. At random intervals, hot steam would fight its way out between the cracks in the sandstone lake bed and explode out of the lake as a plume of vapour or a steam cloud. Over several generations, the processes of evaporation, sedimentation, and crystallization led the lake's water levels to inexorably lower.

The abundance of mineral salts in the lake made Davis more buoyant. Feeling somewhat carefree, he decided to dive from a cliff that protruded into the moist and dense cave air. In this way, he could probe the deeper depths of the lake to find rare stones.

With his tall and slender physique, Davis was an excellent diver and swimmer. He could move his body through water almost as easily as a sea boreaspis could hammer sandstone sediment. In fact, he could swim the entire steam cycle away, losing track of time, while Mother would keep his dinner hot in their miniature forge oven.

Near to the bottom of the lake, Davis hoped to find a rare prize: quartz and feldspar deposits that could be used to impregnate healing poultices or for use as metal detectors, when searching for iron ore for forging steel. He could trade those rare stones for a larger forge oven or an oven supply of tasty tubers. As he stood on the elevated cliff before his dive, he breathed in the moist and salt-infused air, noted the increasingly frequent vapour plumes shooting up towards him, and prayed,

"Mother Earth, you can redeem a sinner, you can embolden a dreamer, you are my guide for everlasting peace. Let it be."

It was not unusual for Davis to return to their home late from these explorations but on that particular occasion, he had not been seen by anyone so Mother wanted to search for him. Recruiting a neighbouring tribe member, together they tracked Davis to the cave he had been diving in. They found him semi-conscious with his head split open, blood and clear fluid oozing from his wounds, nostrils, and ears. They somehow managed to stabilize his neck but could not staunch the blood and fluid loss.

Mother had stayed with Davis while her companion sought help from the tribal Shaman and Shamanka and called Sabis and his younger brother Toris to be by their Father's side. Sabis remembered that his Father's breathing ebbed and flowed just like the rise and fall of the plume vapour cycles. At first, Davis' chest and neck muscles would contract with such force as to cause his upper body to heave upwards as if the breath was being pulled out of him. Then his breaths occurred more randomly. Finally, he laboured no more.