Moving On With Meat

JP with Omni and Lorem

Voah had no fight left to give after reaching the top of the dune. It was a struggle and the scene at the top was a grisly one. The dog from before was still hanging around their gear. It began to growl as they approached and tugged at one of the fallen beasts, pulling it away. If they were lucky, Voah hoped, they could recover their belongings and move on without any further trouble. Regardless of her energy level, she stood sword in hand, waiting for the beast to make a move that didn't come.

Gonyaul encouraged Voah to rest at this point. She would simply stand sentry with her sword, between Gonyaul collecting their things and the last remaining dog. The animal possessively pulled away its coveted meal and Gonyaul was pulling, in the opposite direction, their items until they were all consolidated together; including the staff that had been taken from him in the fight.

Once everything was situated he proposed the idea that Voah could take a seat and keep watch while he went back down the dune to skin and field dress the dead dogs.

“If we want to take more than one meal with us we need to use your salt. We can then let the sun cure the meat to help it last longer.” He suggested. He didn’t want to use her sacred salts in this way unless it was acceptable for her.

The suggestion took her by surprise and she did a bit of a double take. He could read her thoughts plainly on her face as her expression changed from one to the next starting with surprise then to concern, consideration, agreement, resolution, and admiration. She never thought in a million years that she could use it in that way, but there was one problem. She shook her head.

“Using the salt is a smart idea, but there isn’t enough…“ she smiled sadly to Gonyaul and thanked him for taking the task upon himself to gather food as she stood poised, watching the dog. She was fairly certain that once it had fed, it would leave them alone and she felt sorry that they had to leave it without its pack. But it was feral… she couldn’t imagine eating her own kind to survive.

As for water, she knew from the Inquisition’s torture experiments that the human body didn’t last more than a few days without water. But with this heat… it was sure to be less time than that.

Gonyaul knew how to carve up and field dress animals in the wild so that is what he did with the dogs, as much a he could burden himself with.

The path ahead of them led west, right into the sun. They had to follow the caravan trail away from the carrion for a while and set up camp on the shaded side of a dune before resting.

They managed to sun dry enough meat to last them a both a good while, but they would need to continue searching for water and other sources of food such as fruits and vegetables, as sparse and unlikely as those things were. If they could at least make it to the next oasis, they could perhaps stay and recuperate for a while.