Bones of Ice

  ~~*~~

  Day Three

  The light of predawn finally lulled her into a nap.

  When she roused herself to check the traps some time later, Jade found a small striped ground squirrel flattened under one of the deadfalls. All the stress and fear of the night before forgotten in an instant, she ran gleefully back to camp to char it over the fire.

  It was barely a couple of bites, and stuck between her teeth, but it was food, and more than that, it was proof that her traps worked!

  After her meal, she reset the other, empty, traps, and repositioned her snares to spots where she thought she saw more recent signs of animals passing by.

  Testing different plants as she came across them, she even found a weedy shrub that she could break apart into long, fibrous strands that seemed promising for making a twine fine enough to thread through her needle-hook.

  After a couple of days, life settled into a routine - she would wake with the first light of predawn and go down to the river to fish for a couple of hours. Then it was time to check her traps and snares. She almost always had at least one catch to eat, now that she was getting the knack of watching for game trails and scat when she set her traps.

  The process of checking them also gave her the chance to gather greens and roots, and as the days turned into weeks, even a few early berries. It always took a few hours, but eventually her circuit brought her back to camp, where she cooked up the day’s meal.

  She held herself to no more than two walks across the portal site per day - once when she left camp in the morning, and once on her way back in the evening.

  Her experiments with fibers resulted in a serviceable fish net, which she mainly used in conjunction with her hook and line. She also made a crude bag to store the generally useless but irreplaceable survey tools, so that she could use her belt pack for more practical cargo.

  Her first shelter started falling apart, so she tore it down and spent several days rebuilding it in the lee of a boulder and the upturned roots of a fallen tree. The new arrangement was a little farther from the portal site, but more secure against wind, rain, and the forest animals. With her back protected and a fire between her and the rest of the world, she slept well most nights, waking only often enough to keep the fire going.

  Life became, if not easy, at least more comfortable than she had expected.

  But the colonists didn’t arrive.