Some of the younger ones had already settled down for the night, and finding anyone wide awake and interested enough to hear of his exploits was just as difficult as ever.
He still couldn’t understand why such a cavalier attitude was adopted by the other members of his group to any dangers or things of interest he mentioned, it was almost as if they didn’t care, and yet their survival depended upon the latest information of any new threats being relayed to them as quickly as possible.
In the end Kel gave up, and he too found a snug spot to sleep through the night, but not before putting his little collection of tinkle stones around the area, hanging them from nearby branches so that if anything should creep up on him while he slept, the stones would be disturbed and hopefully wake him up. Funny, he had shown the others how it worked, but he remained the only one in the whole group to use them.
Food down in the lower levels must have been getting a bit scarce, for during the night something large and well muscled with large saucer like eyes crept up to the group, and with one swift blow from a powerful fore paw, crushed the head of one of the group, flat. A slight whimper was the only sound, followed by the soft rustle of the retreating beast with its meal.
The time during which the lesser sun didn’t shine through at this level was their most vulnerable, as creatures which couldn’t stand the light found it quite acceptable to come up to see what there was to eat, and yet they took no precautions. Kel couldn’t understand that either.
Next morning, as the greater sun broke through the heavy canopy above, there was only a blood stained smear to show what had happened in the darkness of the night, and that was fading fast as a variety of small insects hungrily devoured the food bonanza.
The trail led to one of the main trunks, and a few smudges and scratch marks on the bark showed where the creature had slithered down to the depths below.
When Kel pointed out what had happened, no one except the nearest relatives of the missing group member seemed overly perturbed, and the incident was soon forgotten as the early morning food gathering party set out to find the first meal of the day.
Kel felt he was different to the others of his group, and found it difficult to come to terms with that difference. He really cared what happened to all of them, while they just went through the rote of taking precautions against the perils of the forest. This was something he must mention to the Story Teller, as he may well have an answer for the dissimilarity he felt, and an explanation for the others apparent indifference to the dangers around them.
A small party of them were asked to harvest some more staves for the group, and Kel went along to help as he quite enjoyed stave gathering. They trooped out of the main area where the females and younger ones usually stayed until midday, and made their way across several main junctions of the larger branches to where an old tree had at last succumbed to the ravages of time, and crumpled to the forest floor deep below them, leaving a brightly lit area in which the stave plants thrived in great abundance.
The party had split up into threes and fours, working on their own chosen clumps, and Kel, the youngest of his group, took over as team leader. No one seemed to mind, and they took their orders from him without question, cutting the poles from the main plant as he indicated his choice. He once wondered what would happen if he suddenly said ‘Jump off this branch,’ and wouldn’t have been too surprised if they had done so.
Kel was just about to say that they had collected enough staves, when a yell from the party next to him cut through the air, causing a flurry of various flying creatures to take flight and several other oddities to scurry for cover.
One of the group had turned around too quickly and hit one of his fellows in the chest with the sap dripping end of a stave. The unfortunate was clutching his chest, trying to remove the sticky juice and getting it on his fingers.
‘Lay down quickly.’ yelled Kel, but the sheer terror of the situation had paralysed the recipient of the sticky deadly juice, and he just stood there yelling. Kel took a couple of quick steps forward and kicked the unfortunate’s legs out from under him, sending the body crashing down onto the track.
‘You two, wet his chest, quickly!’ yelled Kel with a voice of authority.’
‘But that will ....’
‘Do it, now!’ he almost screamed back at the hesitant onlookers. Unfortunately, most of them had emptied their bladders either at early morning ablutions, or while treating the ends of the staves they had cut, so it was some moments before anyone was found with enough of the necessary fluid and the ability to release it.
Eventually one of the group managed to produce a rather pathetic dribble, and then two members of another team who had been working on the fringe of the stave clumps came forward with a plentiful supply.
Grabbing a bunch of leaves, Kel managed to remove most of the sticky white juice from the left hand of the man now writhing on the track, while the two standing over him did their best to direct a wavering stream of steaming urine onto his chest. Kel wetted the man’s hand and then told one of the onlookers to continue to keep it wet, while he inspected the rest of the body for signs of the juice.
Luckily, it was only the chest and one hand which were contaminated, and Kel waited
