04-20-2012, 10:11 AM
624
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[/html]Claudius made quick work of the branches. He had only been able to grab one big branch in between his jaws on the walk back, so it did not take long to break them all up. Once he was done, he stood up and went foraging for a few more branches. Even though he would be borrowing some fire from the Great Fire, he would not be using its wood, so they had to be sure they had enough wood to sustain the fire the entire time.[/html] * Idiom of the week
He made four trips, each time returning with an armload of branches. Since it was early in the year, Claudius didn’t think that they would have a very big wood pile and didn’t want to take from the wood used for the ceremonial fire. That just would have felt disrespectful.
He arranged the sticks into a teepee shape inside of the ring Hadley was making. The two of them worked well and didn’t get into one another’s way very much, so they were able to make their small fire very quickly. Next, Claudius would have to skin the animal. He stood up and walked over to his bag and pawed through it, knowing he had a good scraping stone. He retrieved his scraping stone and two knives and then returned to where Hadley was.
“Ha-a-a-adly, once you’re done… you ca-a-an… put the sap into the stone bo-o-owl. If you still need somethi-i-i-i-ing to d-o-o whi-ile I skin this… there’s a big f-f-f-fire… over there—” he gestured with one hand past the Town Hall to where the fire was lit, “and you-ou can ta-a-ake a branch… and ge-e-e-t the fire started. Wh-e-e-en I’m do-o-one skinning the animal… feel free-ee… to eat… it… since you caught it.” With that said, he sat down and began to skin it. He used his large stone knife to cut through the animal’s thick hide. He then made a cut from its chin all the way down its stomach to the tail. Once that was done, he wiped his knife and then set it aside. He then used his fingers to pull open the hide. He grabbed his scraping tool to ease it open a bit, being very careful not to damage the fur. Slowly, the coat gave way and some of the organs slid out. Claudius picked up one of its organs and popped it in his mouth. He then took the rest and set them next to him in the grass for Hadley. He flipped the animal over and began to sever the fat from the muscle. With each bit, he dropped it into the stone bowl, slowly adding to their collection. He was careful not to damage the fur because even though it was a small animal, he could foreseeably use it for some sort of bag or pouch. Animal skins were waterproof and therefore quite useful.
Once he had finished, he began to skin the animal. He would have to stretch it on one of the fur tanning stretchers, but until then, he’d be able to set it aside until he was ready. After another twenty minutes, he had the animal completely skinned. He hadn’t done this in a very long time, so he was slow in an attempt not to damage anything. And after all, he couldn’t just wave a magic wand* and have the animal completely skinned; no, this took practice and hard work. On the upside, he had a bunch of meat now sitting at his side, so he grabbed another chunk of the animal and chewed on it. He stood up to put the hide inside the Town Hall, but as he stood up, he gestured toward the meat in case Hadley wanted some.
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