Waste not, want not.

A small grin formed on the dark blue wolf as Manea acknowledged his setup.  A nod is given as she easily guessed what it was he had killed.  “This one was alone.” As he spoke Chade went about starting the fire.  It wasn’t a herd to go back to but that was fine, “I did find a herd of female elk though that are surrounded on three side’s by the mountain, a small forest of trees in there.  With the protection, the mountain gives them from the weather I expect they’ll stay there even if we hunt them from time to time.”  Technically she had just asked about what he’d make of the reindeer but Chade didn’t want to forget the full assignment of also finding reliable food to hunt in winter.  

With the fire crackling near the skin, Chade took one of the reindeer's giant antlers, and placed part of it on the mountain surface, using some smaller rocks to pin it in place with the ends of the antler sticking out a good ways above the fire.  Chade placed the meat strips dangling between the tines of the antlers so that the smoke could wrap about the meat.

“Really, the antlers can be used for a ton of things.  Support objects of decent weight, handles for knives,” his own knife was simply made of bone but he was thinking of changing that, “shelves and in this case, used to hang meat up over a fire. The smoke will make the meat last longer to save whatever we don’t eat right away.”  Chade had only more recently learned about how to make meat last longer and greatly wished he’d known that as a kid but hey, that was why kids weren’t meant to be alone.

“I learned recently, well, very recently that this part of the meat,” going back to the corpse and pointing at the thin cords of tendons along the backbone, taking his knife in his mouth and cutting just a small notch between bone and tendon to specify which one he’s talking about, before dropping the knife, “if dried out is really useful.  It can be used as a rope, a good solid rope.  You could use it to make traps or stitch things together, well,” Chade shrugged again, “any manner of things.”

Was he forgetting anything? Oh.  Chade pointed at the knife he dropped, “bones can be used to make knives,” then Chade glanced over to where he’d stuck the hide in the rock, “It can also be used as stake pegs,” he said with a grin, though he hadn’t torn the deer all apart to do that prior.   “Oh, and I bet the deer eyes would be a great toy for a child?” It sounded like something he’d have loved to chew on as a kid, really anything would have worked back then.

Chade looked about at the various things he had laid out.  He was ready to go into detail if she wanted and tear the corpse up more now, ripping out the bones, cleaning them, or extracting the tendon to show how to turn it into a rope but all those things could make time to go by fast and she might be satisfied just by an overview.

“Last thing, just putting some of these together I had a fun idea I was going to try for Me and Ry that I thought you and Alastor might also like?” Chade pointed out to the tanning hide, “I thought I’d get four logs, notch holes into each one, and attach them at the corners of the hide using the string to keep them in place.  It’d be like a bed off the ground so when the rock gets overly cold in the winter you won’t be pressed up against it.  It sounds nice in my head at least.” Just like his first tanned hide, this last part of his creativeness was experimental.


"Chade"