She moved to a small, relatively
smooth stretch of stone just inside the entrance, and laid out the fur
upon it. She sat down and tried to work, but after several tentative
starts had only succeeded in shredding one corner and cutting her finger
on the knife. There seemed no safe way to grasp it, no soft or
unsharpened place anywhere on it.
'Oh, this will never work.' She sat there on the stony ground,
angry and frustrated, sucking her finger and cursing this backward,
half-animal world.
But then an idea came to her. She tried to suppress it, but again the
strange and uncharacteristic stubbornness crept over her. She moved to
the dark fissure of the shaft and looked down, deliberating. After
several minutes of internal bickering, she reached her legs out over the
side, lowered herself to the first shelf, and began to descend.
*
Kalus and the wolf returned late in the afternoon. Sylviana had not
been idle. As the man-child laid five straight and sturdy poles on the
floor by his accustomed sleeping place, he found there waiting for him
four long and curving strands, spiral cut from the skin to assure
greatest length and thickness. The girl returned his questioning gaze,
held up a long hunting knife it its leather sheath.
'If you can steal a sword, I can at least take a few things to make
my life more bearable.
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