STILL WAITING FOR DINNER

26 FEBRUARY, FRIDAY, CONTINUED

Dinner took a long time to prepare. Outdoor cooking in general took its time, but we also had a few delays. The first being the lack of pre-dried and packed tinder and store bought firewood. The guys had to obtain these material from the jungle around us... the jungle around us that was humid and damp to begin with, and then snowed on and lightly showered over.

Some of the guys took off their waterproof warrior jackets to wrap whatever precious branches they had found, and the single sheet of poncho someone brought was used to shelter the designated fire pit.

The Special Team had a special way to get their fire going. They used a bit of solid fuel as a cheat tinder, and instead of matchsticks, they used a lighter. Then just to make it burn all the faster, they sprayed a can of hair spray over everything - who brought the hair spray?

Anyway, that was something I had never seen done before.

"Isn't that dangerous?" Wilhelm, whom I suspected was the only real responsible adult in our group asked, "Using aerosol near an open flame?"

Actually, they were using it directly at an open flame.

"Nah." Barry brushed it off, "We do it all the time."

(Do not do this at home!)

It seemed like my special team had experienced surviving in the wild, they didn't even need aluminium foil or home made tinder. Just solid fuel and hair spray.

The second thing that delayed dinner were leeches. How did leeches get into the picture, you might ask. Well, the answer was, you guessed it, River.

After checking out the waterfall and refreshing themselves, Wilhelm wanted to head back to help set up camp. For some reason, he felt bad about us having to set up camp because he was too weak to carry his concussed prince and keep up with us wolves. Anyway, Wilhelm felt the least he could do was help collect firewood.

"You go ahead, Wilhelm." River had told him. Keanu and I would go straight back to camp.

But of course they didn't. They had meant to, but then River thought it might be nice to just dip his feet into the water for a bit.

The two boys found a flat rock on the quiet side of the pool and did just that. It was nice, until the leeches showed up.

Leeches! They looked like garden slugs, but they sucked blood! Did everything in this tropical paradise have to come in the most vicious form possible?

Anyway, they ran back to camp, leeches fully attached.

"What should we do? What should we do?" River panicked.

Everyone stopped work to see what the commotion was about.

"Stop panicking." Ben said.

"But what should we do?" River asked.

"How would I know?" Ben snapped. Which meant he had no idea.

Everyone turned to our local guide, Barry who scratched his head, "Urm... I don't really know. Apply salt?"

Urm... We weren't making potato chips you know...

"I watched a movie where they burned them off with a lighter." Ben offered.

"What???" River freaked out even more.

"Isn't there any other way?" Keanu asked weakly.

Barry had to admit, "I've never been bitten by a leech before, so I'm not entirely sure."

I guess you had to be pretty unlucky to encounter them.

Ink just returned to the camp with fresh wood.

"Ink! What do you know about leeches?" Ben demanded.

Thank goddess for our walking encyclopedia, "Leeches are a member of the annelid phylum of animals..."

"Do I look like I care?" Ben snapped impatiently, but it seemed like Ink was used to working with Ben by now, he simply continued, "Fewer than a hundred species of leeches live on land, with about a hundred living in salt water. The other 500 or so species live in fresh water..."

Which explained how River caught them, or they caught River. Keanu too, but whilst Keanu only had a single leech on the top of his foot, River had like at least a dozen in varying sizes.

"Why me?" River looked like he was near to tears.

Eventually, Ink did regurgitate some useful facts. The leeches would fall off on their own when they were full.

Removing them by tugging on them, burning them, or rubbing salt on them might cause them to introduce bacteria in the host's bloodstream.

Keanu looked at his leech, "I probably can afford to feed this little guy, but River..."

Hmmm...

"Then you'd need a credit card." Ink said.

This was like something a scammer might say, "What? You need to dislodge a leech? Give me your credit card."

So Ki took out his credit card, because Lorent Princes brought their credit cards to tropical jungles and warlock lands... Why? There are no souvenir shops here!

I think they used the card to pry off the leeches. I was still sulking on my side of the camp so I couldn't see the process up close.

Anyway, they got it all off, and we finished the last of our bandaids in the first aid supplies. I only knew this because Wilhelm kept apologizing and thanking everyone.

After that, everyone went back to work for a while until EJ got upset and threw a tantrum.

"Mouuu! You can't lie to me!" EJ exclaimed loudly, "Don't think you can hide the evidence!"

"Sssshhhhh..." Answered Cobra.

"What happened?" Barry came over to see how he might help.

EJ bounced and pointed accusingly at Cobra, "He killed the parrots!"

"There were no parrots, EJ." Ben said. But he was lying.

"Then what's this?" EJ snatched the plucked birds from Cobra and shook them at Ben's face, "What do you call this, Beta?"

Ben took one look at the evidence and without missing a beat, deadpanned, "Chicken."

EJ resorted to calling us cannibals.

Of course, Fluffy couldn't help himself but explain that cannabalism involved only eating your own kind, "But you're not wrong. We also have monkey stew."

"WHAT???" More than one person yelled.

"Such an exotic stew." Fluffy praised.

"You should have rammed him harder, Torque." Ben grumbled.

Wait, so was there monkey or not? No, wait. Don't tell me. If it's already in the stew, it's too late to save it. I made note not to question the meat later.

I was the alpha. We were stuck out here in the wilderness - yes, with hair spray and credit cards too, but we were all starving, and it's not like we could call in delivery.

My wolves had worked hard to hunt and gather and put this meal together. This was about our survival, and I hadn't even lifted a finger to help.

Okay, my sulk session was over. I was the Alpha. I'm not sure what I should be doing, but I remembered Mum always saying that Alphas weren't supposed to be picky eaters. I steeled myself to swallow whatever they served me and not complain. I was the Alpha. I could stomach it.

I got up and walked over to the fire.

Barry was the only one there. The rain had stopped for a while now, and he was removing the poncho roof of the makeshift shelter over the fire.

The smokey smell of open fire and meat cooking made my mouth water. I swallowed quickly and forced a wide smile, "Can I help with anything?"

"Ah, no need! No need!" Barry immediately declined, "The fire's hot and the knives are sharp..."

Like no kidding.

Ink came by with some long sticks and threw them directly into the fire. It got smokey almost immediately.

"Ink!" Barry scolded, "Don't do that! The smoke will get on our Alpha!"

He tried to fan the smoke away from my direction with the poncho he was holding, "So much smoke... That batch was too wet, Ink!"

Ink shrugged, "Only 8% superficial dampness."

"Are we in need of firewood?" I asked.

"Beta wants to keep part of the fire going until we break camp." Ink relayed.

I looked around me and since there was no pile of sticks around, I concluded, "So we need more. I can help look for more."

"Ah no!" Barry quickly shook his head, "I mean, yes, Alpha, but some of the other guys have already gone out to look."

"It just rained, having more people looking would help." I said reasonably. It's always more challenging to find usable firewood after the rain.

"But the jungle is dangerous, and you might get scratched by the branches... " Barry worried, "Anyway, it's not good for girls to do rough work. It'll ruin your hands."

It'll ruin my what now?

Ben appeared with a small bundle of sticks, "Sam? What are you doing?"

He dropped it on the ground next to the fire.

"I'm just trying to help!" I said.

"Just sit down and rest, Sam. I've got this." Ben said.

Which was really the last straw for me, "Yeah, I guess you wouldn't want to ruin my hands either."

"Huh, what?" Ben paused. I think his beta brain was running through all his database trying to link up to the relevant information, so I decided to help him by dropping a few more clues, "I better be careful of the sun too, it'll be terrible if I freckle."

"Whatever Sam," Ben smirked now, "How about when Fluffy gets back, I ask him to stand next to you and hold one of those big leaves over your head?"

Barry looked confused. He pointed at the ceiling and blurted, "But we're still indoors, beta..."

Ben ignored him, grabbing my by the shoulders he pushed me back to my corner of the camp, "You need to rest, Sam. It's been a long day."

"But..." I said.

"Sam, you've fallen off a cliff, stood guard over Ki till he healed, rescued the humans and their prince from a gyaara stampede, broke me and the other guys out of the warlock's dungeon, and led us..." Ben started.

"Into this goddess forsaken jungle?" I completed for him, "Fat load of good that was."

"Well, at least we're all alive." Ben said quietly.

And then I remembered that he did nearly die. Actually, now that I thought about it, we had been through quite a number of close shaves - some of us (read River), more so than others.

I'm not sure why I hadn't realized till now, but any one of us could have died along the way. This wasn't a make believe game in our backyard.

Grrr.... "I hate this place! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!"

"See." Ben said pointedly, "You're tired. You always get like that when you're tired."

"Like what?" I demanded?

Ben smirked, "Like a spoiled brat."

And then Ben leaned in close and put a tube of jellybeans into my hand, "Here. You can have this for now. Just sit and wait a bit more."

WTH! I was NOT a spoiled brat! Grrr...

But Ben had already walked back to the campfire, "Where's that dog, Ki? Why isn't he watching Sam?"

"He left with the humans to look for Prince River." Barry reported.

"What? The prince is lost?" Ben looked like he was seriously furious, "I thought it was too peaceful around here."

I looked at the jellybeans in my hand. It was a shiny new tube. Ironically, it said, "Exciting Tropical Flavors!" Lies!

When we got out of here, I never want anything to do with "tropical" ever again.

Left alone with my jellybeans, I wondered if eating them would spoil my appetite for dinner. I wondered when dinner was going to be ready. I wondered about Ben's words. I wondered if I was an idiot to continue hunting down the warlock.

Maybe I should've taken the hint and taken everyone home instead of crashing the Warlock's home. Yeah, not my smartest move.

I put a couple of fruity jellybeans into my mouth and thought about it, like properly thought about it, with all the grown up sensibility I could muster.

Let's see now, Ki and I had driven off and free fallen down that super high cliff. Realistically speaking, we should've died. How did we not?

River and the humans were chased by a mob of gyaara. They had no magical blades or wolf fangs and claws, rendering them close to defenceless against the gyaaras' impenetrable hide. Realistically speaking... They shouldn't have been able to leave that cave alive.

Ben and the Special Team were just stuck in a dungeon right? That was relatively safer. Of course Ben had a silver bullet in his stomach, and was hung on the wall to bleed. It's not like his wound could heal with the silver inside. So Realistically speaking, minimally Ben would be dead.

Wait a minute...

Okay, admittedly, while it was happening, it was just one thing after another, and it was super tiring getting out of one trap only to find yourself in another, and very annoying too.

But now that I was looking back at everything that happened with the power of hindsight... could it be? The warlock was trying to kill us from the start?!?!

No way! I shook my head. No way, no way! I shouldn't jump into conclusions like that. There must have been some kind of misunderstanding here.

Why would the warlock try to kill us? I had no beef with him. My dad was his friend. We were making all this effort to return his stone, just like the spell in that song from Lullaby Route asked.

But if that were the case, why didn't he come down to greet us properly and get his stone? He definitely knew we were here.

Conversely, if he wanted us dead, why didn't he just come and kill us directly? He definitely had no small amount of powers.

Well, those weren't the only two options. He could be testing us. Yeah, just testing us. But why?

Or he could be just messing with us. Again, why?

Arugghhhhh... This was so frustrating! How would I know? How would anyone know if he didn't say anything?

#ihatewarlockland X 100.