Glimpse of Civilization

Shokal drank as much as he could. The blue berries were barely keeping him alive for the past two days but could not quench his thirst. He stored some water in Eden too. He could see in his mind that the water was stacking itself up in a corner of the white space.Shokal washed himself as much as he could and sat down in the grass beside the lake. He was still mesmerized by the serene beauty of the lake.Some birds were flying over it,there was some sudden splash in water too indicating there was fish in the lake. He was happy that he had found a water source this early of his journey.

"And perhaps human civilization too" he spoke to himself while looking at the wooden gate on the other side of the lake. 

"It might take me 1 hour to reach the other side. Lets take some rest now and start the journey in the afternoon."

He was quite excited to find traces of human civilization. After all marking a territory with some structures was a basic human trait.

He started to relax in the grass and looking around . The ants were collecting water in a distance. The ants were carrying the branches and dipping them in the water and carrying them back to their nest . Another group was checking out a corpse just beside their water collection point and carrying small pieces of meat in their splinters.

It was a large water reservoir so Shokal already figured out the reason. Many animals would come here to drink water and predators would often attack their prey when they were drinking, which is a common thing in a forest. This was also the reason why he was planning to rush to the wooden gate instead of searching for food first.

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In the afternoon he started walking beside the lake to reach to wooden gate. He collected some long grass like plants root that he could eat, an animal skull of a deer like creature, some oily flowers that he could use to make a fire and many other small things he thought would be useful in the future. There were some birds in the lakeside trees ready to hunt for fish. Shokal threw some sticks to kill the birds but failed every time. He killed a little frog along the way. He checked the status and found that the frog had a poisonous skin. After a while he reached the wooden gate like structure.

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He checked the surroundings carefully before going close to the wooden structure. The wooden gate was made with 3 short trees binding with forest vines. There was nothing special about it. But there's was a foot trail started from the structure into the Forest. Shokal noticed that there were traces of collecting water from that place and the bushes were cut cleaned around it. He found two bowl like fruit shell that could contain water too.

He was happy with his discovery and started following the trail into the Forest. But he didn't stop being careful. His instincts were telling him to be careful as there's no guarantee that the humans would be helpful toward him. So he was walking slowly while keeping an eye out to his surroundings.

The area around this part was a little different from he what he had seen before. There was some rocks here and there poking out from the surface. There were not that much giant trees around the area too. And relatively small trees took the most place. After walking for some time, he could see some glimpse of a tall Rock mountain Infront of him. After a while, a strong bad stench of something rotten startled him. It was so intense that he wanted to puke. He hurried himself to the mountain but sometimes later found himself Infront of the source of the bad stench. It was a big pile of rotten bones,flesh, half rotten corpses of various animals. Shokal was covering his mouth as much as he could and checking the pile.

" Humans have a tendency to bury everything that gives bad smell though. So why these things are outside like this?"Shokal thought.

Suddenly his eyes caught on a humanoid corpse in the pile. Shokals eyes got bigger. It was relatively short in height but the most interesting part was that, the color of the corpse skin was green! He poked it with sticks to check well. It was indeed a humanoid creature with muscular body and green skin with a little animal skin garment that was hiding his private parts. It was missing half of his body like something cut it clean.

Shokal was afraid after this shocking discovery. He was not sure about what it was, but he was afraid that he might be heading to some completely unknown civilization..He wanted to use Edens power to check it out, but the fact of touching a mutilated corpse and placing it into the white space was grossing him out. He hold on to his puke and leave that place quickly and took a look at the mountain from behind the bush.

Some part of the forest that met the mountain was cleared out by someone. He could see a wooden gate like structure similar to the one he saw at the lake, leaning itself onto the mountain wall. Behind the wooden gate, there was a cave in the mountain.

Shokal could hear a crowd inside of that cave. Many humanoid animalistic sound was coming from inside and echoing all around the place. Shokal could guess that this was the lair of the green creature he saw dead.And he mistook sone unknown civilization as humans and came to this place.

His whole body was trembling in an unknown fear. He was so weak to run from ants and these creatures probably hunted the corpses he saw in that pile earlier. His instincts were telling him he would be killed if he got found out. His body started shivering more.

He wanted to run back to the lake right that moment, but it was evening already. He can't risk getting caught to any other dangerous creatures on the way. So he went inside Eden.

" I'll head back tomorrow. I need a sleep now to calm myself. At least I'm safe for now"Shokal assured himself sitting inside Eden..

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