The girls had gathered 8 crabs. They were tiny crabs, but at least they had something to eat.

“How are we going to cook these?”

Kaylea peered in to the shirt and shivered.

“We will fry them. I’ll get a fire started and someone will need to pierce them with sharp sticks.”

Kaylea felt her stomach turn and shivered. Kami looked around and picked up a flat stone and three sticks.

“I’ll pierce the crabs. Kay, you go find some firewood so Alex can start a fire.”

Kaylea nodded at her and started walking towards the jungle. Alexandra grabbed her arm to stop her.

“See if you can find me a flat piece of wood, a straight stick, a bendy stick and a heavy rock. I’ll need them to start the fire.”

Kaylea looked quite puzzled. She didn’t have any ideas how to start a fire like that, but she trusted Alex and headed off.

“How will you make a fire with those things?”

Kami seemed to be just a puzzled as Kaylea. She shrugged and started sharpening the sticks.

“When Kay comes back, I’ll show you both what I learned when I was a little girl.”

After a while Kay came back with a bunch of twigs and branches in her arms. She carried a big flat stone on top of it. She dumped the wood in front of Alexandra. Kay looked at Kami, who was leaning on three sticks with crabs on them. She made a face.

“That looks so gross.”

Alex sat down and removed her shoelace from her shoe. She took the big piece of wood Kay had brought and secured it in the sand. After rummaging through the pile she found a stick that was just bendy enough. She tied her shoe lace on both ends so it looked like she had a bow in her hand. She took another stick and broke it in two.

“I will need help from you, Kay. I want you to make a little dent in this big piece of wood while I sharpen the stick.”

She got Kami’s stone and started sharpening the stick she had just broken. Kaylea start hitting the wood with the stone until there was a dent in it. She looked at Kami, who shrugged. Neither of the two had any ideas what Alex was planning on doing.

“Right, this is really simple to do. I will use the bow to twist the sharpened stick around in the piece of wood. The flat stone goes on top so that it won’t move. Then I just move the bow around and wait until the friction causes the wood to smoke. With a little dry grass or moss we should have a fire started soon.”

She wound the bow around the stick, put it on the flat piece of wood and placed the flat stone on top of the stick. Kaylea held the stone in place while Alexandra moved the bow from left to right. After a few minutes the wood started to smoke and soon they had a small fire going.

next chapter