>>6067281As you mash and roll a march of termites crossing your path into a reedy sausage -
>nrekk! stink! ant spice! but gotsa save the nice uns for later...-and crunch some Drake Tail leaves for moisture-
>nyurhhh! sooo bitterrr! but lots moisture... nrrrh!-you see a sudden break in the canopy, a waterfall of sunlight streaming in.
>Nuh. Big tree fell there. Big, big. Fat-like big; old-old.The break in the canopy is big, but there's lots of new thin branches from other trees reaching into the heart of the sun.
>ZAH! That tree's fell dead a Heap Time (~20 days)! >There's gon be BUGGS!You hurry! The rocks here, moist and mossy from a river-fog, are real slippy; you go on your hands and foot-front, the Hundred Year Corpse Eater basic stance, and wind your way across the wet rocks with the Eight Devouring Transformations. While these don't let you jump anywhere or go real fast (being on two legs is better, for those), or exert any real strength trying to push past bushes and things, they convert all your slips and stumbles into forward momentum, no stops, towards the place you intend to go. So interesting! You can't wait to train for realsies and learn how the Thousand Segment Carrionpede REALLY works!
You reach the fallen giant of the forest and don't even need to knock to see if it's hollow and teeming: it's split open, right through! From the looks of things, seems like it caught some rot and got ate up from inside, and a few vines strangled it, and some boreworms, maybe a colony or three of sapper ants around the root system, and on a windy rainy day the fat baobab fell down dead!
You help yourself to two handfulls immediately, and one more for the road, then break off a big curvy plate of dead bark, and a big straight plate, and start loading the grubs in them, picking the biggest fattest and slowest with a discerning eye (like a Humie picking cheesed scallops at a buffet). You can't eat all of this right now, it's too fatty for an empty stomach, but DINNERTIME, when you have a chance to plop yourself somewhere comfy and cram your mouth and immediately ZZZ when you're done, ooooh yous eatten GOOD.
Once youve packed your bark-bugg sandwich as full and fat as you can, you wrap it over with big palms and vines, make sure nothing falls out. You even make a little sling from the vines, you're so happy.
Since you've found that gobber trove so quickly, you spend the rest of the afternoon setting traps and looking for beer-plants.
Again! Luck! Because Toady is the BEST!
Out of twelve drop-traps you set, you catch four things! A rabbit, some kind of rat, a quite big lizzy, and another rabbit. Yes!
And more than that! Beer-plants!
There are several kinds of beer-plants (plants with fruit or flowers that naturally ferment, sometimes assisted by symbiosis with "stiller" species; like pollinators, but for alcohol) you know about. The one you find is unmistakable: you can smell it even before you see the tree cluster: it's culc.
