“01000001 00100000 01100111 01110101 01111001 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101100 01101011 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01100001 01110010 00101100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01100011 01101000.”

  Best and last joke told in the GH78-ALPHA confederacy cyberspace. The Gleaming Duke was not pleased.

  “The charcoal will do just fine,” Omri thought, as the cinder held in his fingers moved quickly, tracing his soon-to-be map in rough, black lines.

  Staring at his work, the kid grimaced a bit.

  “Well, let’s hope the next shipwrecks won’t be art critics”.

  A flat rock near the cave entrance was his chosen canvas, the map outline crude but precise, first, he drew the perimeter of the island, then he moved on to the landmarks: a long corrugated line served to mark the stream near his hideout, a big cross represented the predator’s clearing, with triangles and a circle for the jagged northern cliffs and the lagoon respectively.

  At last, he drew a skull, to mark the forest depths and the dangers lurking inside, its position a rough approximation based on the direction of the sounds he heard the night before.

  The final result was a particularly nasty-looking potato with two bones sticking out from the sides.

  Looking at his creation, the boy chuckled.

  “As long as it works I guess”.

  Satisfied with his work, he moved on to the next task.

  ”The spear is a good start, but a bow will be even more useful, especially if those flying sacks of meat have yet to encounter a predator with ranged capabilities,” he thought, a devious smile creeping on his face.

  “I wonder how those fat birds will taste like”.

  His thoughts on the matter settled, he started gathering firewood, tree barks, thin straight sticks, and long leaves coming from the stretchy ferns that dotted the jungle grounds.

  Once he got back to his hideout, he arranged his campfire, took out the bark he gathered, and started separating the wet inner side from the rest of the wooden husk.

  He then arranged a makeshift drying rack, placing it at the right distance from the crackling embers, to then start whittling down the thinner sticks into arrows, before putting them on the implement to harden the tips.

  Taking stock of his surroundings, the boy idly thought about possible fletchings before moving on to the next step.

  He searched around until he found what he was looking for, a flexible, mostly straight young tree, similar to hickory, and cut off one of its longer offshoots, producing a long wooden rod that would become the stave of his bow.

  He patiently set to work, idly thinking how much easier a simple axe would make the job while working the length of the beam into a flat shape with his knife.

  He tapered the endings of the stave before carving two notches on each side, deep enough that a string would sit comfortably in the cuts, but not so deep they would compromise his bow integrity.

  The inlaying process was almost meditative, and sitting at the mouth of his cave he lost himself in his work, the sharp blade gliding over the wood, the only pauses to turn his arrows over the fire ensuring the stalk was dry and the point was hard enough to pierce deep into the flesh of his preys.

  It was almost noon when he was satisfied with the work, the wooden rod now actually resembling the beginnings of a weapon, the tapering ends still glistening with the stalk-wet resin.

  The rope was the most delicate part of the bow, and selecting the most promising leaves, he started to separate them into fibers, before weaving them together a strand of fibers clockwise and the other counterclockwise, before twisting them with each other, ensuring they had no way to break free.

  A tedious and lengthy process, not made any more enjoyable by his lackluster materials, but the promise of a safe ranged option in his arsenal kept spurring the youngster forward, his repetitive movements efficient and sure.

  The sun was now high in the sky when the various parts of the bow were ready, and he bundled his arrows together before placing his stave on his drying rack, stoking the embers below with some wood splinters to revive the flame a bit.

  Leaving the stave green would cut a lot of time from the process, but it would also make the bow less robust than what he needed, and properly drying it would take weeks, a definitive no for the situation he was in.

  And thus, he would try to cheat a bit, hoping the resulting weapon would not be too brittle.

  Satisfied with his work, Omri left the hideout, spear in his left hand and knife in the other, looking for the final piece of this carpentry puzzle.

  He recalled seeing quite a few birds circling the treetops near his hideout, in a specific grove with a higher concentration of the sharply colored avian fauna.

  “Let’s see if I can find some proper fletchings”.

  A throaty rumble left his stomach.

  “And maybe also something to eat while I’m at it”.

  A trip to the beach wouldn’t be too troublesome, but it would set his plans back by hours, hours that he would rather spend trying to find something useful while also exploring the vicinities of his temporary home.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I wonder how many of the otters it would take to kill one of the things I heard yesterday… I’ve yet to see any large tracks, but the ground is full of claw marks, and there is a clear lack of prey animals on the ground”.

  An idle thought caught his mind.

  “Have I seen any boar tracks or offal? The damn things are everywhere usually… has everything not on the trees been hunted to extinction or what?”

  It was with those musings that the boy’s winding path came to an end, the chirping of birds intensifying in the canopy above him.

  The light of a small clearing cut through the jungle's damp shadows, and a single large wooden giant stood out from the rest hoarding the sun, driving away his green competitors.

  The forest chorus reached its peak on the crown of the tree, a whirlwind of colorful sound as the flying figures chased each other in a strange, hypnotical dance.

  Every few minutes, the leading bird would let out a dissonant cry, and the ones chasing him would stop, letting him fly towards the tree, on which he would choose a branch to rest.

  The first that stopped would then become the one flying around, with the rest following him closely.

  Omri shook himself out from his stupor, the mesmerizing sight swiftly forgotten as he spotted something hanging from the branches of the giant.

  “Is that thing a damn fig tree?“

  Rapidly approaching the wooden trunk, the youngster took out his knife and made an incision on the dark bark, the wound quickly leaking resinous amber blood.

  Carefully, Omri dipped the back of his knuckles in the sap, waiting a few seconds before cleaning himself on the short ferns trying to live in the shadows of the giant fruit tree.

  The sap didn’t burn, so the boy was still unsure about the nature of his bounty, but seeing one of the bigger birds greedily gulp down one of the dark grey fruits, his hopes were still not dashed.

  Preparing himself for a climb, he strapped the spear to his back, wrapped his legs around what he could of the tree trunk, and started to hoist himself up, aiding himself with his knife, the arhythmical thump of steel a discordant note in the forest symphony.

  After a few gruesome minutes, he reached the first branches, precariously sheathed his knife, and, with a grunt of effort, stretched out his right arm, aiming for the scaffold.

  A good grip secured, he took a deep breath, and with a pump of his legs, he pushed, hooking the second arm over the tree’s offshoot.

  With a final strangled cry, he lifted himself, securing his position among the birds, which were now looking at him in a mixture of what a discerning ornithologist would say was pity and sadness.

  Feeling the deluge of judgmental feathered gazes, the boy took a minute to steady his breathing.

  The solitude was taking a bigger toll on his sanity than expected, he considered, before addressing his audience, some of whom were lazing around in the branches a few dozen feet above him.

  Those were big birds, he idly thought.

  “Tough looks for something that resembles flying pigs, you fat fucks”.

  A single day alone in the jungle, and he was talking to the wildlife already.

  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

  After being ignored by the wrongfully anthropomorphized avian creatures, the boy glanced up at his prize, the fruits looking plump and juicy even from a distance, as Omri noted that the higher his gaze went, the bigger the birds and the tentatively named figs got.

  And hiding between the middle branches, a new presence made itself known.

  Small brown primates scurried around in groups of four, sometimes five individuals, snatching fruits and disturbing the bigger birds while bullying the smaller ones away from what seemed to be their literal place in the pecking order.

  Witnessing one of the huge volatiles suddenly pecking and braining a monkey, too prideful or too stupid to retreat after getting his bounty, he realized that he was also intruding in this natural order, and, sizing up both primates and avians, he quickly decided not to disturb the peace of the mostly passive birds.

  Enough of his breath recovered, he resumed his climb, promptly reaching toward the tree's middle branches, getting more of the simian's attention the closer he got to their nest.

  The majority of the beasts were now looking at him, making his way towards one of the figs, and as he got his left hand on the fruit, a cacophony of screams and screeches erupted.

  One particularly big specimen started to approach him, flanked by four smaller goons cautiously trailing just a bit behind their leader.

  Omri looked at the incoming danger and puffed out his chest, hoisting up both arms, before releasing a thunderous yell, stopping the creatures in their steps.

  Still staring at the beast, he brought his knife to the fruit and opened it, exposing the ripe flesh within, the cloying smell of sweetness exuding from the red flesh of what he was now definitely sure was some sort of fig the size of a melon.

  The primate's leader roared in outrage, and with a jump betraying a lot of strength for its size, launched itself towards the intruder, all thoughts leaving his gaze as rage at the theft overwhelmed his caution.

  The boy threw the fig at the beast, catching it mid-jump, stopping his momentum and watching on as it plummeted towards the forest floor, a surprised expression on its face as it fell, still clutching the fruit between two hairy paws.

  The rest of the group stood still in the silence that ensued, only broken by a faint crash at the foot of the roots.

  They looked at him as he grabbed another ripe pome before starting to skin it, this time undisturbed in the endeavor.

  The normal sounds of the forest came back as the monkeys got back to do what monkeys do, still wary of the intruder but willing to leave him be, as long as he let them be, having sized him up only to realize he was at least as dangerous as the big birds. Maybe more. Probably not.

  And so, he was left to his lunch, and to his musings, which were now all centered around the sweet, sweet fruit he was eating, its juices dripping from his chin, a tinge of sourness as the buttery aftertaste of the fig lit up his tastebuds in a way he rarely experienced before.

  Those things were good.

  “I need to find a way to harvest and preserve them. I’ll add weaving some nets to my to-do list, just below not dying and staying in the cave during the nights I guess”.

  “Preserving them is a whole other problem… are the cliffs high enough for some ice to form? I’ll be damned if I salt them, and drying them is such a waste of time and water…”

  A sudden cry, low and resonant shook the sky, and he almost jumped off his branch as he got up, right when the biggest bird he had ever seen took flight from the crown of the tree, each of its wings as long as the youth’s height.

  He realized then, that the only sound present in the forest was his breathing, the cacophony of a thousand beings living their life in the wilds overcome by deafening silence.

  He scanned the treetops and saw it.

  His blood froze as his gaze locked on a leopard-like creature the size of a small bear that was moving towards him like oil between the branches, its fluid strut stopping for an instant as it realized it had been spotted.

  The beast's muscles coiled in tension as the boy's hand frantically reached toward the spear on his back, and then it was upon him, a single leap clearing the remaining space between them, the quarter-ton of muscles, claws, and teeth reaching to take his life.