Desert Oasis

Year 4 Day 282

Back to mapping, and to tell the truth I’m getting a little bored. On my right is water. On my left is sand. Now and then the sand is broken by trees and even a bit of grass growing where ground water reaches the roots, or by rocks. There are mountains visible occasionally, which I presume are the source of the ground water, but it is not a very inviting place for hunters.

Giraffe is still planning how to teach his son to hunt, but we are both increasingly frustrated by Meerkat’s insistence that it would be very bad luck for Songbird to come out of the birthing hut, or for a male to enter, until the day of the new moon. How they manage if they are traveling when a child is born is beyond me, and I suspect Meerkat is taking advantage of the fact that neither Giraffe nor I have been near a birthing woman before. It should be only a few more days; the moon is a late waning crescent.

I shall have to make it very clear to Patches that the baby is to be guarded, not treated as prey. She is certainly capable of learning to regard the little one as her own cub, just as she accepts Giraffe and me as her packmates.

One thing bothers me about the mapping: I am fairly sure I am west of where I found the western ocean before, and the coastline has just turned north again. It is hazy, but when I levitate as far as I can go and breathe comfortably, I think I see mountains to the north. Am I mistaken in thinking this almost tideless sea connects to the ocean to the west I found earlier?

Jarn’s Journal is the fictional Journal of a human-like alien stranded in Africa 125,000 years ago. The journal to date is on my author site.