She bounces up again. “Sorry. Yeah, I never heard anyone say that rubber tastes good. But I guess chewing gum is made from it, so you never know.”
I place the various pots on the rock. I’m itching to start experimenting on the various substances, but I’m hungry and exhausted in the most wonderful way. “I never thought of that. Chewing gum would be a nice thing to have. Brank’ox, I know you’re hungry. Eat something with us?”
“I got your dinner ready,” Jennifer says. “I was sure you’d be home on time. Enough for everyone, Brank’ox.”
He looks over at the army huts, where there’s rising smoke from several little campfires. “I’m supposed to go on a sunset patrol today.”
“You just got here,” I tell him. “Someone else can do it. You’re needed for an after-mission meeting.”
He raises his eyebrows. “I am?”
“Oh yes. After every walk in the jungle, we have a meeting and talk about everything we’ve seen before we all agree that we had a great trip. Right, Jen?”
“Very important,” Jennifer supports my made-up story. “Everyone must know what the jungle is like right now.”
Brank’ox gives me a little smile. “Very well.”
We go over to the main camp fire, where some of the girls are assembled already, along with some of their husbands.
“No need to go looking for you today, I see,” Mia says. “I’m disappointed. I wouldn’t mind another search. We ended up reading some great phone books last night, Kyandros and I.”
I sit down, feeling like I’ll never get up. “I know. We could hear you.”
Her hand goes to her mouth. “Oh my God, was I that loud?”
“No no,” I laugh and squeeze her shoulder. “I’m just joking. We heard nothing. Just the distant sound of someone turning pages.” I’m unreasonably happy, and it makes me a little silly.
She punches me playfully. “You’re terrible. Everything okay out there?”
Brank’ox finally sits down on the rock next to mine. Jennifer ladles up a steaming bowl of stew for both of us, wooden spoon included.
“Thank you, Jennifer. I feel so spoiled. Yep, everything looks normal. As far as I know. The dinos were a little more active than usual, I think. We were attacked by dactyls and a couple of times by raptors. Apart from some other nuisances.”
Sophia sits down across from me. “The guys say the dinos are becoming braver, after they were shocked by the dragons arriving. They speculate that the dragons are getting weaker.”
“Maybe the dinos will take care of our dragon problem,” Jennifer suggests. “If we just give them time.”
“I doubt it,” Aurora offers. “The dinos aren’t organized enough. They may accidentally kill the occasional dragon, but they won’t be trying to. It’s not like they can eat them. And dragons are incredibly hard to kill, even in their human form.”
“It’s up to us to get rid of the dragons,” Sophia agrees. “To just chase them away from this area. It’s a big continent we’re on. Right, Mia? Can you see the edges of it from the air?”
“Only in one direction, towards the Actual Ocean,” Mia replies. “In all other directions, there’s only jungle and mountains. This doesn’t look like an island.”
“We have to scare them,” Aurora ponders. “Shock them so bad they can only flee.”
“Couple of problems with that,” Sophia says. “One. They will not want to leave this general area. This is ground central for whatever passes as civilization on Xren. We’re here, and the various caveman tribes are concentrated here, around Old Bune. I would guess that two hundred miles from here in any direction, the tribes thin out a lot. Dragons may be beautiful and incredible, but they are essentially just parasites. They need hoards, but they themselves don’t mine gold or gems. Nor do they make things. They need some kind of civilization to do those things. As far as they know, this is the only place they can find that. Two. The dragons avoid each other. We’d have to scare them away one at a time. I’m not sure that’s possible.”
I remember Brank’ox’s plan. “Could we assemble enough gold to make a hoard so big that it will attract all the dragons to one place? Then just let them fight it out among themselves until we can handle whatever remains of them?”
“They are very hard to trap,” Aurora says. “The guys have tried something like that, but the dragons just don’t bite. Though of course, they didn’t have real gold to tempt them with.”