Otter Creek sleep, soldier

The water flashed with minnows and other sleek, scaled creatures he could not put a name to.

Greedily, he could not help but quantify every possible mouthful of food, to translate them chemically from flesh to energy in units of time. A fish might be enough for a day of slow travel. Any farther would require meat, real land-animal meat.

At times he would be so hungry as to fill his stomach with berries and tree bark. But with the arrival of spring, other predators slowly but surely had become more careless in their hunting and caching. Oh yes, in the winter it was impossible to scavenge from these misers, but nowadays all Gavrel had to do was to follow the shadows of crows and their ilk.

He waded out deeper, the current tugging at the fur on his chest. Gavrel's expression when he turns to face the boy is expectant, but he remains wordless as he turns back to the thankless task of fishing -- most of which really was just lying in wait.