The hover lifted silently until it was above the canopy, then as it moved forward Tristan heard the rustling of the leaves. The boy was finishing cleaning his plate and pan, while Tristan considered the next step in his plan. While the boy didn’t talk about his father, he was getting more comfortable around him.

Emil put everything aside to dry and looked at Tristan. “Are we going to look for more plants?”

Tristan smiled. “We don’t have too. Alex brought us enough food to last until he’ll come back.”

The boy looked at the cooler and the cases of none perishable food then bit his lower lip. “I kind of prefer what we’ve found in the woods.” 

Maybe he had the makings of a Survivalist after all.

“Okay, do you have your knife?”

Emil took it out of a pocket. Tristan would have to fashion him a belt so he could clip the sheath to it.

They headed into the woods, Tristan taking them in a different direction from the previous day, and the boy quickly set to comparing leaves to those he’d taken pictures of.

Tristan considered taking the datapad away from him. He hadn’t had that when he’d learned how to identify edible plants. He’d had to remember them, or get sick again. But the boy was human, the datapad let him be comfortable with being away from civilization. In a few days he’d suggest they leave it behind.

As they took leaves, and tubers and put them in the bag Tristan had brought, they heard animals around them, and that roar in the distance that made Emil cling to Tristan. The Samalian looked at the boy’s reaction and an idea began forming. He’d have to investigate that animal during the night.

When the bag was half full, Tristan had them stop, and he showed Emil how to make a shelter from the trees and branches. That was something Tristan had to learn by himself. His father hadn’t bothered teaching him that part before he started dumping him in the middle of the forest for him to survive on his own.

It had taken weeks of sleeping in the rain and cold, before he’d figured out something that worked. Now he was showing the boy how to split branches so he could insert another one there and make the form of the lean-to.

By the time they were done the boy’s stomach growled, so Tristan showed him how to make a fire pit that minimized the smoke, and how to cook the tubers without pans or tool, wrapping them in thick leaves and putting them under the fire.

“We didn’t find any meat,” Emil said.

Tristan tilted an ear at him.

“To go with the tubers.” The boy was learning Tristan’s body language much faster than Alex did.

“You want meat?”

He shrugged. “That’s how it's supposed to be, you have meat with your vegetables, and you’re supposed to eat everything. But we didn’t find any. Do you think meat grows in another part of the forest? Or is it something that grows on a plain?”

Tristan laughed. It wasn’t an act. The question genuinely amused him. Didn’t humans teach anything to their children? “Stay here.”

It didn’t take Tristan long to find one of the small rodent like creatures that were always chittering about. And even less time to capture one. He returned to the fire holding it in his hands.

He showed it to Emil and the boy smiled. Reaching to pet its head.

“This is where meat comes from.”

The boy looked at him, confused. Tristan considered snapping the animal’s neck and opening him up, but as much as that would be a valuable lesson, it would traumatize the boy, and he couldn’t afford to do that right now.

“You, me, all the animals, we have meat inside us. When they die, you can take the meat out.”

Emil frowned. “I thought meat came from the stores.”

Tristan smiled. “That’s where you get it, but before it reaches the store, meat is in animals.”

“Like this one?”

“Yes, but for the store, they use larger animals, so they can get more meat out of them.”

“Like people?” The question didn’t have any disgust in it, which surprised Tristan.

“No, not people.” Tristan didn’t elaborate. He didn’t mention the horror most humans felt at the idea of eating someone they considered sentient. That and animal who could reason usually ended up putting a lot of things in their bodies that made the taste unappealing. Tristan had had to survive off human flesh twice in his life, and he’d rather not do it again if he could avoid it.

“So if I want meat, I’d have to find a dead animal?”

Tristan considered his answer. Maybe the boy did need a little reality injected in the fantasy that had been his life until now.

“Or you can kill one.”

Emil looked at him, horrified. “I can’t kill it.”

Tristan nodded. “It’s a choice you make. If you’re going to be in the woods only for a few days, you won’t need meat. But if you’re here for longer, unless you know what kind of plants can take its place, and can find them, you might not have a choice.”

Emil shrank in on himself a little. “But we have all that meat already.”

Tristan placed the rodent on the ground and it scampered off. “You won’t need to kill anything while we’re here. If we need more meat Alex will get it for us.”

“Have you killed any?”

Tristan made his smile sad. “I grew up in a forest. We didn’t have any stores. If I wanted meat, I had to get it myself.” 

The memory of the revulsion he’d felt at sinking his teeth in the Growler didn’t bother him anymore. He’d had to get used to getting his protein that way. It was a long time before his father let him kill one of the animals he caught before eating it. His father hadn’t wanted a squeamish son.

“Did you hate it?”

“I had to live. That’s how it goes in places like this. The small animals eat plants, and the larger ones eat them.”

“I don’t want to kill them.”

“You don’t have to. And to be honest, I prefer not having to do it.”

They were quiet for a while among the animal sounds, the leaves rustling in the wind, and the occasional roar in the distance.

When Tristan used a branch to take the tubers out from under the dying fire, the leave had darkened and burned, but the tuber was intact, it had softened to the point where Emil could poke a hole with a finger.

By themselves they were bland, but they were filling. When they were done eating Tristan showed Emil how to properly cover the fire to make sure it was extinguished, and that there was no indication it had been there, then they headed back to their camp.

Not long after they’d separated the leaves and put them in the cooler, something approached. It sounded different than Alex’s hover, and Tristan told Emil to head in the shuttle. To stay in his room until he got him.

The boy didn’t ask any questions. He grabbed his datapad and headed there.

Tristan grabbed his Azeru from its hiding place and waited. The underside of a hover came into view, dipped down, breaking the top branches of a few trees before going back up.

When it was in the middle of the clearing it came down again, then went sideways as if a strong wind had pushed it, rightened itself, dropped ten feet before stopping, hovering in place, then gently coming down to the ground.

It was Alex’s hover, and Tristan headed for it. He’d better not be injured. Too much depended on the human for him to be injured. All he was doing in the city was talking to people, if he’d managed to screw that up and get in a fight, Tristan was going to beat him.

The ramp came down and Alex stormed out. By all appearance he was in good condition. Tristan grabbed his arm as he came close and forced him to stop.

“What happened? You were supposed to be gone for a few days.”

Alex wrenched his arm out of the grip and looked around.

“The boy is in his room in the shuttle. I didn’t know who was coming.”

“A couple of city kids got in the hover and messed it up.”

Tristan raised an eyebrow, an ear tilting at the same time. “You didn’t lock it?”

“Of course I locked it, but they bypassed that.” He headed away.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I need to do something!” Alex snapped.

Tristan watched him as he grabbed a handful of nutrient bars from one of the cases and a pack of Energy Booster drinks. He considered if he’d gain anything out of teaching the human he didn’t appreciate this kind of attitude, but decided against it. Angry humans didn’t learn much. Tristan added that to the list of things he was going to have to teach the human.

He entered the hover and shook his head at the mess the open panel revealed. At a glance he could see that the stabilizer was missing, no wonder he’d been all over the place trying to land. He couldn’t imagine how difficult it had been flying this back.

They’d tried to rewire things so it wouldn’t be obvious what was missing, but had caused a short in the sensor, as well as the dampeners. If Alex had had to stop all of a sudden, he would have been splattered against the view screen.

He was going to have to jury-rig one of the shuttle’s spare stabilizer in there, and fix the damage to the other components. He headed to the shuttle for tools and to let the boy out. He grinned as a thought occurred to him.