THE PASSAGE

DISCOVERING NEW THINGS

Solstice looks over in my direction with a smirk on her face, and I can tell her remark was an intentional tease directed at me.

"Solstice, you're going to get it."

I tackle her, then push her onto her bed and commence to tickling her while holding her down. She's kicking and screaming and hysterically laughing while trying to free herself. I finally let her up when Cain starts crying, probably thinking that I'm hurting his mommy. I go pick him up and bring him to Solstice before he stops crying.

"Jamie, you know I'm just teasing you. But Toby must remember to do that twice a day to keep that infection from coming back. His wound is still not healed all the way, and we have no more bandages. We will have to wash out that compression bandage with boiling water and just make do with it. Now get to your duty. That's an order."

I step to Toby's bed, then grasp the bottom of my tee shirt and pull it over my head in one quick motion. Standing beside the bed, I motion for Toby to come here while attempting a sultry smile. Showing no objection to that, he immediately steps to the bed and lays with me, doing as Solstice ordered. Solstice watches us for a few moments, then comes to the bedside also. She sits and then begins rubbing Toby's back. After a few moments, she looks up at me as if gauging my reaction. I smile at her, and she winks back, then continues. The expression on her face is not sexual, but the same one I see when she rubs Cain's back, loving.

After Toby finishes, Solstice and I go to the storage shed and retrieve the shovel and pickaxe. While digging around under some debris in a damp area, we manage to come up with a handful of earthworms, as well as several white grub worms. I retrieve the plastic grocery bag from Albertsons and put the worms in it, along with some dirt, then dig around a little more by a patch of vegetation, surprised at what I dig up.

"Solstice, look. This here looks like a piece of potato."

We inspect the piece of root, smelling it, then tasting it. Next, I dig directly under one of those plants, and sure enough, a handful of potatoes come up. We are both excited about this, as now we have yet another food source. We bring them inside and show them to Toby, who is also thrilled.

After gathering all of our supplies, the four of us head to the creek. Toby can descend pretty easily with the help of his walking stick and my support.

We make it down to the sandy area, where we stop and let Toby look around for a bit. He walks around, inspecting the different animal tracks near the water. Next, he wants to go to the boat to check the damage to the engine. He locates a small toolbox and begins to dismantle the cover. Solstice is hovering over his shoulder, asking him a hundred questions about how the motor operates and the speed it can attain. She looks pretty disappointed when Toby declares that the engine is unrepairable without parts.

After reassembling the motor, Toby decides that we can explore for a bit with the trolling motor. We head up the creek in the direction that I originally came from until the creek begins to narrow. Toby turns the boat around, stating that there are too many rocks in the way to make it any farther. We continue past the point where I had docked the boat a few days earlier, going towards the bend in the creek. I inform Toby that Solstice and I had already checked that area, and it turned rocky like what we just saw, but he wants to go anyway. As we are traveling, I point out a group of white crows in a tree, and we stop to observe them for a while. A little farther, I point out the area where those angry birds' nest and also the direction that we saw the pigs.

Once we get past the bend, large boulders protrude out of the water, as I had previously stated, so we head back in the other direction, towards the cabin. When we get back to the sandy area, Solstice states to Toby that she and I want to bathe, so Toby drops us off and says that he will use the trolling motor for fishing in the surrounding area.