Luminari

Chapter thirteen

We walked throughout the rest of the day Inola was still slightly limping, but she seemed much healthier. The sun was starting to set, and the dark swamp land was starting to get a lot colder with chilly winds blowing through the willow trees.

"Let's stop here for the night," Inola suggested pointing towards two fallen logs "I'm starving what do we have to eat?"

I had conveniently forgotten to mention to Inola that I had traded all of our food for her medicine, and she was not very happy to hear it.

"You're such an idiot clam poisoning doesn't kill! I would have woken up just fine without it, I can't believe how stupid you are, how could you give away all our food there's nothing to eat around here!" she shouted angrily tearing off my backpack and using it to hit me in the back of the head.

"Sorry," I said, rubbing the sore spot on my head as she dug through the backpack to see if the man missed anything.

"What do we do now?" she asked looking around with a frown on her face and her hands on her hips.

I just shrugged holding my growling stomach.

"If we can find some frogs then we could eat their legs," Inola suggested then she took off her shoes and started looking through the pond.

I could hear frogs all around me, but it was too dark to see any of them and every time I walked close to one it stopped croaking, and I could no longer find it. The water was freezing cold, and my hands and feet were beginning to go numb from searching the water for frogs. I felt my hand grab something squishy and pulled it out of the water only to realize it was some sort of aquatic mushroom.

"How many did you find?" Inola asked stepping out of the pond with a frog in each hand.

"I found a mushroom!"

"You're worthless," she complained rolling her eyes, setting the big slimy frogs in my backpack, and stepping back in the pond to find more.

"This would be a lot easier if we had a lantern" Inola complained, I didn't tell her that I traded honest John my flashlight I wanted to survive the night in one piece. 

Inola had gathered a dozen frogs and I still hadn't found a single one, she told me I couldn't eat any of her frogs unless I found one. I didn't want to go to sleep starving, so I continued looking for a frog as the night got darker. I could hear their croaks all around me and knew that there were hundreds in this pond alone, but I couldn't see a single one. Inola had started a fire and was now cutting the frogs legs off and removing their skin something I was way too queasy to ever do.

"It's impossible I can't see anything!" I cried my feet were numb and had lost all feeling, my hands were freezing, and my back was sore form bending over.

"I found twelve I'm sure you can find one."

I bent back over and started running my hands around the bottom of the pond searching for something squishy when I saw the water ripple in the corner of my eye. I watched as something moved through the water away from me and lunged for it. My hand gripping something slimy that squished when I touched it I removed it from the water only to realize with terror that it was a two-foot-long water snake. I screamed like a little kid and threw the snake as hard as I could, I fell over backwards and landed on my butt soaking my pants with pond water. The air was filled with croaking frogs and Inola's laughter.

I sat near the fire wrapped in a blanket waiting to dry off while me and Inola roasted our frog legs over the fire with sticks. I was a little reluctant to eat it at first scared it would taste like a frog but it was surprisingly good like eating the best part of a chicken. The snake I threw had hit a tree and died so Inola chopped of it's head and roasted it, but I refused to eat the snake, I drew the line at frogs.