Chapter 191: Found Salt

Anna and Gaark flew past the rocky mountains no problem. Their pets got them past the tip of the mountain safely, and in fact, they avoided the former home of that cannibalistic tribe all together. They didn’t need to get close to it, so they stuck close to the tip of the mountainside, and then took a sharp right turn, heading east.

The sea that Anna had seen in her past trip was eastward, and she intended to head that way regardless of how long it took to get there. She and Gaark were making great time, and if they by luck found some salt deposits across the sea shore, their day would be marked as efficient, and they’d get to make the trip back home on the same day.

Advantageously, the river that was at the foot of the mountain, headed north as well. It followed a mostly straight path towards the sea, and Anna knew for a fact that she had a great chance to find salt at the end of their destination, where the river met the sea.

Fresh water bore microscopic amounts of salt, and if there was a place where those microscopic amounts could pile up over time, it was, again, where the river met the sea.

Anyway, it took some time to get to the shores. The sea was farther away than she had originally anticipated. An estimated three-hundred miles north from their home, to be exact, or eighteen short of five-hundred kilometers.

This heavily weighed them down, and lengthened their travel time to six hours, simply because they did not want to tire their pets out too much. Their pets were carrying loads on their back, to the point where those loads didn’t let them glide continuously, which would’ve otherwise been useful to preserve energy. They had to flap their wings every fifteen minutes or so, just so they wouldn’t crash into the mountainside, and they were tired.

Once they landed on the shores, the QTs dropped to the ground, and took in multiple deep breaths. They had flown nonstop up until this point, and were desperate for a short rest.

“Maybe we worked them too hard?” Gaark said.

“Yeah, but we can’t afford to be gone for days.” She reminded him, “Our tribe could get attacked at any time, so we need to get back home quickly. Let’s hope there’s some salt here.”

“Don’t you think we should eat first?” He added, “A short break will hardly make a difference to our trip back home. We’ve been flying all day, my ass hurts.”

A few days ago, Gaark had been intimidated by the idea of flight. He didn’t hate it, but he was simply nervous.

Today he nearly shat himself when he and Anna flew past the tip of the rocky mountain, because he expected the worst. His adventurous spirit had died when he was a kid, and got himself lost for years, but today, he figured out that the main challenge when it came to flight, was hardly related to the dangers of flight itself, or the eerie mysteries of the rocky mountains.

With an intelligent pet to call his own, the dangers of flight were nearly non-existent as long as he was just a little bit careful. The greatest challenge was remaining durable in long flights such as this one.

Gaark’s skin was so dry from the flight, as the open air had hit him for hours, to the point where he felt like he would crumble like a leaf! He was sore all over, and he just wanted to sleep for a couple of days, to hopefully sleep the discomfort away.

However, Anna didn’t give him a break. She was very insistent.

“If you’re hungry, you can eat the bugs that splattered on your skin, froggy,” She said. “Now come on, the river should be that way, towards the forest.”

Gaark listened to her, he had to, so he followed her, and ignored his grumbling stomach. Their pets, although tired, followed suit.

Thankfully, the spot where the river met the sea was only one hundred meters, or over three-hundred feet away from where they landed. It wasn’t too long of a walk, and just like that, they found salt deposits as soon as they saw the river.

“Too easy! Haha!” She celebrated.

“You find this easy? Darn, you’re one tough woman.” He added, “I ate so many bugs today that I might turn into a bug myself next morning.”

“Boy, you ate bugs today, but you’re gonna eat quality meat all winter.” She sighed, satisfied with the amount of salt they found. “You have no idea how good dried meat tastes. It’s a lot healthier too, because the odds of getting food poisoning from them is next to zero.”

“I can’t say I know what that means,” He tried to catch his breath, “But it sounds good.”

The salt deposits they found essentially looked like foot-tall piles of gravel, except it was white, and it stretched for a hundred meters across the outskirts of the river.

The deposits here weren’t only enough to help them get through the winter, but it could get them through ten winters. There were hundreds of kilos here alone, and if they expanded their search across the long sea shore, and looked for deposits that the sea itself produced without any help from the river, they may find even greater deposits!

The one they found today was good enough. They could not carry it all in one day, and odds were that they had to come here a few more times before winter hit, but overall, their hunt for salt was a success.

Gaark and Anna then unrolled, and laid out the two meter, or six foot wide leather bags, which in this case were more like tarps, and started throwing salt on them.

This was hardly a complicated task, it barely required any physical work, but it was going to take about an hour until they loaded both tarps up with as much salt as the QTs could carry.

Thankfully, the QTs helped them. They mirrored their masters, and used their large beaks to scoop salt several kilos at a time. They were a lot more efficient than their masters, and since they didn’t have taste buds, the salt in their beaks didn’t affect them whatsoever.

Halfway through the process, something interesting caught Gaark’s eye. He pointed towards the open sea, and called for attention.

He said, “That water dino looks awfully big, doesn’t it?”

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