Would that cut ever heal? Probably not.
That hurt reminded him of his wife. She had also been taken from him. Sam had watched her wither away. In a way, it had broken him. Irreparably.
Nora had a similar hurt, from the loss of her husband. She and Sam had that in common. Wounds that wouldn’t heal. And they shared the bond of the secret of Absolom. And, as they had discovered, an attraction to each other. In a way, she had brought Sam back to life, awakened something inside of him. Just when he thought they were ready to take the next step, she was gone, torn out of his life.
If he dwelled on the things that had happened to him, if he kept feeling sorry for himself, he knew it would drown him, just as the sea had wanted to. As in the water, here on land, he needed to swim, to propel himself forward, toward the shore, toward the future. The past pulled at him like the depths of the ocean, the abyss, but he resisted. He was going to fight. For Adeline. For Ryan. For his friends. And lastly, for himself.
With the torch in one hand, he reached into his pockets and emptied them. He threw the sickening green pods across the white rocks and put small pebbles in their place. If he lost the torch and spear, they would be his last line of defense. The small rocks wouldn’t hurt the large reptiles here. But, as he had learned last night, they would scare them. They had never seen prey （or a predator） who could hurl rocks at them. Something new represented danger. Something to flee. Thanks to evolution, they were programmed to avoid uncertainty.
He glanced up at the sun. It was low in the sky. Sam figured it was probably two in the afternoon. Plenty of day left. And much to do.
He knew he needed food. Something hardier than Triassic earthworms. He wouldn’t find it in the forest behind him—unless he was ready to fell a seelo. He wasn’t.
Ahead lay unexplored territory, and within it, the prospect of easier prey. Perhaps a mammal he could eat. Or fish in a pond or a stream.
He had the fire now, and that gave him the option to cook larger animals.
Yet the prospect scared him. Ahead was new, unknown territory. That was the way of the world: even slowly starving, we cling to the lands we know instead of striking out into the unknown. But he had to now.
With his pockets full of stones, a spear in one hand, a torch in the other, Sam marched across the rocky expanse to the far tree line and stepped into the unexplored forest.
Under the canopy, the world turned dark. Around him, he heard animals scurrying. This thicket was alive, and the animals here were on the move. Why?
Sam realized the answer then. It was the smoke. That was rare in the Triassic. It probably heralded the beginning of a forest fire. Animals in this time had evolved to recognize the smell, to fear it, to run from it. That was going to be a problem for his hunting expedition. But it was also keeping him safe.
The terrain rose for a while, then turned downward before inclining again. Soon, the ground grew rockier, and finally the forest gave way to a ridge, where the trees were gone and stone covered the ground. At the top of a tall rock outcropping, Sam got his first glimpse of the world around him.
Ahead lay hills covered in dense forest, like what lay behind him. They cascaded down into a desert that stretched out as far as Sam could see. Turning back, he realized that the forest he had been hiking through was but a small strip between a massive sea of water on one side and a sea of sand on the other.
The desert ahead was barren except for narrow shadows that looked like stripes. Sam didn’t understand where they came from, but there were hundreds of them. He wasn’t about to trek down there to find out what they were.
To the right of the desert lay a swamp that flowed to the horizon, probably to the ocean. The lowlying land was likely a mix of saltwater from the sea and freshwater from the rain that pooled in the desert and washed away toward the coast.
Sam turned and surveyed the ridgeline. Another peak rose to his right. It didn’t have a pointed top. It was blunted, like a mountain that had been sawed off. In the center, there was an indentation. It was a volcano.
Sam eyed the volcano like a dragon he had caught by the tail. A dangerous thing that could go off at any moment and burn him and the entire world to a crisp. But for now, it was asleep.
In the volcano’s shadow, Sam spotted a small pond （or what looked like a small pond from where he stood）。 A stream flowed away from it, into the forest. He imagined that it eventually snaked its way to the sea. Another branch from the pond flowed toward the desert.
Sam glanced at the sun, mentally estimating the time and distance to the pond. He could make it there and back before nightfall. At least, he thought he could. If he couldn’t, the torch would be his salvation in the dark forest. But it was burning down. He needed to resupply it.