Afterwards, they sat in the patchy shade to rest. The sun was up but they had an hour before they needed to be inside one of the huts in the camp. Sorrel thought the tough green breadfruits would be more useful as weapons than food. She remembered the first time she had tasted it on her first night in the Tribal camp. Their first night.

“What was it like, being always on the move, with this many people?’ she asked Emrallie.

“Hard, although there were not so many of us then. Finding shelter every night, the ferals, dust storms, rain bombs. But it is cooler up here, so even when we were caught in the day, only a few died. But you know how it is…” She fell silent.

“When do you think we’ll leave?”

“Guata, Sorrel. How many times you gonna ask the same question? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this – all of us can’t travel together for long. We’re a big band because we had the camp and the river – Is that a fish down there?”

There was a small flapping creature on the riverbank, well before reproductive age. According to Tribal rules the only animals they could kill were the mature ones. “Should I throw it back in?” Sorrel asked.

“You crazy? Go get it. It’s at least a bite each.”

“Are we taking it back to camp?’

“What d’you think?” Emrallie was scornful. “Cooked or raw, is all I want to know.”

“Best not to start a fire here.”

“Probably the last roasted fish we’ll ever eat. They’ll all be inside at camp. Find some stones.” She looked at the fish. “Doesn’t even look like it’s worth cleaning. You going to get it or not?”

“Fine, I’ll go. You get the stones.”

“I picked the breadfruit.”

The dry breadfruit leaves on the ground were good kindling and they made a fire in a small hole lined with river stones. They tamped down the fire, wrapped the tiny fish in a few green leaves and laid it on the hot stones. They didn’t give it enough time to cook and the fish was part raw. “Four bites each, I guess,” Emrallie said, taking the first one. “You can have the head.”

After they had sucked every bone dry, they cleaned their hands in the wet river sand. “We shouldn’t go close to anyone when we get back,” Sorrel said. “We smell of fish.”

“Let’s bathe then.”

Sorrel glanced at the sky. “No point. We’ll get dirty and sweaty on the way back.”

“You don’t get it, do you? After we leave, there’ll be no huts. No river, so no water. No food a lot of the time. And we’ll never be alone.” Emrallie began to strip.