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Taralina turned to Korchaw, gesturing at him to stay, and picked up one of her javelins and the maul. She picked a direction tangential to the one she'd been following the day before and started walking, listening for the sound of running water.

(I'm going to assume they find a stream, since Fuzzy isn't posting, but we can retroactively re-contrive things if not.)

Eventually, Taralina found a stream, which she approached cautiously. A little further down into the valley, it went around an enormous bend, but they could see upstream a decent distance. Some airplane parts were washed up on the shore, but Taralina ignored them.

She prodded the water near the bank with her javelin, as if to ensure that no crocodiles were waiting just beneath the mud, and waded in until the water was up to her knees, which is to say, where it was nearly two feet deep.

There she stood patiently, stabbing at passing trout and the like.

Rachel kneels down and fills some empty water bottles up so that they can boil the water later. After she's done, she sits on the shore and watches Taralina "fishing".

Over the course of about an hour, perhaps a little more, Taralina had accumulated a small pile of fish-- mostly trout and salmon, though she'd also caught a few crawdads.

She wrapped them up into a bundle inside a skin, securing it on the shore. Then she stripped down out of her filthy hide armor and began bathing herself in the shallows.

After washing up, Taralina strode back onto the shore and redressed.

"Ready to leave?" she asked, picking up the meat and her weapons.

On the way back, Taralina is annoyed to find that their path is broken by a nasty snarl of thorns. Either they took a wrong turn, or they sprung up while the two were at the stream.

She is unfazed, however, apparently sure that she still knows how to get back to the campsite if they crest the next hillock. "Up top, we see camp," she explains, and sure enough, the embers of their fire are still burning away down the other side.

What they'd missed, however, in not coming this way earlier, was a small gathering of strange trees with big, frondish leaves, from which dangled fruit with an irredescent white-and-blue mottled skin.

Taralina picked one up questioningly, and held it out to Rachel for inspection. "Never seen this fruit."

"Could be bad fruit. But fruit carries seeds-- trees make fruit so we move seeds. Bad fruit makes no sense."

Thoughtfully, she picked a few more of the round, almost bell-shaped fruits and balanced them on top of all the fish she'd caught. Her stomach rumbled, giving the impression that maybe EVERYONE in the valley was used to enormous meals.

"I go back to camp, now," she said, "Start preparing fish."

She took off at a brisk pace down the hill, her enormous legs carrying her back towards the campsite very quickly.

((Who KNOWS what kind of fruit that is? Not me!))

Upon reaching the campsite, Taralina seated herself to clean and gut the fish she'd caught and crack open the crawdads. She balanced a thin piece of shale over the fire, and rekindled it, so as to fry all of the meat she'd procured.

Noticing that Rachel had helped herself to the fruit, she looked at it warily. "Fruit any good?"