progress from today

book-1/13.tex

@@ -137,4 +137,77 @@ Only a hand full of the doors had the grey rags that Katt and her sister used as
 Almost nobody from the tribe was currently able to be seen,
 which Andrew wasn't too sad about.
 On the other side of the large plaza some kids were playing,
-but Andrew went without looking at them closely.
+but Andrew decided he didn't want to look at them too closely.
+Even if he had gotten a taste of the tribe through Ratt, Liz, and the others,
+he felt it would be better to get to know the rest of the menagerie in homeopathic doses.
+
+Shortly before they left the plaza,
+Andrew stopped and looked around him.
+On the roof of the house next to where Katt and her sister lived a fire was still burning.
+It was too bright to really see the flames,
+but Andrew could see the column of oily black smoke that went almost completely vertical in the unmoving air,
+before it dissolved into the air thirty or forty meters up.
+He blinked questioningly.
+
+``She'll have her child today'', answered Katt,
+who had noticed his facial expression.
+``At the latest tomorrow.''
+
+``You always light a bonfire when one of you expects a child?''
+
+``Is it not like that where you're from?'', asked Katt blankly.
+
+Andrew laughed.
+``No.
+Our tribes are \dots a little bigger than yours.''
+
+``That much bigger?''
+
+Andrew nodded.
+
+``How many?'', asked Katt.
+
+Andrew thought about it for a moment,
+then he made a sweeping motion around himself with the empty canister.
+``Imagine this whole city were full of humans.
+A whole family would live in each room.''
+
+Katt's eyes widened.
+``I don't believe you.''
+
+``And then imagine it was a hundred times as big'', Andrew continued.
+``And there were a hundred of those cities.''
+
+Katt stared at him further in bewilderment and in her eyes a fear appeared that Andrew didn't understand at first.
+She laughed, but it sounded nervous and not real.
+``You're pulling my leg'', she said.
+``No tribe can get that big.
+What would they all eat?''
+
+Andrew mentally warned himself to be careful.
+It might not matter to him if Katt believed him or not,
+but maybe the danger was that she \textit{would} believe him.
+Maybe he wasn't the only one that needed the truth in homeopathic doses.
+
+``Yeah, you are probably right'', he said ambiguously and made motions to continue walking.
+She looked at him for a moment longer with such hopelessness and bewilderment that Andrew almost regretted his own words.
+As they kept walking Andrew mentally warned himself again to be much more careful with what he said.
+He really should be thinking about every word he says very carefully.
+
+They left the plaza and stepped on to a street that was mostly blocked by rubble and other debris.
+It continued straight for a good one and a half or two kilometers.
+The houses,
+even though they were destroyed,
+were still so tall that they held most of the sunlight back;
+At the floor of the brick ravine it was not only darker,
+but also noticeably cooler than on the big plaza where the tribe lived.
+only a small stripe on the left lay in the sun,
+but Katt avoided walking there,
+instead opting to march along the other side even though they were constantly forced to climb over frequent boulders and other rubble.
+Andrew was wondering why she was doing that,
+but he figured that Katt would know what she was doing and followed her without complaints.
+He also passed on asking how far they had to go.
+With two full water canisters the way back would be torture.
+
+While he was closely following Katt he took the time to really look around himself.
+