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The Never Ending Quest - Episode 48127
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Astra had her back to the tree, with the rope over her shoulder. So, as
she bent her back and pulled, she felt rather than saw the tree slowly
begin to move after the first few seconds of resistance. As it speeded up,
she had to duck to avoid being knocked off her feet. It continued on from
its own momentum, before there was a great thump as one of the two large
branches that the trunk split into impacted with the far bank, followed a
moment later by the other. The tree shuddered violently, and for a short
while there was an ominous creaking sound. But the branches did not break
and the tree seemed to be holding firm at their end, even when Astra tried
pushing it.
"We actually did it!" she exclaimed. "Y-yes, we did," Hesht agreed, puffing a little. Astra saw that, in spite of his assurance, his hands were worse and now bled a little from the palms. They must have been very painful when he was pulling on the rope, though he had not complained. "I should have thought of doing this before I let you pull on the rope," Astra said. She used the knife to cut off two pieces of material from the hem of her dress, then wrapped one round each of Hesht's hands, being careful to leave his fingers exposed so that he could still bend them and grasp objects. She tied each improvised fingerless mitten in place with a knot. "There, that should help a little," she said. "T-thank you," he said. "But you shouldn't have." "Why ever not? The material of your own clothing would have been too thick. Since I already look a mess from the rain and the mud, I'm hardly going to worry about hacking a couple of bits off my dress. In fact it should make climbing across our 'bridge' a little easier." "T-true. We ought to t-try to p-press on now. We have lost a lot of t- time doing this. D-dusk will come early under this thick c-cloud c-cover, and we need to get to my f-friend's before it does." "Yes. We'll have to go across one at a time, as we daren't risk the weight of both of us on it at once. Shall I go first?"
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JH
1/3/2005 3:39:19 AM
Extending Enabled
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