The moon was out giving Ashwin plenty of light to work with, back up the bank his log cabin campfire was blazing, shadows danced and twisted against the bone white backdrop of the shattered kneecap.
Dragonflies buzzed atop the waves of the water, splashes filled the night as huge predatory Beast fish targeted the swarming clouds.
Gingerly poking around inside his oversized hide pocket, Ashwin pulled out a handful of the translucent chitin hooks from his hide britches and arranged them on the ground.
There was a particularly large hook among the pile, he inspected it close up under the light of the moon.
It too was virtually weightless in his hand, placing it between both thumbs and fore fingers he began to apply pressure.
Ashwin watched his fingers and thumbs turn white as he squeezed but the translucent chitin hook did not bend.
“Good, its stout, that’s good.”
There was a problem.
There was no way to loop the filament, he would need to bore a hole through the chitin hook to secure the ultra-fine filament through it.
But quickly, Ashwin recalculated his approach.
“Hmm wait.
Boring through is the hard way to do this, when all I really need to do is make a small notch at the blunt end of the hook.
Ashwin searched the fossilized bank for a rough stone that he could slide the hook against to form the notch, and after some time he found another coarse blue rock; he sat down again placing the coarse blue rock between his feet edge up and began to gently rub the hook end against it. Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
Ashwin sat there under the bright full moon sanding the notch into the hook for around ten minutes, taking pauses to listen to his surroundings and to scan the area with his mental energy.
There were larger Animus signatures out now, but they were far away.
Ashwin picked up a smooth round stone and smoothed the notch he had just put into the chitin hook, and it was ready.
Ash looked at the translucent rod whip, the very tip of the ultra-fine filament listed lazily in the air, like an anchored ribbon of smoke.
Watching it had an almost hypnotic effect on Ashwin.
He unspooled the filament that he had wrapped around the rod and watched in awe as it immediately floated up into the air above.
The filament curled like streamers of smoke around Ashwin, and that’s when he noticed something really perplexing.
There was a gently breeze that came up from the shore and even though the filament was lighter than air the wind had no effect over it.
Slowly Ashwin began to realize that perhaps other forces that he could not yet comprehend were at play in the Rod Whip, and that maybe what he held was in fact a very rare treasure from the Death Valley zone.
He paused; ” It could even be an intent based weapon.”
“I can’t tie a permanent knot onto this whip, it’s too valuable.”
Instead, Ashwin would use a tension knot that would untie itself when he pulled on the ”tail” or working end of the filament.
Ashwin looped the working end of the filament into a small loop, which he then looped back over the mainline to form a ”bight” next he simply pulled and the slippery half-hitch tightened and drew down on the smooth notch of the hitch he had formed.
He gave the hook an experimental tug.
It didn’t budge. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Ashwin looked to the lake where he saw huge dragonflies darting over the surface, occasionally hovering in place to drink or eat particles of whatever it was, they consumed, periodically he heard loud splashes as large fish would breach the surface to hunt them!
“Oh yeah baby, I want in on this action.”
Ashwin thought about bait, he could dig up worms or perhaps try to capture a small dragon fly to impale on his hook.
But quickly realized he may not actually need bait at all.
The tip of the filament was fuzzy with hundreds of fine strands, situated on the spine of the hook like it as, it resembled a fuzzy bug.
Ashwin had inadvertently crafted a lure; he would go bait-less.
The weight of the chitin lure though negligible was still enough to weigh the tip of the filament down, while the rest of the mainline of the filament body drifted in the air around Ashwin like anchored smoke.
To launch his line, he would have to do something unconventional with this impromptu fishing rod.
He would have to cast his line by hand.
Ashwin griped the main line eighteen inches from the hook and spun it rapidly and threw!
The thirty-seven feet of drifting filament followed the hook out into the water and when the lure hit the surface of the water Ashwin snapped the rod back rapidly so that the lure kissed the surface and flew back into the air behind him again.
Ashwin laughed, “Now we’re fly-fishing baby.”