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The dog shook the dust off its fur and stretched its legs as it stood, sniffing the air.

There was a familiar scent coming, the telltale odor of a person at New Well, and something

else, too.

Blood, fresh meat, a meal was on its way, coming down over the low hills to the east.

The dog bounded off in that direction, following the scent and barking in delight until its

eyes caught sight of the small group of people, spears and nets in their hands, heading down

through the well-trodden grass of the hillside.

As the dog had suspected, two of the younger men were hefting a freshly-killed gazelle, enough

food that everyone living in the small cluster of a half dozen roundhuts would have more

than enough to eat that day.

Its tail wagging the dog barked again, making itself heard over the steady grinding

thud of rock on rock.

Two people, a man and a woman, were sitting cross-legged around a fire just outside one of

the circular huts.

The man held a stone pestle in his hand and smashed it repeatedly, and with a very large

mortar, likewise made from stone, using them to grind up grass seeds into a fine white-ish

flower.

The woman had taken the flower and made a kind of dough, which she was shaping at a flat

pancake and then placing on heated stones around the fire to bake into something like

a flatbread.

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