Even the lame fox no longer visited. Hunger had driven Urrell one day to scratch about in Agaratz’s pouches for remnants of stores while their owner was out foraging. In one he came across several handfuls of grain, dried hard as grit, which it occurred to him to kibble with a pebble on a slab of stone. While he was doing this some water spilt over the meal. He scraped it up with a bone flake into pellets the size of thrushes’ eggs which he ranged on the slab. As he had often parched and roasted nuts, he placed his doughy lumps in the embers where they hissed a little before giving off a most savoury aroma. He was engrossed in doing this when Agaratz returned. A smell of baking dough hung in the air. Urrell’s activity gripped Agaratz’s attention. No cat watched a fledgling more keenly than Agaratz followed Urrell’s demonstration of how he had ground the grain and mixed it with water before baking the result. He pulled a lump out of the fire and tossed it from hand to hand, blowing on it till it cooled enough to be broken open, and gave half to Agaratz.
