We silently walk back to camp hope. I’d like to think that we are taking things slowly to ensure that we don’t make a sound or leave tracks for whatever rules these parts to follow, but realistically it might be more the fact we are looking up to having to discuss our findings with the others.

The best situation would be coming back to our traps tomorrow and finding whatever ambush predator haunts these lands stuck in them or even dead.

We will have to change our plans and set out with the three of us. Two to keep watch while the third creates the traps.

We would plan to litter those parts of the woods with traps, hoping to catch what is there before we are forced to go in to replenish our water supplies. If we don’t trap it, we would need to send in a large group in one go to fetch enough water until a hunting party can kill it, which would be risky and time-consuming.

And this is just the first danger we have come across.

Safe to say that once we report this to the others, none of us will be allowed to have a full nights rest tonight, between keeping watch and building some basic defenses.

Naturally, we knew it would be dangerous. But is it too much to hope for a large lumbering predator we could riddle with arrows before giving the final blow in a heroic battle after which we could safely claim these lands?

Now we are in a face-off between us and an unknown, neither party knowing what the other can do. Our traps might kill it, it might sneak in and kill us in our sleep.

The first thing we do when we reach camp is to report to Ethan.

Sarah tells him about the traps she has set and that we never heard nor saw any animal, not even just tracks. He naturally agrees with our assessment and immediately calls for a first meeting.

All the other families were done with setting up their parts of camp and had started with some basic camp necessities and fire pits and are now setting up some quality of life improvements.

The Stallwar have started digging a ditch surrounding our campsite, which would hopefully slow down a predator trying to enter the camp. The Fogg are checking the maps that the scouts had provided us with and updating what needs updating.

We immediately call a meeting. With glee, I realize this counts as updating Jason, saving me from the risk of conversation with him.

Even though people are quick to leave their monotonous manual tasks that they were doing. It still takes time before everyone is gathered.

While people are gathering, I take time to survey camp. I had been gone for over three hours total, and with such a group of experienced and dedicated people, a lot has been done.

First The tents are set in a semi-circular pattern, all entrances facing the central fire pit.

Behind the tents, a circle of single logs has been made around them under which the back end of the tents are stuffed. This both keeps the tents outside steady as well as make it impossible for anything to crawl under it.

Around the central fire pit, an area has been completely cleared of any plant or bush. This is for multiple reasons. We want to keep bugs out, we want to have a clear line of view, and we want to optimize workspace in the safety of our camp.

Outside of the ring of logs, people have started to dig a shallow ditch. These three lines of defense, together with a night watch, would hopefully keep us defended throughout the coming night.

Sarah, being the one who experienced the woods the longest, is going to be our designated speaker who will inform the rest of her findings. After that, most likely, Jason will take over and organize any changes that need to be made to the schedule or our report back.

Never having talked in such a meeting nor even been present in one, I can tell Sarah is nervous. It helps that she knows what she needs to say, and nobody expects her to say anything more than the bare necessity.

A sure way to tell that she is nervous is that it barely takes her five minutes to rush through both her experience in the woods, the traps she has set and why and her conjectures on what is out there. It almost takes her audience longer to digest her words than it took her to say them.

After a minute or two of silence, Jason, as was expected, takes over and summarizes things. I realize while he is doing so that by summarizing, he is implicitly taking over command. I am sure Sarah is just relieved, and most will be happy not to have to think about what her words will mean, but I also need to think of Williams instructions to me.

I can’t let Jason become the sole leader of our new establishment, I don’t think I would live that down when it gets out.

So in the brief period after the summary, I take over and add my own observations. To those without any knowledge on the political undertones, I am sure that it may seem that I am just expounding on Sarah's statements, but both Jason and I know otherwise. I am using my first-hand knowledge to inject myself into a leadership role, as once I start talking, I can easily switch to ask specific people on their takes.

Just as summarizing previous statements indicates a role of leadership, so too does the handing out of speaking assignments have that effect. I first ask the Stallwar family elder, Michael, as he is the most experienced of us all, how he thinks we should hunt something like this.

While Michael is answering an expected Stallwar answer, sending a large hunting party once the second group has joined us but send a large group to fetch water today, I glance over at Jason.

Expecting him to look annoyed or any other negative emotion, I am surprised to see him smiling back. I hope that means he would expect our leadership of the new town to follow the example set by our predecessors in Aprait and that Williams worry was for nothing.

After everything is said and done, we agree that each family has a task. The Stallwar will be the ones to go get water. The Fogg will continue upgrading camp as well as protecting what is here, and us Foggs will set more traps surrounding field as well as scout the other directions. You could almost forget that we have now only scouted the south towards our water source and our west from which we came.

The three of us plan to walk North for about two hours, setting a few traps along the way and then half-circle around camp until we are on the path of the water carriers and then head back.

Luckily, walking north, we see clear signs of a multitude of beasts. We clearly see markings off both bears and deer, yes I can differentiate between them much better now that I don’t have the old man looking over my shoulder.

We see tracks and pathways that are being used by boars and rabbits. Overall, this is what you would expect of a wooded area. We set a few snare traps for the rabbits so we can study them and a single deadfall trap for anything more substantial before continuing on.

A few times during our trapping, we came across a fresh trail of a predator, and each time we stopped to carefully lay out some traps. Most animals habitually follow pathways they have traveled in the past, and we can use that for our traps.

It took us until dusk to finally reach the route that our water-carriers had followed, and they would long be back at camp before we got there. We had left plenty of traps and logged which beasts we would expect to rule over these areas.

Getting back to camp, we arrive too late to provide any input on the division of the night-watch, and we end up getting the dreaded middle watch. That means we would have to sleep a little, wake up, and then get some more sleep.

We agree that Sarah and Ethan will immediately get some sleep while I get together with Jason and our Stallwar contemporary David and discuss what we will include in the report to send to Aprait tomorrow.

It doesn’t take long to agree that the report tomorrow should include something about the ambush predator between us and the water source, but that everything else is going according to plan and the second wave can head out.

With that done, I head to my tent and try to get as much sleep as possible before it would be my turn to take watch.