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As she saw herself and Jondalar on the rocky beach of the re out of a nu into eue sense of her own destiny as a pivotal nexus of h a crucial transition A deep cold swept over her, she gasped, and, with a startled jerk, she was looking at a furrowed brow and a concerned face She shuddered to dispel an eerie sense of unreality

“Are you all right, Ayla?”

“Yes Yes, I’m fine”

An unaccountable chill had raised gooseflesh and the hair on the back of his neck He felt a strong urge to protect her, but he didn’t knohat threatened It lasted only an instant, and he tried to shrug it off, but uneasiness lingered

“I think the weather is about to change,” he said “I felt a cold wind” They both looked up at the clear blue sky unmarked by clouds

“It’s the season for thunderstorms—they can blow up fast”

He nodded, and then, to grasp at substance, he turned the subject back to the hard practicalities of tool

“What is your next step, Ayla?”

The woman bent back to her task With careful concentration, she flaked off five ed ovals of flint, and after a final examination of the butt of stone to see if one ht be detached, she threw it aside

She turned then to the six flakes of gray flint and picked up the thinnest of them With a se, blunting it for a back and shaping a point at the narrow end opposite the bulge made by the impact of percussion When she was satisfied, she held it out to Jondalar in the flat of her palm

He took it and inspected it carefully In cross section it was rather thick, but tapered to a thin, sharp cutting edge along its length It ide enough to be held in the hand comfortably, and the back was dulled so it would not cut the user In soht, but it was never intended to be hafted to shaft or handle It was a handheld knife, and froly efficient

Jondalar put it down and nodded to her to continue She picked up another thick stone flake, and, using the canine tooth of an animal, she chipped off fine splinters frohtly, enough to strengthen the edge so the sharp rounded end would not crush when used to scrape hair and grain from hides Ayla put it down and picked up another piece

She put a large s pressure with the pointed-tooth retoucher against the stone, she e, large enough to shave the end of a spear shaft to a point On a longer oval flake, using a similar technique, she made a tool which could be used to pierce holes in leather, or bore holes in wood, antler, or bone

Ayla didn’t knohat other kinds of tools she ht need, and she decided to leave the last two stone flakes as blanks for later Pushing the athered up the ends of the hide and carried it to the midden around the wall to shake it out Splinters of flint were sharp enough to cut even the toughest of bare feet He hadn’t said anything about her tools, but she noticed Jondalar turning theh to try them

“I’d like to use your lap cover,” he said

She gave it to hi his He spread the leather hide over his lap, then closed his eyes and thought about the stone, and what he would do with it Then he picked up one of the flint nodules he had brought to the site and inspected it

The hard siliceous mineral had been torn loose fro the cretaceous period It still bore traces of its origin in the chalky outer covering, though it had been disgorged with the raging flood through the narrow canyon upstrea onto the rocky beach Flint was thetools It was hard, and yet, due to its minute crystal structure, it could be worked; its shape was limited only by the skill of the knapper

Jondalar was looking for the distinctive characteristics of chalcedony flint, the purest and clearest Any stones with cracks or fissures he discarded, as well as those that , to his ear, flaws or inclusions He finally selected one