Elijah knelt by the edge of the stream, his head submerged in the water.  After a long while, he pulled his head out with a violent jerk, spraying water in a large arc and sucking in a deep breath.  Then he plunged his head back into the stream.  After several repetitions, he fell back against a rock and lay there catching his breath.<br/><br/>After a few minutes, he pulled his sack over and began rooting around in it for some supplies.  He pulled out a vial labeled "Poison - Do not drink!".  Inside was months of work milking the scorpions from the far beach.  It was not without danger and he had been stung several times, to the point where he was nearly immune to the stuff, now.  The poison itself was a mild paralytic.  Elijah remembered the first time he had been surprised and stung by one or the scorpions.  The neurotoxin sent a signal to his muscles which caused them to go rigid.  Certainly if he had been a small animal, the scorpion would have had a good dinner, however given his relative size, all the scorpion did after the sting was to escape in the opposite direction.  An hour or so later, during which he watched the clouds go by, his muscles released enough to allow him to stagger back to camp, where a good night's sleep cleared the rest from his system.<br/><br/>Elijah pulled out a hollow tube which he used as a primitive blowgun and several pieces of seagull bone.  The bones had been sharpened into tiny spikes and had a small reservoir due to the bones being hollow.  Carefully opening the vial, he dipped one of the spikes into the viscous liquid and slid it into the end of the blowgun.  He sealed the vial again and replaced it in his sack.  He was giving the blowgun one last check, when suddenly he heard a branch snap behind him.  Elijah spun and fired the blowgun without thinking, realizing at the last moment that it was Maddi coming through the trees.