Unfortunately, the sudden onset of a torrential downpour prevents our hero from cooking the moa.
He would have to name his island, he thought, as he plucked the last ragged feathers from the first demon bird. He didn’t want a name that was merely descriptive, like, “Plane Crash Island” or “Poison Berry Rock,” and he definitely wouldn’t accept “Island of the Demon Birds”–it wasn’t their island, anymore; it was his. He needed a triumphant name, indicative of its new owner. Something like “Isle of Man,” but less familiar-sounding. He decided he could let the problem drop for now. He’d either be rescued before it mattered or be stranded long enough to give him time to think.
Instead, he refocused on the task of cooking his dinner. It’d been a long time since he’d last skinned a chicken on his grandparents’ farm, but he’d managed to get as far as cutting off the legs, removing what he hoped was the gizzard, hacking off the neck, and impaling the whole thing on a sturdy spit. The legs had looked like more of a challenge than they were, but pulling out the gizzard had involved being up to his armpit in more blood and viscera than he had thought a single creature should hold. He had vaguely remembered his grandfather explaining the incisions he needed to make before pulling out a bird’s neck, but his method had involved more blind stabs and a furious yanking than Gramps might have appreciated; he’d had to brace his feet against the bird’s body as he tugged at the neck taut. Combined with the awkward maneuvers involved in forcing an eight foot stake through the body cavity of a five hundred pound bird, the process had left his dinner coated in quite a lot of dirt. He supposed he wouldn’t be eating the skin.
Twice he had to hunt for new branches when the load of the bird’s torso snapped the mounts of his rotisserie. Even with the spit as a lever arm, it took all his strength to place the axle above the fireplace. When he lit the kindling, the dried leaves and twigs clinging to the sides of the carcass ignited.
A sudden onslaught of raindrops graciously extinguished the corpse. He looked up at the canopy and the darkening sky. More raindrops accepted his invitation and pelted his eyes while their friends put out the fire below his dinner. The trees shook under the growing downpour, and the gentle patter grew into a continuous roar. Sheets of water cleaned the remaining grit from his dinner, washed the blood from his clothes, and formed streams about his feet and extending seaward.
A blue flash illuminated his waterlogged meal so brightly that the image lingered in front of him long after the ensuing thunder rumbled past. A support sunk into the softening dirt, and the rotisserie tumbled onto the ground.
