The Index -|-
With a crash, two melon-sized rocks dropped the ground, and one of them shattered into many shards.
“Hey, Pfftul, how did you get those rocks so round?” asked Kpleeb holding up his bloody hands. His left pinky-finger angled suspiciously away from the others.
“You are such a rube, Kpleeb.” Pfftul shook his head with disgust. He leaned over and arrogantly rolled two of his rocks together with a supremely satisfying clunk. His rocks had the smoothest edges on the tundra, or at least the parts of the tundra he knew about. “Kpleeb, these beauties have eight sides. Count em. EIGHT!” Spittle flew from Pfftul’s yapping maw and spattered on the beautiful stones.
“Urrgh. You know I cannot count past six. Where did you learn such magical ways, Pfftul?” Kpleeb was amazed at Pfftul’s rock carving skill, but he also knew that Pfftul would never compete with his skill of attracting the cavewomen. It was not much, but there was always some happiness in life if one just looked for it.
“I have been working for weeks to get one with nine-sides, and I’m almost there. Here let me help you grasp the basics.” Pfftul pulled out a hand-sized rock with a sharp edge and began to laboriously bash the edge of a rough stone. Shards flaked off and spat themselves all over the the frontal lobes of the two cavemen. Three cavemen at the next stone outcropping were grunting back and forth about something to do with ideal stick shapes for smacking wildebeests.
After many minutes of back-breaking work, Pfftul had turned the roughly five-sided block into a six-sided thing of beauty. He cracked his back slowly and mopped the sweat off of his brown with a nettle branch. “See what I did there, Kpleeb? Now you try it. By the way, we need to get the CCUG (Caveman Clothing User Group) to come up with a more absorbent and less itchy, sweat rag.
Kpleeb retrieved another rock, this one made of limestone and lifted his hand to begin carving. With the first tap, the carving tool shattered. Kpleeb wailed and in a fit threw the remaining chunk. It ricocheted off the skull of Kenthid, and immediately her greatly muscled legs launched her off of the rock where she had been sitting. She picked up her wildebeest slapping stick and waved it around the cave angrily.
“Do you know what this user group needs?” she shouted, her thick moustache waving and spittle flying from her maw. “It needs LIMITS on WHO can ATTEND! No one joins unless they have a craftscaveman certification!” She emphasized her words with slaps on the wall, and the stick’s end began to crack. She stopped turning and huffed in frustration. “You made me break my wildebeest slapping stick version three-point-five! Arrrgghh!!”
“A-a-and… urh, we can have a secret handshake!” said Foopril. One could see the excitement in his beady eyes. His hairy fingers started to twist in complex motions as he worked on his idea.
“Shut up Foopril!” Kenthid said while glaring at Kpleeb. She pointed toward the dark and cold cave entrance. “Get out, Kpleeb. You can attend again when you are certified.” She turned her back and sat down.
Kpleeb began to sob and turned towards the entrance. As he did, Pfftul held out the nettle branch.
“Take this as a token of my friendship until you rejoin the group.” He then turned and bent over his eight-sided rock and studiously ignored Kpleeb.
“Goodbye, my friend,” said Kpleeb under his breath as he sadly turned and walked out onto the frozen tundra.
