Salient

Word of the Day Thursday, March 11, 2010

salient

\SAY-lee-unt; SAYL-yunt\ , adjective;

1. Shooting out or up; projecting.
2. Forcing itself on the attention; prominent; conspicuous; noticeable.
3. Leaping; springing; jumping.

noun:
1. An outwardly projecting part of a fortification, trench system, or line of defense.
2. A projecting angle or part.

Eric huddled in his hut with his head buried in his arms. All he knew was that he had been captured originally six months prior, and they hadn't killed him.

He kept expecting to be liquidated, like all the rest of the humans they came across, but they didn't. He had begged and pleaded, yelling from inside his cage until he had lost his voice. Then he had lost consciousness and had woke up outside, in the same eery rock formation filled forest where they had found him.

He didn't remember how he had escaped, but he must have. He had quickly melted into the landscape hiding as best as he could. He soon ran into all the same obstacles that he had been faced with before, where to find shelter, where to find food and water, and how to keep himself undetected and safe from all the horrifying creatures that were out there with him in the rock forest.

It seemed like every day there were new challenges to every miniscule bit of progress that he had made the day before. Part of his shelter had collapsed or washed away, or his food supply missing. He remembered spending four straight days devising a contraption to collect a bunch of edible fruits that were hanging in an salient, but out of reach, branch of a tree, after a swarm of ants had devoured a couple of fig-like fruits he had saved.

All the while trying to keep on the run from the aliens. Although it seemed like they had lost the furor with which they were pursuing him. Days would go by and all he would hear would be a group of them marching past through the bushes hissing and clicking at one another.

However, the thing that he found the most disconcerting was the fact that the panther-like creatures that had stalked him the entire time he had been on the run previously had not made an appearance yet. They were incredibly proficient predators, but not this stealthy.

He couldn't quite put his finger on what was not right about his current situation, even though everything about it was not right. All he knew was that before he had been out right terrified. This time he was uneasy, and out right terrified.