On Wings of Wyverns Tidbits

Time for some more of my "tidbits". This time it's for "On WIngs of Wyverns," in case you can't tell from the title of the post.
So, The first one is that Clara has a little hideaway inside a bush that is sort of hollow in the middle. Well, outside Foster City Rec, there's some trees and when you climb up in them, the branches strecth over you in a sort of canopy and it's hollow in the middle, leaving you free to scramble around on the branches. So, that's where the bush came from. I just took the tree and shrunk it down to shrub form.
Oh, and when the Emperor finds her hiding in the bush, at first I had him be really mad. But Ellen and Nicole told me it would make him seem more evil if I had him PRETEND to be nice, while really being very sinister underneath. So, I did that, but I'm not sure how good a job I did. Hmmm... that's something else I need to work on.
And when CLara's at the nesting grounds, I mention that the ground's covered in rocks. I don't know if you've ever tried to walk cross ground like that, but even if you have good balance, it's hazardous. You never know if one of the rocks is loose, and it's easy to have your foothold suddenly slip out from under you. Granted, it's not quite as bad as trying to walk across river rocks that are covered in slime, but still...
And how would it take something as big as wyverns hatch? I have the wyverns coming out of their shells pretty quickly, but some birds take a very long time to hatch. Well, my excuse is that wyverns, dragons, ex, spend a long time in their shell developing, so when it's time to come out, they have to leave their shell quickly to avoid suffocating. And when do these guys learn to fly, huh? Well, I tend to have my dragon/wyvern species learn to fly rather quickly to move the story along. Hatch small, grow fast.
Ooh, cooking food over a fire. Have you ever tried it? I don't mean marshmallows. I mean REAL food (but marshmallows are good). I did it with a hot dog once. The problem was that when we speared it on the end of a stick, it would break in half and fall into the ashes of the fire. I was the only person that didn't end up dropping mine in the end. And it DID taste like smoke. But a good kind of smoke, if that makes any sense.
Ah, starting a fire without a lighter or matches. Now that's hard. Flint is hard enough, but if you don't even have that... I tried that once too. All kids have tried rubbing two sticks together. Well, that doesn't work. We made a sort of bow and spun a branch back in forth against another piece of wood. We got smoke, but not a fire. Oh, but we did start a fire with a gun once. At a camp, we were going to have a campfire, but we were too lazy to get our matches. So the guy took out his gun, emptied the gun powder from one of the bullets onto a piece of paper, and shot it with a blank. It smoked for a very long time, then finally it caught flame.
How about nerves? Ever spoken in front of a big group, like Clara has to do near the end? Well, I've had to play a couple solos in band, and sitting there before the concert can be pretty nervewracking. And the weird part is, sometimes I"m not nervous at all, but I'm still shaking. Stupid shiver reflex. It makes it really hard to sound good on the flute...