At last, at long last, I felt like I could grow. That belief helped me get up in the morning and get to work.

I tended to all the chores I’d made for myself, had an early lunch, then carried on braiding the reed threads. Three already done yesterday, I fell into the rhythm easily, listening to the stream flow, birds tweet, wind at times whistling, rustling the leaves of the tree I sat under.

Now and then, an insect buzzed close to me, but they were skittish. All the creatures here seemed to be. I still hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of the squirrel-like things, only saw birds that were high up in trees or darting in for a snack, flying away right after. There hadn’t been any fish in the stream that I’d seen, maybe camouflaged or hiding among the reeds and other plants. The stream was small, though. If I went farther down than where the third stream joined, where it looked like a river, maybe there were fish there.

Well, it didn’t matter to me if there were fish. I was happy being vegan. Eating stuff that was already killed and butchered was one thing, but doing it myself… just the thought made me feel queasy. Even if I did end up going to a village, who knew if I would be able to eat meat again.

Idle thoughts while my hands moved without needing to think.

The plan I’d come up with, I made one more not-really-that-thick rope, then switched to even thinner ropes, more like twine. I wanted to use them to secure my room, so they didn’t need to be thick. The notches of the branches kept it pretty stable and just needed something to make sure they didn’t slip if they were knocked.

It wasn’t any faster making twine, but it meant the threads I had would go further. Four more days or so until my next batch of threads were ready. By evening, I had the fourth rope and then four lengths of twine. Good progress.

With that, I was ready to devote tomorrow to replacing the vines I’d used for my room. However, when tomorrow came, I ended up with another task to do first.

Checking on the pea pods for the bush I’d grown, they were much darker, a couple popped open—just what I was waiting for. Picking the mature ones, I popped them open and collected the peas.

Rather than soak them until they sprouted first, I just buried them under nearby trees, not wanting them to compete, and heavily watered them. I hadn’t kept track the first time, but guessed it had been like two weeks before they grew enough to flower. I had kept track of how long the pods took to grow, though, which was about a week. Pick them earlier for smaller, sweeter peas; later for bigger, bitterer peas.

That wasn’t the end of my farming, the wheat I was growing looked ready to harvest. Not all the wheat had big kernels, so I split them up into roasting and sowing piles as I cut them down. No rush, I only picked three of the twenty-odd wheat for sowing, their kernels noticeably bigger than the others. That meant some more digging to make room for the extra seeds, but it was still a small patch.

Since I’d already done all that, I checked on the carrot and onions patches too, finding ones that had made seeds and sowing those. It was pretty interesting. I didn’t know much about plant biology, but it was like the ones in the middle knew there wasn’t room, so didn’t flower—only the ones on the edge did.

I wondered if something similar went on with the wheat and peas, but couldn’t come up with anything that made sense. Well, the pods definitely dropped down, but the peas didn’t seem to want to grow close together. As for the wheat, the kernels seemed to get eaten a lot, but otherwise they stayed “ripe”?

Thinking really wasn’t my strength.

It didn’t matter too much, so I didn’t linger on those thoughts. Once I finished farming, I started replacing the vines on my room with the twine, which wasn’t as easy as taking the vine off and putting the twine on.

No, the first step was to strip the leaves off the roof and take out the loose sticks, then I hacked at the vines holding the other sticks onto the roof. Looking at the pile, I sighed. Going backwards really did suck.

I sucked it up, kept going. With all that off, I cut through the vines holding the frame tight one at a time, tying the twine around the “joints”. When I got back to the roof, it was actually harder, the twine thinner than the vine, so the gap between the sticks wasn’t as big as I wanted it. More sticks made the roof heavier and not any more waterproof. After some fiddling, I ended up snapping some sticks into small pieces to space out the sticks on the roof.

That took up most of my afternoon, a lot of that spent fretting over the knots and pulling them tight, but the result was something that, well, would hopefully last a long time. As long as I could make a good roof, it wouldn’t get weathered.

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Just like that, I collapsed in a sigh, how to make the roof something I still hadn’t solved.

Before I could get too depressed, I walked over to where I hung the threads and grabbed some more. Needed two more lengths of twine to finish the roof’s base. So I braided, focusing on that, pushing away the thoughts that wanted to drag me down.

If I had time for that, I had time to think of solutions.

I kept going into the evening, braiding while I waited for the carrots to roast, but couldn’t see well enough to tie knots. A job for tomorrow.

Night fell and I slept, curled up in the crevice of a rocky outcrop, but I’d soon have somewhere better to sleep… hopefully.

After my morning routine, I finished off the roof’s base. Over lunch, I thought about what to do next, settling on braiding the rest of the threads—at least until I came up with something better.

So that was what I did. Sat under the tree, I braided more twine and my mind wandered. Thatching still seemed like the best idea to me. I had straw, I was making twine. The way I’d tied down the roof was fresh in my mind too.

Because the problem I had with tying the straw into bundles was that I had long threads, so it would have been a waste to use one per bundle, and I thought it would be fiddly cutting the threads into short strips and braiding them. I liked how I didn’t have to spend much time tying the ends with these long strips.

But with the roof, I just tied one stick after another, not cutting the twine. That would work with the straw, right? Like bunting with straw bundles all on the same string. I’d need a couple lengths of twine for each strip across the roof, and the roof would need, like, three strips, and more than one layer would be best for making it waterproof….

Trying to keep all that in my head, I came up with twelve lengths of twine to start with. A few more just in case. Looking at the hanging threads I had left, I guessed I needed the next batch to do it. Not really a problem, another day or two until I could start processing all of it, or, no, better to use up all the thread I had first. The next batch of reeds were more clumped up, so probably needed more time.

I could also get more wheat to pass a day. With my ropes, I reckoned I could bring back, like, four times as much per trip. Plenty of straw to thatch the roof and maybe weave into the walls. Oh, I needed to finish the last wall too. The roof was more important, but the wall wouldn’t be a waste of time either if I ran out of other things to do.

This was great. Perfect. A whole list of chores. Even if it rained for a week straight, I could snuggle up and braid.

But it wasn’t raining, so I worked on everything else.

I spent the rest of the day braiding and spent the next day braiding too. My pace slowed, though, fingers kinda raw from all the fiddling. Not enough to stop me, but I started taking breaks to rest my fingers. Sorted through the straw and went down to where I was growing the reeds, happy to see the first ones I’d planted were growing the pine cones. I could “farm” them too.

After a sleep, my hands felt a lot better. Still, I tried not to overdo it, braiding slower and taking breaks to soak my hands in the cool water a little downstream.

Sky growing darker, wind colder, I finished up the eleventh twine, hanging it next to the others. There wasn’t much point starting another one, I thought. Even if I wanted to, though, there wasn’t much thread hanging there.

“Guess I can see if the reeds are ready tomorrow,” I muttered to myself. More and more, these days, my thoughts sometimes slipped out—as if my voice was afraid of dying.

In the morning, I got through the essentials, then skipped my usual chores to check on the reeds. The extra day seemed like enough to get them how the first batch was. Still, there was so much to get through, I decided to only take out some at a time to strip. Probably would take me more than a day, so make my job tomorrow easier.

Enough food and firewood, I focused on gathering the thread, slow and steady. Knew what I was doing, so didn’t take me long to fall into a rhythm.

Come evening, I looked about half done, felt pretty done too. The reeds were obviously heavier after soaking up water, a lot more of a workout than braiding the thin threads.

That was nice in its own way. Easy to fall asleep.

Although my arms felt stiff when I woke up, I worked through it, not really aching. Slow and steady. It helped that the stem fell apart even easier. At the end of the day, I had a branch full of threads again, a pile of decomposing stem bits, and very tired arms. Couldn’t help but smile.

Another busy day, another good sleep.

After neglecting my chores for two days, I went back to my old routine in the morning, checking on the plants, foraging for more food. Slow and steady, my arms feeling heavy and stiff. Still, I couldn’t stop, so I went back to braiding in the afternoon.

Just one short for my roof, I didn’t push myself and only braided one length of twine. Once that was done, I fumbled through making an early fire and cooking, in the end not really finishing much earlier than a normal day.

I definitely needed to leave the reeds longer to soak and to try to find a better way to get the thread out.

The next day, I used my “free” time to work on the roof. Made a bundle of straw as big as I could hold with one hand, tie it up at the end, then do it again. It wasn’t as awkward as tying the sticks to the roof and something I could do sitting under the tree, so that was nice. Relaxing.

Quicker than braiding, I finished the first “strip” in half an hour or so. Not that I really had any sense of time any more, so who knew how long it actually was. Anyway, I finished it and, walking to my room, my heart beat harder and harder until I noticed it.

Was I really getting so excited over this?

Well, that was okay. This was the culmination of so much.

Like I was putting a tiara on a princess, I so carefully placed the strip across the roof, gently tied the loose ends to the frame. It only covered halfway across and about a third down, but there it was, my first bit of thatching.

Strip after strip, I spent the hours patching up more and more of the roof. It looked great. Every time I walked over to add another piece, I couldn’t stop smiling. Like a real house.

After another day, I had the second layer done. Although I didn’t know if that would be enough, I felt like another layer would be a waste, deciding to wait for a rainy day to see if it was needed.

Until then, it was perfect. Home.