I didn’t sleep well. Rain drops jerked me awake now and then, the wind sometimes blew in. But I slept. The heavy rain luckily didn’t last long, most of the night just a drizzle, lasting into the morning. A gloomy, grey morning, sun stuck behind the clouds, all I could say was that it was after sunrise.

Well, I had my breakfast and survived a quick trip out to go to the toilet and have a drink. Then I was back to watching the rain from my room. Still small, leaky, ground barely more comfortable than sitting in the crevice, but it was something I’d made. Something I could make better. The start, not the end.

Unlike the first time it rained, I didn’t really nap, not stuck with a door right in front of my face. Passed the time watching the rain fall, just loud enough to cover up the idle thoughts that bubbled up. In here, the rain sounded louder hitting the leaves, then made a little waterfall off the end.

So nice.

Around midday, the clouds broke up, drizzle lightening until it stopped altogether. I shuffled out and, after a good stretch, went back to my routine. No more rain to distract me from thinking the thoughts I shouldn’t.

Firewood and straw pretty much stayed dry, the pods on the pea bush I’d planted were growing nicely, maybe halfway done, stocked up on some more food. The fire pit was unfortunately flooded, the charcoal-y remains I’d covered up soaked, but the little stone coffin I’d made for my fire-starting sticks had kept the rain off them.

As for the reeds, it looked like the water was doing a great job of breaking down the stems. Not much came off on its own, but just poking around was enough for pieces to fall off, washed away by the stream. I couldn’t remember how long the podcast had said jute took, but I was happy to give these another day or two. The whole point was the threads didn’t break down in water, so, the longer I left it, the easier it’d be for me.

Checks over, I stopped for lunch, then back to the routine, ending the day by starting on the last wall for the room.

A simple day. So was the next one, and the next one. Wake up, check on everything, gather a bit more, make a fire. One foot in front of the other.

Then finally the reeds seemed ready to “harvest”, floppy when I poked them.

So I could focus, I finished the rest of my routine first, coming back early afternoon. The podcast hadn’t really gone into detail how the threads were taken out. Well, I pulled the reeds out of the water and tried stripping the first one. The stem fell apart easily enough, leaving behind the bundle of threads, but it was tedious, so much to pick off. I could sort of slide it through my hand to “brush” it, but I didn’t want to get a cut or rope burn from doing it—if only I had an actual brush.

In the end, the best I could do was find a split stick, sliding the threads through. That worked well… until the stick broke. But it worked well enough that I found a couple more sticks to split myself and finished the batch of reeds off with those.

From a stem about as thick as my thumb to a bundle of threads thin as a shoelace, maybe smaller once they dried out.

I hadn’t exactly counted, but guessed I’d cut something like thirty reeds, maybe closer to forty, so the pile of threads wasn’t that impressive. That was fine, I had plenty of time to collect more reeds. For now, I hung the threads over a branch to dry.

Too late to go cut some more reeds, I sat down by the fire pit, catching my breath. Hadn’t really stopped since having lunch. But not for long, important to keep moving. Slow was fine, but keep moving, don’t stop.

Shuffling around, I prepared for my evening fire and thought about what to do with the threads. I wasn’t sure if there was something special about a spinning wheel or if it just, like, braided threads into string. As far as I knew, rope was also just braided string. Hopefully.

Once I made rope, I thought, replacing the vines would be best before they broke apart. Wouldn’t want my room to collapse. Or maybe use the rope to make it easier to gather more reeds, tying them into bundles. Keep some rope around to use first.

The next day, I knew what I wanted to do, but my routine came first. That involved checking on the pea plant I’d grown from a sprout. The pods had come along, looking pretty much ready to eat—eight days based on my carved calendar. All of the first pea plants I’d picked from had already grown new pods, so eight days seemed about right.

However, I wanted to leave them longer, make sure the peas were ready to grow. I couldn’t remember how many sprouts I’d planted here, but it was more than one and only one had grown.

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After that “distraction”, I finished up my routine without issue and checked on the thread bundle. Spread out thinly, they managed to dry out overnight, bits of stem flaking off as I brushed them. Not wanting to scratch up my hands, I switched to use a stick to brush down and scrape off those bits.

Looking at the hanging thread, it still didn’t feel real that I’d actually taken this stuff out of a plant, actually like real thread. Not as thin as thread for sewing, but thinner than yarn.

Wanting to focus, I had an early lunch before coming back to the thread, ready to braid. A small help, I had a lot of experience braiding hair. Not just with three groups either. Still, I didn’t want it to take forever, so I wasn’t going to use single strands.

I fumbled a bit tying the one end, then split the threads into three groups and started braiding. It was a bit awkward since, well, hair was attached to a scalp while these threads weren’t. Once I had some done, I could at least hold it between my knees and, later on, keep the end under my foot. Otherwise, it was easier since it didn’t wriggle or complain about how long it was taking even though she was the one who asked me to do it in the first place.

Not that I held on to any grudges.

Over, under, outside to the middle, over and over, the repetitive task calming. Different to the way weaving was. This was something familiar to me, bringing back memories, bringing out a soft smile.

I hadn’t hated that life. Looking after the other children had given me a purpose, something to distract me from hating the rest of my life. I didn’t have to think about why my parents abandoned me. Why no one adopted me, even though I was put up as a baby. Why other children at school would ask me why I smelled like curry, even though I never ate anything like that, the orphanage mostly serving roasts and other stuff that could be cooked in bulk.

Instead, I could sit there every morning and braid Hatty’s hair, brush Becky’s into a ponytail, all those little moments filling up the day.

And now I could braid the reed threads and forget all my troubles. Over, under, fingers sliding along, the thread really feeling like fabric, especially the part I’d already done. Like twine, but smoother. Little by little, I worked along the thread that was about as long as me, ending with something that came up to my shoulders.

Tying the other end, I felt a rush of accomplishment. My first rope. Well, it was closer to twine than rope, but I didn’t need rope for climbing. This would do.

Yes, this would do.

I took down some more threads and started on the next one. No rush, steady progress. Even if it wasn’t something I messed up once I was in the rhythm, I didn’t want to get to the end and realise I’d messed up and have to undo a bunch, then redo it. I didn’t know what would happen if I started going backwards and I didn’t want to find out. So I carefully braided, mind wandering as my hands did what they knew.

By evening, I had three ropes. The decision I’d come to was to use them to gather more reeds. If I wanted to do more “building”, then I would need more rope. It didn’t take that long to prepare it, but it also didn’t hurt to have spare around, especially if something urgent came up.

So that was what I did the next day after an early lunch.

Sharp stone in hand, ropes over my shoulder, I went downstream. Not wanting to cut all the closest reeds, I followed the stream farther than I had before. Easy to do since I wasn’t inspecting all the plants as I went. A quick pace, helped by the slope, and I reached a place where a third stream joined on, pretty much making it into a river.

The problem with that was that the stream joined on the same side as me, leaving me stuck. I considered trying to wade across the smaller stream, but that seemed like a not small risk. If I twisted my ankle—or worse—then it would be a nightmare getting back up to camp.

For today, I settled on going back up and cutting down the first patches of reeds I saw. Besides, the responsible harvester I was, I did plan on re-seeding it. The reed seeds I had sowed up near the camp had already grown pretty tall and that was after just a week or so.

That said, with my ropes, I cut down the first patch and could carry it in one hand. Somewhere between twenty and thirty reeds. Not quite as much as before, but I had two hands, so I could easily bring back more than last time.

A few more patches of reeds were harvested on my climb back to the camp. It was great: I could carry the bundles under my or on my shoulders or stack them up in front, sort of cradling them. No aching muscles from needing to keep the same position for the whole trip. Not to mention, I could put them down and pick them up again in a second.

Rope was amazing.

Back at camp, I didn’t waste any time getting them into the water. Not enough space, I had to stack them, putting rocks on top to weigh them down, fairly buoyant. When it came to the seeds, the rope unfortunately couldn’t help. Maybe I could try making bags at some point.

Well, nothing else for it, I carried them down in a couple trips, expanding where I’d planted the last reed seeds. It would be nice once they all made seeds, no need to go so far. My little farm.

Thinking of it like that, coming back up to the camp, the wheat I’d planted was very noticeable. It felt like I’d only planted it yesterday, but it had been eight days according to my calendar.

A lot of the other things had come up too. The carrots had grown, flowered, and made a bunch of seeds. The onions grew super fast, looking full-grown after only a week. Again, though, I left them to flower and make seeds. My plan right now was to try and grow as much as I ate, sowing extra seeds nearby in case something went wrong with my farms.

Everything sort of came into focus as I was thinking about that. I’d been here for twenty-four days according to my calendar. It might have looked like all I had managed to do was make a shoddy room and pile up some rocks, but I was growing my own food, making my own rope. Firewood was the only thing I still relied on the forest for, but the reeds weren’t too thin and the wheat straw made good kindling, so maybe I could dry and burn those eventually.

Plans for the future.