It took me several days to reach a small farming village, I almost ran out of water but thankfully it rained and I still have water purification tablets in my SERE kit. With my night vision I could see the houses of a homestead first, over this time of walking I didn’t encounter any more travellers and it gave me a lot of time to think about how I was going to integrate myself into their community.
Approaching at night is a complete no go, I’ll have to wait until morning. The night makes it easier for attacks so people are more naturally wary when a stranger knocks on their door during the night. After introducing myself I’ll set up camp or move into a vacant home that they hopefully will give me, and I will then assist them in their daily chores like gathering wood, farming, and hunting.
This will give me a value in their society while I learn their language and make them more willing to teach me. I assume, which I shouldn’t, that as a rural farming village they’ll have people going between villages to communicate and share supplies, from that I can acquire equipment, gear, and information from the wider world.
The sun starts to rise and the villagers begin filtering out of their houses to begin work, there is only a small amount of houses around fifty or so. I begin crawling out of the forest line from my observation post backwards into the forest to make my arrival appear more natural. As opposed to emerging from the treeline looking like a hostile force. Trekking from the road and towards the centre of the village I draw a few looks from the people working the field, I don’t disturb them from their job and I continue into the village to stop someone that looks not as busy.
While most of the men are working in the fields it’s mainly women left in the village to do odd jobs such as drawing water from the well, sewing, looking after children and other miscellaneous but important work. The weather is fair and it looks like it’ll begin to turn into a bright and sunny day. Temperatures are warming up and it didn’t get too cold during the nights so I can safely assume we are in the warmer part of the year.
It was still early into the day and not everyone else had appeared to start repairing and producing more of their clothes and equipment. The few that are here share a few worried glances at each other as I stop before them, reaching into my pocket I take out the rudimentary map. I move into a kneeling position and present the map to the group, with my other free hand I point down towards the ground and exaggerate a shrug before circling the entire map with my finger.
The women begin to talk briefly before one shuffles a little closer and points at a location on it, I nod to her and take a look at the map again. The roads on the map are not to scale or accurate, the little village I’m at isn’t even on this map. Finding the closest landmark reference point I use my finger’s width to work out a distance so I can easily find the position she pointed to. Three finger widths, index, middle, and ring, east from a waterfall. In comparison to the rest of the map it appears I’m on the fringe roads of these peoples' territory, on the vast edge of civilization where nothing exists to the north.
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The next form of communication is going to be more difficult than the last one of simply asking where the fuck I am. I gesture wildly to all the houses and scratch my chin and then I pretend to pull on an invisible beard. They shared confused glances with each other and muttered between themselves before miming back hesitantly a shaving gesture, shaking my head. I take a quick few seconds to think of another method. I point to several houses, then myself and then I mime sleeping to them. Once more they share worried expressions with one another, before I can decide on another method to try and communicate I notice a small crowd has formed to watch my interaction with the tailors.
A man from behind the crowd pushes through and approaches one of the women, he gives me a side-long glance before talking to her where they share a quick and hushed conversation taking several glances at me. I approach them, slowly and taking a non-aggressive stance. I point to a house, then myself, and then mime sleeping again. He speaks loudly at me, pointing several times to the house.
He doesn’t seem to want me sleeping in that house in particular, I use one of my hands to point at myself and then gesture anywhere and he seems to calm down very quickly, a look of realisation passes through his face before signing back my ‘anywhere’ mime. Which I nod to and then he visibly sighs with relief, he walks over to the crowd and says something loudly before gesturing to me to follow him and I comply.
The crowd quickly disperses and my guide and I weave in between people trying to get to wherever he’s leading me. He talks a few times but he must see the confusion on my face and quickly gives up. We head towards the other edge of the hamlet and a little away from the rest of the houses he stops outside a lone slightly decrepit small house.
He slaps me shoulder and gestures to me before saying something, he quickly stops himself before miming sleeping and then counts on his fingers. He’s trying to work out how long I’ll be staying, it’ll be best if I’m straight forward with him so he can tell the others. I slowly clench and open my hand enough times for him to stop counting and see that I’m here to stay, he looks a little annoyed but I then go to mime shooting with a bow, cutting wood, and farmwork. He shrugs and sighs before walking back the way we came and I enter the small run down house.
While the structure is entirely made out of wood, the roofing is thatched. The wood walls are thin, and I see multiple doors while standing inside the biggest is an ill fitting barn door. There is a second floor but it leads up to a loft that overlooks the rest of the ground floor. This building wouldn’t last five minutes in a firefight, it has no concealment value other than from the naked eye and overall ranks very low in buildings I want to be in when the Enemy appears, and it smells bad.
The floor is dirt but I actually like that. Looking at the barn doors again, if I can find a way to replenish my power supply I could try and move my exo-suit into here, if it crouched through the barn door. I take a few more minutes to stand and look at the interior and plan how I want to organise my new shit base.