D.A.B. day 10
Cleaning up
After the usual morning run to poop, check traps and collect materials and salt, we chop down a couple of trees for furniture. We have all the split logs for the loft, it's just installing and planeing that takes time. The sky isn't clear and it looks like it will rain, which will make it far more dangerous to move around and work down below, so better get this work done so we can work inside. We open the charcoal cylinder and it have been a good burn. There are bad pieces that will be reused in the next charcoal burn, but we fill baskets, and bring it up to our hut. Some kind of outdoor roofed storage area would be really handy, but we have limited space. Still, might as well do a small extension to the roof out over the porch. Just storing wood or charcoal there is a good idea, and we can build up those planters and use clay to better hide the hut. I also want to finish the damn furnace. But we refill and light the charcoal cylinder before we do a few clay runs and a slate run as I think about needing to make a blower and pipe, and make another of those rotary blower thingys. I would really like to have leather for a classic blower, but sturdy leaves should be good enough since it doesn't need to last for ages.
We try to camouflage the new blocking door to make it look more neutral, and it's a bit hazardous to work where the door is so we do most of it at the wide lookout area where the trail serpentine before continuing on to the hut. Daub is two or three parts clay, straw and fibrous dung from a grazing animal like a cow or dinosaur, so it is not a nice material to work in, and the nose clamps are wonderful as we stamp around and mix it. Then throw it on and smear it in to the waddle and wood with our hands. The smell will disappear but it's gross and almost like rubbing your hand on sandpaper too from all the clay. But it needs to be done. We're happy when we can call it done, clean up the area and we hurry down to creek puddles to wash of the stuff. I feel sorry for Reiley whose sense of smell is far better than mine, but she insisted she would help, and I don't mind helping her get clean even though we hardly linger. If this hadn't been Dinosaur planet, I wouldn't have minded some intimate moments in the surf on a private sandy beach, but our beach doesn't even really have sand.
The new blocking door needs to dry and be protected from rain until it is dry, but it looks quite good and like a fairly natural shrubbery extension of the cliff like a lot of other places on this green ridge. Sure, the greens will dry, but there's plenty of dry shrubbery too. Still far better than it was, and this one have hidden handles so we can use it when we leave even though we can't add the locking wedge. The blocking door will probably wear and have to be replaced, but we just have to accept that. Just like I can't have an alarm on it. I would like to have some kind of silent alarm system if someone removes it or moves along the path, but I've got no good idea how to make that. It will likely be an intelligent person doing that, and that person would likely look for traps or such things. Tricky issue.
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We climb up to the ridge and make a side track to the future high fields. We've found a surprisingly large area that will be good for several fields more than just a garden, without any terrace. It's not like we will be planting rice and need to keep the plants submerged in water, so the ground can slope a bit, which will help with drainage. I don't think erosion will be too bad, and we can plant as we clear. A local water source will be vital, so we will build a dam in a crevice and store a watering can and a large pot up here to water the plants and maybe simple gardening tools. We need to clear the ground from shrubbery, but we will leave a couple of trees on rocky outcrops for some shade and camouflage, plus they are on rocky outcrops. We will plant more berry bushes too as there already are a few. Then we'll see how much soil we need to carry up here, and the ground will be fertilized with diluted pee mixed with ash. Once finished we should have two fields about 10-15 meters by 25-30 meters, and a smaller 4 by 6 meter field. We have no idea if the soil will be good, and how the different plants will fare up here and they won't produce anything close to modern yields, so we just have to plant and see. It's likely we will need more fields or area in the future, and we could fit several small fields here, but there seem to be more places like this up here. We haven't really explored enough, and we should get up on that cliff to really get a better look around too.
One of the reasons we want to journey to Reiley's old camp is to try and get some of the plants. Neither me nor Reiley are knowledgable in agriculture or plants here, so any help would be good, and there was a plant they were going to use for bread. I would really really want to have a loaf of bread every now and then. There were also the beginning of a herb and spice garden, and I would really like more seasoning too. We're going to collect a few plants that Reiley's more sensitive sense of smell indicate might work, and try to dry it out and test sprinkle a bit on food.
It's kind of annoying that all this hard work might be for naught if we decide to make a life in the high valley, but not doing the work here is the worse idea, and we have time. A hidden fallback point isn't bad. Reiley honestly seems to love the terrain, the hut and the view, and that it feels more secure when it really isn't. We can obviously be attack and killed by a single sneaky person, but well, that will always be the case if we're two and don't even keep a watch. Someone camping with a bow or making a trap can quickly take us both out. I've already planned to make a bow, but Reiley have taken over that project. She already carry a home made bow and arrows, and every 'real woman' in her culture knows how to make weapons, shields and armour from wood, stone and leather. Hardened leather, lamellar or scale armour seems to be top of the line, but she have only seen a few bronze scale armours with matching helmets on her Queen's guards.
I can just imagine how damn badass - and admittedly sexy - a platoon of full kitted leather clad warrior women like Reiley would look.
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Pouring rain and lightning makes us return soaked to the hut. Well, we got quite a bit of work done, and I manage to take a noon reading of the sun up there before the thunderstorm. Since I use a plumb bob the height above the ground shouldn't matter much, and it was a good lesson for Reiley to count seconds to estimate distance to the lightning strike. I do it almost by instinct. Another project that will be fairly quick is to make a sundial at every work location, and they will be made for 26 hours. It doesn't really matter how many hours a day have as long as we use the same, but my watch still work, so it makes sense to make sundials with 26 hours. They will have errors since I need to get the angle right, and I don't know which exact angle that should be, but those small errors doesn't matter. The sundials are mostly to synchronize us if we work in different locations.
After a quick wash and clothes hung up to dry, the pre-heated kiln is filled with more pottery and lit up. With all the rain pouring down all our rain pots and water bottles are already filled, so I put in the blocker for the lower outlet so the overflow just flow down the cliff instead of gurgling from pot to pot in here. We need more pots, and quite a lot of pots will have a dedicated use. The pee and poop pot is two, and pot-in-pots, water storage and so are others, but also the pots we will use for soap making. Yes, I might be too careful, but we have and can make more pots. We have to make a porous pot firing for pot-in-pots and since I want to try that creek iron bacteria idea, and other things like a distillator to try and make alcohol from those sweet berries. Reiley is convinced that making a low alcohol drink from the sweet berries will be easy, and think it is weird that I don't really know how to produce alcohol. Sure, I can drink it, but I'm not that fond of beer or alcohol and I'm far more interested in other use for high grade alcohol, like wound disinfectant or molotov cocktails which actually might mean the difference between life-or-death. Getting drunk is just a waste of alcohol, and doing stupid shit like being careless high on a cliff, or just falling asleep in an unsafe spot, can easily kill us here.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
We just continue working as we talk and occasionally practice sign language. Some of those signs are too damn close and it will take time until I stop making mistakes.
It feels weird working in just small leather shorts that Reiley made from Tiola's shredded leather pants, but it is as it is as we don't want to damage the good nice clothes, and the 'shorts' that topless Reiley is wearing is literally a piece of leather where the front and back is tied together with leather strings at the sides. It looks sexy as hell, and Reiley is pleased that I find her sexy. Being topless or even completely naked isn't really considered sexy in her culture, as that is the natural state. Having and using pretty clothes are sexy and attractive.
Reiley have started to make soap. The filtered ash powder have been soaking in water and she decanters it and start using the low heat from the kiln to evaporate and concentrate the solution. Common sense say we have to be careful to not get it in our eyes, and it will probably smell, but once it's concentrated enough we will try to add it to low heated fat or coconut oil, and there is another pot with coconut oil heating up to concentrate it. We don't really know the exact ratios, but it seems logical that soap shouldn't be wet, and we can dilute with water if we need it, or use less, but we have to try in a couple of different mixes. We both assume it will be a lot of stirring and trying. It's hardly ideal to do it at the same time we do other things, but none of us wants to waste time or heat, and Reiley knows it can take a long time until the finished soap is fairly solid. And we both really really want a lot of soap.
It's interesting that Reiley's people soak white ash in lumps, dry them, then burned them in a form of kiln and then make a type of cement from the lumps by crushing them with water and sand. Along with fired mud bricks it's how they build their better houses. I just need to remember to not do the mixing or applying with hands as I'll apparently will get nasty 'ash cement sores'. I assume that is a form of chemical burn or something, but that is another concept she have no word for. In Reiley's former camp they had started to build with wood ash cement and bricks, and finished a couple of buildings and were working on adding bricks to the outside of the wooden tower, but that wasn't finished when the raiders attacked.
We have plenty of ash from all the fires, and soaking it and making lumps is kind of an easy way to store and dispose of the ash, so we already started to make square flat lumps, simple because they're easier to stack and won't roll. We will do a special burn with the finished lumps in the future, but in a dedicated kiln down in the forest. Yes, I'm that careful. We will make a clay mold and fire it as we might make clay mud bricks too, since that might be useful for that balcony or making a better stair up there, and fix the cliff gap for a nice proper door.
Hearing about Reiley's culture is fascinating and it is kind of logical that her town was built on a rocky outcrop where two rivers meet on a fairly open plain, and big trees was cut down further upstream in the hills and floated down to the town. They had simple dugout canoes and used rafts, but there were a few catamaran style ships made from huge trees. Reiley consider the leather canoe to be very advanced and practical for exploration as it is light and easy to carry, but far less durable and not as good as a proper dugout canoe. Dugouts don't tear, and Tiola would probably have been alive if they had a proper dugout.
If we would have contacted each other is another thing, but they probably would have tried shouting from the canoe if they had seen me. It's quite possible that the dino's would have chased me after they lost them on the sea, and Tiola and Reiley would probably have seen me run like hell along the beach. Or trying to swim out to them.
I work on finishing the loft with the occasional help from Reiley. I really can't wait for this to be done. And ironically I still haven't made my steel axe and steel knife. This have all been built with stone tools. Well mostly. There is my small knife and the titanium blade planer.
I would like to be able to charge my phones or the smartwatch, just so we would have a bit of music and the smartwatch would be very handy to have functioning. The 'how' is the very tricky part, but I have nothing to loose by trying. Taking apart Tiola's music player is a possibility, but doesn't seem like a useful idea as it probably is a high tech computor. But I have a solid lump of copper from my coins I can make copper wire from, and there should be copper wire in Tiola's headphones. With a bit of iron I should be able to make a small DC generator, and although I have no charging cables or electronics, the smartwatch have contact points and I never worried about which way I plugged in the USB charging cable, so I assume the watch take care of polarity. If I make a DC generator and some kind of springy contacts, I should be able to just increase the generator speed and hope that the smartwatch eventually start to take a charge. I can use falling water to control the speed and keep it slightly above 'starting to charge'. Sure, it will mean a lot of manually lifting water, but if it works it would be wonderful, and the smartwatch should last for many weeks until the next charge. It's not like I need the heart rate monitor, bluetooth connection or the watch face to light up except on command, and that is already turned off. Charging the phones will be far trickier, but I might be able to use the same trick, although I don't know about the polarity. I can remove the battery which is marked with plus and minus, but just forcing electric power into it is very bad since it is a Lithium Ion cell. Li-ion is light with high power density, but tricky to charge. Still, it's not like I have anything to loose by trying, and I could add a simple carbon resistor to maybe limit current and let the battery adapt voltage. I can use the watch to estimate charging current, and then charge the phone battery for 20 minutes or so, and see what the phone say the new charge is. And then repeat it until I reach 80% or so.
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The rain fade away and it's just damp outside. The sun peeking out turns the rain soaked ground and cliffs to fog. It's pretty. I switch to making that simple roof extension for outside storage since it won't take long, and Reiley switch between helping me, checking the solutions, making holes in slate tiles and camouflaging the rest of the front wall and outdoor area. The bark on the outside of front wall is a greenish hue so she smear clay in patches, and also clay darkened with a bit of charcoal to add dark areas to imitate shadow and break up the surface. It's not like the hut is perfect, and it might look a bit shabby once done, but if it helps, it helps, and it will make the hut harder to see. The ladder will also get a bit of ferns tied on the side to camouflage it and the lightly coloured split wood inside will have some darkish clay smeared on it too, since it do stand out and might be seen, and we have no space to store it other than at the front of the outdoor space. It is long and would block the door. Honestly, with the planters along the front edge, the outdoor space is starting to feel cosy.
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The rain and thunder have picked up again and bad noises from the land below hammers in that it is dangerous to go down there in the rain. We haven't finished close to all we hoped today, as doing stuff just takes time, and I add things or re-prioritize all the time. But we now have that outdoor storage and camouflage, and as the day turns to evening, all of Reiley's stirring in the low heat pot finally makes something that behaves viscous and thick. We kind of forgot to make a mold and use two small round unfired pots, and after we filled one we stir in some thick brine and continue stirring for a while before pouring the other. If we have to crack the pots to get the soap out it is no biggie. There is plenty of clay. I guess it will be another day to finish the toilet and the shower. And those shelves and better chairs. And the roof door and so on.
Reiley really loves bathing, and wants that shower. She loves to be out in the rain, and she is a seductive sight as she stretch and make a graceful slow dance while completely naked. She starts to softly sing and I'm reminded of the damn alien bastards as the lyrics might be translated, but it really can't match the song and how it should sound and rhyme and flow. It would be better to hear it without the translation, and I would really like to hear Reiley's true voice. I wonder how my voice sound to her? If I had that phone and recorded her, would it translate? Reiley seems happy singing that song praising the rain, and with the way she dance and pretend to strike a drum I get a feel for the rhythm. I should try to make her a drum. She will probably be better at making it than I. As she finish and pose with her back to me, I walk out into the rain, hug her from behind and kiss her neck. Reiley reach back and grab my butt, and I glide my hands up from her stomach and start to caress her breasts. Reiley whispers:
"I've made a couple of tube things from pig gut, and I hope one will fit and work..."
The kiln's heat rise and makes it warm up at our bed, and as the rain hammers on the roof we kiss and play, and eventually try the new condoms.