----------------------------------------
Since we need to check the kiln, the plan is to move up and down during the day. Like cut down, split and shape a tree as much as possible before bringing the log pieces back up to the hut, where we check the kiln and the go down and check the planned charcoal mound. And repeat. We might have to split up to keep feeding the kiln, even though we don't like it.
We collect dried logs and carry them to the jungle working area, and we quickly get a good pile, and since it will rain sooner or later we make sure there are a good steep leaf roof above the pile. We might need lots more charcoal in the future so the plan is to make a reusable charcoal mound, although the design is more of a cylinder than a mound. I really don't like the noise we make but it is as it is, and as I break up the log Reiley use a sturdy branch to dig a shallow pit in an open area. We don't use all the wood at once as the plan is to make the mound reusable, but we make a good pile. Then we fetch water from a nearby creek and from the sandy dirt we make mud and build up a cylinder with four air holes along the bottom. The plan is to pile up wood inside until it is a bit higher than the cylinder, then add a mud top and light it through the small hole in the top. When the fire have reached an airhole in the base, that airhole will be sealed with mud, and when all four are sealed the top hole is sealed. Then we just leave it. Next time we use it we should only have to clear the airholes, fill it up with wood and do the top cone in mud and start over. But we do a small fire first in just the cylinder to harden the mud and make it a separate piece. Reiley is clearly more skilled in starting a fire than me and just use a stick rubbed between her hands instead of a bow drill. I'll have to try that, but it must be hard on the hands - then again, even after the previous weeks work I still have softer hands than her. She likes my soft hands. After Reiley returns from a quick kiln check, I shown her how the tuyere pipe should be, and I start to make the furnace as Reiley start to chop trees.
----------------------------------------
Neither of us like to split up more than we have too, so after Reiley have weaved two quick baskets from cut-off branches for the coal, we move the canoe up so that Reiley can work on it close to the jungle working area and charcoal mound. Her plan for fixing the tear is to scrape the sealant of, sew it together and then sew another piece over with a form of glue sealing it before sealing the surface. There is spare leather and thread in the canoe left over from the construction and also a lump of hardened sealant, just so that it would be available to fix leaks or tears, but the glue is a bit of an issue since she can't find the right tree here and will try making a couple of other glues from animal and plants. In the end, as long as the repair is strong and doesn't leak too much, we just might have to scoop water out from time to time, and there are two wooden cups for it. There is no doubt that woman who made the canoes in Reiley's former camp sure knew her craft and had made several canoes before coming here. She taught ahead, and even added wooden bars on the front and back outside the leather to protect the leather when reaching a beach or shore, although she missed adding a spare paddle, so we will make a simple one. I hope they actually managed to defend that half built tower and drive the raiders away, but it seems unlikely.
We will try to find a good hiding spot for the canoe a bit further up the stone beach and away from the trail to the hut, and eventually we will do a few hidden caches with equipment. If we need to flee and leave everything, having a stone axe, stone knife and a few water bottle pots and something to carry them in will be very helpful. Being able to reach the canoe and flee with it is not a terrible plan.
We will do short explorations North and South along the coast, and probably at least a bit up river. We both want to try to travel up river to that lake and camp. Making a life up in that valley should be safer than here, and if the raiders have taken all and destroyed the camp, they will probably stay away for a while. There is also the possibility that the raiders took over the camp and now live there, or that the camp defenders actually manage to win. Either way, we need to know, and Reiley of course wants to know if her friends managed to survive. She feels guilty for not staying and helping to defend the tower, and that I conceal thinking less of her for that. Like she abandoned her duty to defend her home, her friends, and the three men there. She is slightly torn between wanting to return, and wanting to protect me here, but just paddling there and back again is a hard three day journey with a lot of risk, so it won't happen yet. Although Reiley is reluctant to say bad things about her old camps leader Manous, Manous does seem to be a bit of a bitch.
The Sanctuary flowers gives an interesting option, and there are plenty of those flowers in the jungle. Reiley is really impressed by how well my idea of using nose clamps works and she also loves my idea to always bringing dried Sanctuary flowers in a small sealed belt bottle as Dinosaur repellent. If shit is about to hit the fan we can put on a nose clamp and smear the flower powder on our body as we run. Since the dinosaurs are likely following they should get a good whiff and it might be enough for them to bugger off. If they hate the smell that much, eating something smeared with it should be very unattractive. We just really need those nose clamps and will bring a couple of spares. Just scent stuck to our skin, hair and clothes when we didn't smear it on us, was enough to make Reiley horny as hell and we had an intense quickie against the wall and a support pillar. As long as we carefully wash of any scent stuck to us, clothes or things, even Reiley shouldn't be effected too much. And if the option is death, adrenaline might help the mind stay on task.
The flowers bottles should make a canoe trip safer from dinosaurs, and we will add a couple of flower bottles to the canoe. The river have plenty of water to wash with. People and scouts are a problem, but if I use Tiola's camouflage cloak and face cloth, from a distance we would look like Reiley and Tiola returning, so my identity will be somewhat protected. The river is a long choke point, but it's not like we have much options. I just like to be really prepared before we make the journey, and Reiley agree. Bringing something like a net hammock might mean we can sleep in shifts somewhere high in a tree if we need to leave the canoe and make our way back by foot.
So we're going to make many small belt bottles with stoppers and pouches, collect flowers, dry and then seal them. The flower season will probably pass sooner rather than later, and we'll need a good stock. We might be more than two people, and it can be something to trade with other camps in the future. It can also be a weapon against unsuspecting enemies, although it might backfire badly. But desperate times and all that. Hopefully the dried flowers don't loose their effect and potency too fast, but we have to remember that it is a possibility. And we also cannot harvest all the flowers to not destroy the protection they give us here.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
We finish the lower work for the day and will just let the sealed charcoal mound burn out and cool and the small fire in the furnace is out.
----------------------------------------
The new long ladder is used to finally check out that other flattish area I couldn't a week ago. Yeah, it's far bigger and easier to defend, but there is a couple of big piles of rubble and muddy dirt from the cliffs above with a few shrubs and two small trees in the back. The flat area is basically the corner of the huge cliff and have a good view from the ridge all the way to the south shore, and there is even a small tree and shrubbery covered low crest about one to two meter high towards the ridge and trail up and down to give some cover. It's actually a good spot to watch the ground below and the path up to the blocking door and hut, while being hard to see from below. This would have been a better place for the hut, but that is far too late, and I won't start building another hut when I've almost finished it, and I see no urgent need for another hut. Although there is even a large and deep natural oblong bowl with rainwater, that seems to have been formed from water falling from a crevice in the cliffs above over a long time. A very long time since that is a big bowl. There are small stones and sand along the bottom that probably have been carving the bowl slightly bigger each time it rains. I walk around it and using a stick I estimate it contain more than three cubic meters of water. It's a good water reserve to have, but I wonder how much the sun will make it evaporate on warm days. It's fucking hot up here, and I'm happy for my hat to avoid worsening my sunburn. I'm kind of envious that Reiley's kind doesn't seem to have any sunburn problem. I'm not looking forward to the summer.
If we ever need more space or other friendly people show up, they can build a hut here so that my and Reiley's hut stay ours. The cliffs up to the top are steep, and the top of the cliff is probably 30-35 meters higher, but it's damn hard to guess height while standing below it like this and just looking up, and the trees, ferns and shrubs doesn't make it easier. We pull up the long ladder and rest it against the cliff so we can climb up and peek. The cliff has a fairly flattish section, and the steep top section seems easier to climb from here, but hard to truly see from this spot, and I'm not in the mood to do that today. Our hut isn't visible from here, but with a lot of work it would be possible to make a good path between the hut and new area, and it might be from that cliff gap at the top of our hut, over or around this 'flattish' part of the cliff and back down to the larger new area. We could make a small terrace garden here, but that seems more work than worth while. Still, some vegetables or herbs would be handy to have close. Storage would need a roof and bringing up and down stuff will need some kind of hoist as climbing is bad enough at our hut even with the improvised hoist and basket there. The new area could be a protected cliff work area, but same issues. Still, we climb down to that area and lower the ladder back down and will leave the ladder leading up to the new cliff work area since we can't really store the ladder anywhere else. If someone makes their way past the blocking door, they might just think someone spent a few days up here instead of finding our more hidden hut. That might actually be a reason to make a small shelter here to sell that story and maybe add some kind of 'trip wire' so we can see if someone have climbed up. Like moving the ladder a bit to make it unstable enough that someone would correct it. Like it had been abandoned for a while and wind moved the ladder.
----------------------------------------
We stand on the loft and look out through the new eyebrow dormer window as we hug each other and snuggle. The new wide window along with the loft makes a big difference in light and overall feel of the hut even though only half the loft is finish along with its steep stair. We did a lot of other work today, and it just takes too long to make all the loft boards and do all the cuts to seat them fairly level and then to plane them. Yeah, there will be another stair leading up to that gap in the cliff as that is a way up, and not just for reaching the top of the cliff. If we're attacked and have to flee, that will be a way out, and we can store a climbing rope or something to get down from another cliff face. I've only peeked out, but it might actually be a sort of 10-14 square meter extra room there or a balcony with a nice sea view while being hidden from below from basically all other directions than the sea, especially if we add more plants to camouflage. It feels a bit dumb to use that bright space as a bedroom, so a fairly open outdoor room and balcony would be nicer. It could be a nice open work area as there should be plenty of light while still being shady inside, and fairly protected from wind, and a breeze will only make it cooler. And after the days work is finished, a couple of deck style chairs to lean back and watch the view and to see the sunset would be nice.
Before the evening falls we lift up the wide new bed that even has two small bed tables for stuff. We haven't really said the words, but there is just this silent agreement that we're in a relationship and will share the wide and improved new bed. The cold hearted logical bastard in me wouldn't say it's love and more like two people with extremely limited options enjoying each others company and making the best of it. But I kind of want to taste Reiley's lips all the time and I find myself sneaking glances at her, and her smile just gives me shivers. I want to show off for her, and there are also those awkward moments I really don't like, and sometimes I feel like a prey in front of a tiger, until I see her awkward glances and fidgeting, and I just want to hold her and protect her from the world. Reiley seems to want to show that she is a skilled, serious and mature woman, at the same time there is that playfulness and hint off eager for praise, looking like she wants to bounce and go 'look look look what I did!' like when as she came back with that fur pig.
Considering I spend more time thinking about Reiley and kissing her, than the bloody big dinosaurs that want to eat us... Yeah.
We sit at our table and eat a wonderful evening meal of meat, fish and a bit of one of the vegetables plus a bit of coconut, and I compliment Reiley for her hunting and cooking skills, while she compliments me for the forge-kitchen and the pottery. We need to see if we get sick from the new vegetables, so mixing new vegetables, fruit or berries and larger portions will only happen once we know each is safe to eat. Tomorrow we will finish the loft, the new sturdy front door, the roof door, the toilet and the shower. Then we've pretty much finished the hut.
Our home.
There is still a lot of work to do. We need shelves and better chairs. A proper kitchen bench. Lots of pottery for all the rain collectors, water and food storage, and I will try to melt and forge tools. I really want that iron axe and knife, but we will start on the high garden as we need to get that finished too as growing takes time, but if the canoe works we will make our first water exploration North beyond the ridges and to find that salt collector boon. Then we have to decide if we want to make that journey up river or wait until after the next Pillars of light, because that journey will happen sooner or later. If it means I have to spend a few days working and living with the wonderful lovely sexy woman smiling at me from across the table, well...
I can endure.