It’s finally over.

After a month of dedication I finally had what I needed to start creating matches.

Potassium nitrate.

It took a bit of work, which involved making sure that the dung that I buried got the right amount of moisture for it to decompose. The fruit of my labors were the small gray-ish specks of matter that littered the soil where the excrement once was.

“What do I do again?” I thought.

“Oh, right. Purification”

In my time on earth I was taught that to make matches I needed three things: charcoal, sulfur and powder— all of which was to be used in a powder form. They would then combine with water to make a sort of paste, which would be applied to the sticks I had to create makeshift matches.

One step at a time, though.

I can’t be too impatient.

Every step of this process needed to be accomplished with the utmost precision in order to make adequate matches that can be commercially viable. If I got the mixtures wrong and added too much potassium nitrate and too little charcoal and sulfur, it would result in creating what is essentially gunpowder on a stick.

Who am I kidding? It's already gunpowder on a stick.

Regular matches sold in stores had more complex chemicals like red phosphorus and potassium chlorate, things that I had no idea how to create. Sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate was the best I could get with my limited technology, knowledge and funds.

So this match was essentially a stick with modified gunpowder, with the same ingredients and everything.

If I wasn’t careful and added the proportions wrong I could end up with actual gunpowder in its pure form.

Needless to say, no good things would happen if I created and used that near my body.

I’ll worry about that later. For now, I need to focus on the task on hand.

How do I collect the nitrate?

After ruminating for a while, I remembered that I had a perfectly empty, albeit dirty, container waiting to be used.

I went back to the house and picked up the old excrement crate that was lying outside. It was a bit disgusting at first, which was most likely due to the fact that I didn’t clean it for over a month. But after a good rinsing and drying with water from the stream, it was finally clean enough for me to use it once more.

After meticulously collecting every single piece of soil that was lighter than the rest, I did my best to separate the pieces from the brown earth with my hands. After picking at them for around ten minutes, I was left with some gray-ish particles which I was fairly sure was potassium nitrate.

Placing all of the substance in the empty crate yielded around a tenth of what I had put in as dung adding up to around a kilogram of weight. The rest of it had probably been turned into soil and dirt, or energy for microorganisms.

After carrying the crate, it became apparent to me just how little potassium nitrate I had. I brought it over as carefully as possible, as I could not afford to waste any of it in a stroke of clumsiness.

I put the crate of potassium nitrate on the table so I could finally start purifying but there was something that prevented me from starting the process.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I forgot about the things I need for the purification.

I decided that I couldn’t find the things I needed at the house and had to go back to the compound warehouse with my wheelbarrow to find them. As I walked back I made a mental checklist of what I needed— firewood, a pot for boiling, somewhere I could put the different substances, a mixing utensil, a source of fire for the firewood and a wooden tray where I can place things that needed to be dried in addition to a small cloth that I needed for filtration.

I returned to the compound at around four hours after noon, and went straight to the pantry that was next to the warehouse. I rifled around the different crates in the pantry until I found a clay pot, a wooden tray, a wooden mixing rod and wooden bowls that could be used to place things in and a fabric which was probably used to clean the utensils.

In my mind I hoped Qaton wouldn’t be too annoyed if I “borrowed” these items for a bit.

The firewood was pretty easy to find seeing as there was a decent amount lying in random piles around the space. The torches were just as simple to procure because they were a commodity that they needed to have a lot of in order to light their spacious compound, so I lit one and left the compound with it.

After making sure I didn’t need anything else, I brought all the materials necessary using my wheelbarrow back to the house to start manufacturing the matches.

Finally, after an hour I had what I needed to start purifying the potassium nitrate.

I mixed three parts of water from the stream for every one part of the potassium nitrate bits that I had collected together into a clay pot, mixing with the stirring rod that I “borrowed”. Over the past month, I had discovered a small circle surrounded by pebbles which seemingly contained a small fire in the past based on the small amounts of ash that I found within it.

This addition to the yard was a boon which would allow me to heat chemicals as I wished. I used this feature of the house to my advantage by adding new firewood and lighting them with the torch that I had brought over.

The flame from the torch engulfed the firewood as the timber began to smoke and smolder. Using nearby twigs, I fashioned a setup wherein I could place the clay pot over the fire to allow it to heat up.

After placing the pot on top of the fire, I waited for it to heat up until it was just about to boil and then took it out. I quickly extinguished the fire and used the cloth that I had to prevent myself from being burned by the scalding hot clay pot. I brought it back inside the house and used the fabric to filter out the dirt from the solution and poured it into one of the remaining wooden bowls that I “borrowed”.

Knowing this would take a good while for the potassium nitrate to settle, I headed back to the compound with the intent to return the next morning.

The next morning…

The first thing I did when I came back the next day was look at the progress of the nitrate.

Small white crystals had formed at the bottom of the bowl after it had cooled overnight.

It should be very pure by now. Even if there is a possibility that it isn’t, I have to trust that it is.

I then threw out the remaining water as carefully as I could, the water at that point was waste that wasn’t important to the process. Though I had to make sure that any of the nitrate in the bowl stayed in the bowl and didn’t fall on the ground. I then crushed the crystals with my hands which resulted in it turning into a milky white powder.

I was left with around six hundred grams of a crystalline material that looked similar to table salt. However unlike table salt, this substance had the capacity to burn a house down if handled combined with the proper elements.

The potassium nitrate that I was left with seemed pure enough to be used. But to be safe, I placed half of it in a different bowl just in case I needed to purify it again.

Now it’s time to prepare the other ingredients.

I took the crate of charcoal that I asked for and inspected, inside the crate were a bunch of jagged matte black stones which looked like someone carved them by hand. While the charcoal pieces were in a pebble-like state, I needed them to be more powdery so I could use them properly.

To remedy this, I took out the stirring rod and began poking and prodding at the charcoal until it eventually turned into a chunky powder. To make it even finer, I found a hard rock from outside and began pounding the sediment until it was finer than sand.

Now that the charcoal was ready, I next had to prepare the sulfur. I opened the crate and was barraged with the smell of rotten eggs. I recoiled back in disgust, barely holding myself together but I steeled myself enough to see that the sulfur was already a fine dust.

Once it was all ready, I got the empty nitrate crate and started putting the elements into it— three parts sulfur, two parts charcoal and one part potassium nitrate. In the crate was enough material to create around one hundred matches, not enough for commercial use but it was to be a proof of concept only.

Historically, gunpowder was composed of a mixture which included seventy-five percent potassium nitrate. But this novel mixture was intended to be used for matches, which meant that I had to significantly reduce the portion of the potassium nitrate in order to control the burn.

I used the same stirring stick to mix the ingredients together, which required a high degree of wariness lest the whole thing ignite and go up in a ball of flames. I then added enough water for it to become a paste with a texture not unlike thick paint or paste.

I was now left with a box that contained a gunpowder paste which would hopefully make any stick I had into matches. Selecting five of the most promising twigs from the crate of sticks that I had, I dipped their ends into the paste box and then took them out and placed them on the wooden tray that I had brought from the compound.

While waiting a few hours for the matches to dry, I looked around outside for the stone with the best properties to light the match with. It had to be rough enough that if I dragged the match onto it, the match would hypothetically catch on fire.

After searching for a while, I found three matches that fit this criteria, each of them being around the size of my palm.

I came back to find the matches dried and picked one up. It was a brown twig with black powder at the end which indicated that it was ready to ignite.

So, I picked up one of the rocks and stuck the match against it.

There was nothing.

I used the match once more.

There was still nothing.

Did the purification fail? Was the sulfur faulty? Did I have the wrong charcoal?

In a final act of desperation, I scraped the stick as hard as I could against the stone.

Finally, a small ember rose from the top of the match alongside a wisp of smoke.

Fire. I finally have it.

There was fire.