Urist opened his eyes to see the rays of sunlight shining through the bamboo door telling him that morning had come. Getting out of the comfy leaf bed, he walked outside and did a light stretch before going back to wake everyone up. As he woke them up, he noticed that Uroa and Briana were currently snuggling together for warmth.
“Mu… More fish eyes…”
“I want more fish cheeks…”
The two were currently talking in their sleep dreaming about food. Urist could even see the drool on their faces. He smiled wryly poking their cheeks, “Come on, we got a lot of work to do. Wake up, you lazy girls.”
Uroa reluctantly broke away from Briana who she treated as a hug pillow and rubbed her eyes with a tired expression, “Eh? What are we doing boss?”
Excitement filled Urist’s eyes, “After we eat breakfast we’ll go out to explore!”
Their dinner was pretty filling with six fish traps giving them a total of fifty good-sized fish that Urist decided to only open up five pre-packaged meals and share them amongst the dwarfs. Urist split the dwarfs into teams while eating; the teams were thus exploring, gathering water, basket making, hare traps, and making a coop for the chickens.
Equipping the bronze sword for protection, Urist walked together with Uroa and Briana through the forest to help him classify the plants they came across. They set out at around 10 AM and headed down the river. He decided that they would travel for about two hours through the forest alongside the river flowing outwards in hopes of reaching the sea.
If they didn’t reach it in time, then they would hack back and be back at the main base at 2 PM or 3 PM at the latest. Urist used an extra shirt as a makeshift backpack to carry any useful items they found along the way.
Traveling along the thicket, Urist picked up a few quirks about Uroa and Briana. Namely, the two liked to associate with different types of plants. Uroa preferred vibrant flowers and plants that might not have the best medical properties. On the other hand, Briana picked out plants not by their looks but by their effects no matter how dull they were. It seemed they would argue if the plant was worth picking or not and usually ends with Uroa sulking at being proven wrong.
Listening to their argument, Urist laughed, “If you want Uroa, we can plant some flowers near our home if you want.”
“Really?! B-but they are useless… Is that really ok?”
“Even if the plant can’t save someone physically, it can save someone's soul. Remember that Uroa, Briana.”
Uroa felt better with Urist sticking up for her and replied, “You see! Pretty flowers aren’t useless! The boss said so!”
Wide-eyed Briana didn’t know what to say for a time. She could only shrug and look away. “That’s pretty nice wisdom Boss.”
Pointing at himself Urist had a blank face, “Me? Wise? No, it's all just experience.”
And so the three worked in tangent to identify the plants around them, they discovered a trove of walnut trees in their first ten minutes of the walk which made Urist happy at how big and spread out they were.
It would be a good food source if they could harvest them before fall hits, they could also be used for making ink if they wanted to be fancy. To mark the area where the walnut trees grew, Urist and the two girls chipped a faint ‘X’ on nearby rocks at the river line to find this place again later.
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While moving the rocks along, he happened to notice some dark rocks along the shore and grew instantly excited, “We’ve found flint!”
Despite the strange looks Uroa and Briana were giving him, Urist felt like he was on cloud nine.
Flint was one of the many hard rocks that could be used to make stonewares such as knives, hand-axes, and was one of the components to make flintlock pistols. It is also a great firestarter as long as you had some steel to strike it on.
He decided to keep this mental note in mind and urged the two to follow him onwards. Twenty minutes later, he spotted a curious creature jumping from tree to tree. It had a fluffy tail and little paws sniffing the branches here and there. Its body was covered with brown fur with a single black streak running along the back from the base of the head to its tail.
Urist knew perfectly well that this was a squirrel. He remembered that he and his mother would make Citatap with the small bodies by chopping the bones and meat together with their knives. They would also eat the brain raw as a treat, it was one of his favorite treats as a kid growing up.
The memory forced its way into his thoughts. A woman with a blurred face. Although her face was obscured, he could see her long black hair that went down her neck covering her fur clothes somewhat. She held a knife in her hands and was currently skinning and cutting up a squirrel.
‘You see this my cute, little [---]? This is how you make Citatap when I traveled to Japan this nice tribe showed me how to make it. I assure you it's very tasty. Do you want a bite?”
“Eating its brains!? Is it really that tasty?! That sounds disgusting mother!”
He shook off the fond memory and focused on making another ‘X’ to mark the spot and kept moving on. By now, they had taken about an hour in walking yet hadn't found the sea they were searching for. Along the way, they found some edible mushrooms they could bring back to grow thanks to survival book as a reference. They harvested the ones they were sure were entirely poison-free and as well as the moderately aged shrooms.
This spot had a surprising variety of poisonous and nonpoisonous mushrooms. Urist decided that it would be good to take the few they could grow and move them nearby the cave. He can vaguely call to mind bits of details that mushrooms can grow with ease in moist, damp places which perfectly describes the cave.
They lucked into some white cap mushrooms, Hen of the Woods which looked like chicken feathers and another type called wolf’s eye found in the book. It was a strange mushroom that seemed to be out of place in nature. Wolf’s eyes grew in a spider web formation from a center mass along the branches of trees. From the book's description, cutting and boiling them up made them like noodles and they tasted like wolf meat.
He figured they could grow it and once in while having noodle fish stew. They pressed on along the river and no matter how far they went, they couldn’t see or smell the sea anywhere near. At this point, Urist settled on throwing in the towel and headed back along the trail.
When they had more resources, it would be better to find the sea though for now, they had gained a good haul and it shall suffice. With the mushrooms, they will be able to eat some stir-fried with the fish while the squirrels provided a good meat source and maybe they could make some leather out of it.
However, without salt or borax, producing any leather worth using was but a pipe dream as by then, it would be all rotted. They could try doing the North American Indian method with deer brains and eggs, but that had its problems namely finding a deer, having enough eggs, and having good containers.
Alas, his only hopes were to find that sea. If they could find the salt, their palate would be tamed (at least his would be) and various other problems could be solved.
Since they hadn’t reached the sea, Urist decided to call it a day. Now that they were not marking stones it would take about an hour to reach home. As they were heading back, he picked up noise and stopped the two behind him. Bewildered, the girls stopped on Urist’s command wondering what was happening.
No sooner did they open their mouths to ask, a creature’s head peaked out of the forest scaring the living daylights out of the three. Walking out of the bush in a sudden movement, the creature’s white fangs glistened in the sunlight, eyes black and soulless, full of cruelty. The color of its fur boasted shades of various browns with a body as tall as Urist walking on four legs. The creature barked at Urist full of ill-intent before running off into the distance moving its tail left and right.
Briana held a piece of large flint in her hand, her legs trembling, “What a terrifying creature! What was that Urist?! ”
Urist held a solemn expression watching the retreating figure leave them in the dust. “That... was a vampire deer.”