The word “slog” very accurately encapsulated our travels for the next several hours. True to Yojoti’s prediction, we didn’t see another living thing the rest of the day. No game meant nothing fresh to eat, so we finished off the last of Yojoti’s dry rations as we walked.
Those animals are smarter than we are, honestly. What kind of being sees that much rain coming and decides to stay out in it anyway? The kind that has “societies” and “money” and things besides “survival” to worry about, that’s what. And even once the rain stops, the ground will be soggy and even more uneven, and sleeping will be muddy and cold and just UGH.
I voiced my disgust out loud, drawing Yojoti’s eye. He didn’t look like the weather was bothering him very much at all. Though he was probably much more used to it than I was.
“Hey Yojoti, how much did your tent cost?” I called out to him.
“Well,” he paused, thinking, “the frame is just wood I cut myself from the forest. The ________ cost about five Asi, and rope is dirt cheap so I don’t count that.”
Another unfamiliar word. “What cost five Asi?”
“Oh, the cloth itself. It’s infused with a mixture of oils to make it waterproof, called ‘oilcloth’,” he explained, and I repeated the word back to him. My pronunciation rarely needed correcting anymore.
“Not quite as waterproof as hide, but getting a single piece big enough to sleep under costs at least double. And the ones sewn from multiple hides leak worse than the oilcloth!” He finished the explanation.
“What if I wanted a tent with a collapsible frame? The kind with rods that slot together end-to-end and anchor into the corners to make a dome.”
I knew my Ozryn still wasn’t perfect, but Yojoti didn’t have to stare at me like I was speaking Greek. Or English, for that matter. “I said, one with its own–”
“I know what you said,” Yojoti interrupted me, “but I’ve never heard of anything like that. Is that kind of thing common where you come from?”
“Well yes.” We had mostly skirted the question of where my shed, with its contents of tools and materials Yojoti had never imagined, and myself had originated. “You can find tents like that from single-person size to large enough to hold ten or more people.”
“Ten people! That can’t protect from the rain very well.” Yojoti seemed to dismiss the idea as ludicrous.
“I have never slept in one, so I cannot say for sure,” I shrugged, “but if the tent was made of the same material as my tarp, it would be just as waterproof. So you are saying there is no such thing as a collapsible tent frame in Ozryn?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard of, and I’ve spent time in most parts of the country at one point or another.” Yojoti confirmed for me.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Well, that is too bad for me, then.” I trailed off into thought.
Well. Well, well, well. Is this something I could use to lift myself out of a subsistence lifestyle? The idea of a tent isn’t new, but one with a light frame that doesn’t require ropes and stakes to stay upright seems to be novel enough. But what would I use for the poles? There’s no such thing as fiberglass here, I’m fairly certain. Thin lengths of wood could work, but how would you get them to slot into each other? I suppose a smith could make iron tubes for that, but that would increase both the weight and the cost. Does bamboo exist here? Honestly that’s the best, cheapest, most easily available thing I can think of. I wouldn’t have a good way to make the elastic bands that keep them attached to each other, but that’s mostly for convenience. Once the sections are together and attached at both ends, they’re not going anywhere, and it’s easy enough to tie them to one another. Yeah, that could work. Now I have to refer to Pythagoras to get some dimensions…
I continued making plans and improvements as we slogged, occasionally muttering to myself in English and pulling out my phone to perform calculations and make notes. Yojoti, who didn’t usually have anyone to talk to anyway, seemed content with the silence.
-
The rain had stopped an hour prior, but darkness came early due to the clouds. Yojoti had a rule to never attempt to navigate in the dark, so we stopped to make camp. By that time, I had figured out that for a single person tent measuring two meters long, one meter wide, and one meter at the peak of the dome, I would need poles about three and a half meters long, give or take a few inches.
I blame my time watching science documentaries for making me mix imperial and metric units in my head. I couldn’t say why, but it would feel weird to say “give or take a few centimeters”.
I dropped my pack and began clearing space for a fire. The first time we had been rained on, Yojoti had instructed me to clear space for a fire like normal. I had been a little peeved, but damned if he wasn’t able to get it lit! Everburn was pretty miraculous, by Earth standards; It was much more likely to light after all that rain than any wood we could have found. It wasn’t exactly guaranteed to light, but Yojoti had managed to get a fire going all but once when we had been doused by Spring rains, previously.
With enough of an area of open mud to prevent accidental wildfires, Yojoti tore apart some of the grass we had dug up, and rubbed it vigorously between his hands. He ended up with what could easily have passed for a clump of hemp fiber, which he placed on top of a small pile of damp but unmolested Everburn before turning his flint to it. Half a dozen tries later, I was worried it wouldn’t catch. But Yojoti kept working until a flame leapt up from the ball of fibers, which in turn dried out the grass below it before it caught as well, starting a proper campfire.
As I walked around pulling potatoes from the slurp of the mud, I glanced Northward toward the dark green edge of the forest. I was very, very noticeably closer than it had been at the beginning of the day, likely less than five miles away; I imagined that I could make out individual trees if there were more light..
As I plopped down on the tarp to peel and cut the potatoes, Yojoti already had both pots filled with water and set to boil. We would miss the addition of jerky to the stew, but herbs and potatoes wouldn’t be too bad for the couple of days it would take to reach the frontier town where Yojoti sold his pelts.
“We should reach the forest well before midday tomorrow,” said Yojoti. “But just because we’re out of the grasslands doesn’t mean the trip is over–we still have to keep an eye out for any last game we can find before we arrive in Holsworthy. A deer or two would make this trip much more worthwhile!” He finished with a smile.
“I will do my best not to hinder you, my friend,” I responded with a rueful smile.
Yojoti clapped me on the shoulder and turned to set up his tent, and I put my head back down to preparing the potatoes. The meal passed without too much conversation after the exhausting day, our heads beginning to nod almost as soon as the starches hit our bellies. I tossed a handful of Everburn onto the fire before nodding to Yojoti and crawling into my sleeping bag and folding the tarp over top against any overnight showers.