The one identified as Brekin responded emphatically, "We have not eaten in days now. At first, we fished the coast, but some predators in the water started attacking our lines and wrecked our nets. We tried hunting the interior, but we came across one of the big cats, and it was too much. We ended up having to flee up trees and hide from it."

I nodded sagely as I ate some fish, "Yeah, I had my own run-in with those things. Y'all did the right thing there. Our nets're still good, and we been fishin' the river on the other side o' the bluff, and just brought in a major haul. We're smokin' the fish now, so we should be good 'til the storm clears."

The Hilgos went over their experiences since they'd been brought here, and it hadn't gone well for them. They'd started out near the coast, like several others, and it had turned into a back-and-forth, competing for fishing spots, fresh water, basically everything. If it hadn't been for Val's speech about bringing everyone together, they were on the edge of either having to quit or be pulled out. Even now, I saw signs of bleeding into the suit, "Did you injure yourself?"

Brekin looked at this arm, "Oh, it would seem so. It is fully covered by the suit, though."

I almost went straight forward with first aid, then stopped. Brekin was right, I would have to remove the suit from his arm. Why? Because it was fully closed... but if it was fully encased, then where was the cut? Usually, I would have pressed a button on the shoulder, getting rid of the suit layer, but instead, I pulled the 'fabric' out from his arm, and cut it with a knife, careful not to cut open any further wounds. For a moment, nothing happened, other than there being a hole in the arm of the suit, and being able to at least somewhat inspect the cut itself. Then, quickly but quietly, the suit resealed the breach, even as I still held a small strip of fabric that I'd cut away. There was no seam, nothing. In fact, there were no seams anywhere on any of the suits, as far as I could remember. There also.... weren't any wires I could detect, either, so how did the suits register the button presses... and where was the power supply?

I busied myself for a moment by taking care of Brekin's arm, but it was pretty cut and dry, so my mind went back to work on what I was thinking with regard to the suits. With Brekin and Kestra pulled together, I had Hearth escort them up, but I asked Marila to hang back a moment, "Hey, I need your help testing something. It's about our suits."

Marila's head went to the side, "Yes, I saw something pass through your eyes, and apparently, you're really an incredible medic, because your mind was nowhere near fixing Brekin's arm, yet you missed not one step of care."

"Really, that's just practice, but thank you. Hang on for a second," I said, pulling my knife out.

I put my other arm out, asking Marila to pull some of the fabric away from my arm, as far as she could manage. She did, and it stretched. Careful not to clip Marila's knuckles, I cut out a small section of the fabric, rather than just opening a smaller area like I had with Brekin, "Marila, drop that piece on the ground for a moment. I need to test something."

She did as instructed, and I watched the hole on my arm. Again, at first, nothing seemed to happen, then... activity. The sides of the hole shrank steadily, until it sealed over once more, a perfect match to the rest of the suit. It didn't even feel any tighter, and I looked at the ground: The scrap I'd cut off was still there. Both Marila and I cursed, nearly simultaneously, myself saying, "Motherfucker!"

And Marila, "I'll be damned!" She picked the piece back up and examined it. It seemed essentially inert and wasn't growing, but her eyes narrowed, "Cut off another piece."

I did as asked, and with the second piece cut out, the process occurred again, sealing the breach whole. Marila, meanwhile, beamed, "This is interesting. I mean, the suit seems to regenerate itself. Can we cut a larger piece off, and it will still regrow?"

The vision of what this looked like for the viewers at home, and our folks up on the bluff, had to have been both strange and hilarious. Step one: Strip down to survival suits in the wild of an alien wilderness. Step Two: Begin cutting off larger and larger sections of the suits from each other. Step Three: Laugh like maniacs at a line of thought only we vaguely understood.

Then, as we were picking up the cut-offs, an interesting thing happened: Two of the pieces, brought within inches of each other as I picked them up, started straightening out, each piece almost reaching for the other. I let them finish closing, and suddenly, instead of two smaller pieces of the suit fabric, I now only held a single larger piece. I did this again and again, Marila now "feeding" more pieces to it, and the fabric continued its growth. The growth, however, only seemed to happen when one of us was holding both pieces we were trying to connect. Fabric on the ground, or pieces held by each instead of one of us, remained inert. We tested it a few more times until Val was coming down from the bluff, "What are the two of you doing down here?"

I held up the fabric, speaking excitedly, "Our suits! They regrow! Like, these were all trimmings from our suits... I sound insane. Okay, hang on a second. Marila, help me cut off part of my sleeve."

We went through the motions, and again, the fabric bound itself to the main piece perfectly. Val's jaw dropped, "Holy shit! How... how is it doing that?!"

I held up my work, "I think it's some sort of, like, nanite-infused fiber. Um, Marila, nanites are tiny, microscopic robots. Can't be seen by the naked eye, but I'm not sure how they're pulling power."

Val just looked at the fabric for a minute, and I could see the gears turning, then she was smiling, "The nanites! The ones they injected into us, I mean. What I believe is happening is that those are feeding off the excess electrical energy our bodies produce, and they share the energy with the suits. The whole thing, buttons included, is being powered by the nanites in our suits and bodies. The structure itself is probably a collection of spare molecules in the air like nitrogen, carbon, and some things from the soil itself all being moved around at the molecular level."

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I shrugged, "Sounds about right, Val. I reckon we have an infinite supply of this stuff. We could make rain catchers, canopies between shelters, hammocks, sails, whatever we need it for! HELL, we could make enough to build a frickin' windmill if we wanted!"

Those weren't the only tricks available. I cut both sleeves off of my suit, and while they didn't grow back the sleeve, they did essentially make themselves a proper sleeveless shirt, even if the hems were a bit rough. I could then put the sleeves back on, and they would rebind almost instantly. I could do the same with the feet, the leggings, and so forth, quickly tailoring my suit how I wanted it to be, while still having it in case of needs. Val also went sleeveless, got rid of the mid-riff, and 'sockless', cutting her leggings off just above the knees, but instead of just ditching them entirely, she cut fabric holes in a section of freed fabrics, putting it on like a pair of fingerless gloves, and sure enough, the nano-fibers completed the shaping, a likely pre-programmed response, "Oh, much better. God, you have no idea how annoying this suit's been to work with."

Marila meanwhile hadn't been slacking. Unlike us, however, she was more about quality than quantity of things she could do. Her cuts, unlike ours, looked properly hemmed, whereas we just straight up looked like we'd been shredding our clothes, "Marila, how did you-"

She beamed, "Oh, it was simple. Watch: I have this stripped-down stick here, right? So we lay it on this strip of the fabric, and roll it over the stick until it meets back up with the fabric, and... there! We have a perfect hemline."

I was looking at what she did. The stick was still through it, making it look rather large for a hem, but as soon as she removed the stick, the fabric shrunk back down, forming a perfect hem. Something occurred to me, and I grabbed another scrap of fabric, doing the same thing, but after the hem formed, instead of pulling the stick, I took my knife out and cut along the line just past where the fabrics had bonded together. Pulling it clear, I removed the stick, and it shrunk down as before, now rendering it into something about as thick as a strand of paracord. Testing it, it was fairly strong.

I repeated the process, and then picked up both of them, put them closer to each other, and at first, nothing happened until both ends suddenly seemed to snap to each other and combine. I now had a longer piece of the aliencord, as I decided it would be called, "It gets better. We can make rope. I don't need to shave any more tree bark!"

We went back and forth, getting enough fabric together to make three proper lengths of rope. I laid them out going away from each other, using my knife to draw an essentially even triangle to measure the points, and carefully moved the three strands together at the ends. As before, a second or two, and then they moved together. I grabbed the collection, examining them, to see they'd formed together perfectly, as all others, and without hesitating, started braiding it into proper rope, then connected the aliencord strands at the other end to finish off my nano-fabric rope, "Huh. Cool. Val, hold this."

Val took secure hold of the rope, and I started pulling away from Val. The rope went taut, but nothing seemed to happen aside from that. Then I let all my weight go backward, and while Val did need to use both hands, changing stance to keep from getting dragged, aside from that, the rope wasn't offended by the added weight, "Aw, we're gon' need t'test this bugger out on some real weight."

"Test", as it turned out, meant grabbing one of our handy-dandy container shells, and lashing it to hang from a branch. The container shell measured twenty-four inches across, sixty inches long, and eighteen inches deep. From there, we just started dumping rocks and such into the container, checking and rechecking the fabric rope. It held taut, no frays, and finally, as we were just looking a bit more into the shell, there was a loud break, and the shell hit the ground. It was not the rope that had snapped; it was the branch, having had far more weight put to it than what it was able to work with, "Well, hell, reckon that's as good a sign as any. I mean, some downsides to it, but great rope. Gotta be 'bout a ton of rocks in there, and it was the branch that broke."

Marila startled a lit, "How is nigh indestructible rope a bad thing?"

I looked over to Val, "I believe you'd be more able to answer that one, hon," Then went to sit for a moment on a nearby rock, and have myself a short smoke.

Val nodded, and turned to Marila, "Okay, so yeah, unbreakable rope is great in theory, but like, let's say we're climbing one of these mountains around us, and I start falling. Of course, the rope catches me, but you're still tied off to my line, and the tie-offs start to pull away from the rockface. There are only two options: I cut the rope to save the rest of the climbers, or we all fall and die as the ropes rip out of the stone. A self-healing rope does nothing to stop the fall, but it'll just about prevent option one, so what's left?"

Marila blinked, and didn't meet Val's eyes, "You... would kill yourself?"

Val shook her head, "Hey, it's not like I want to kill myself-" She hazarded a look toward me a second, mouthing an apology, and turned when I shrugged with a smile "- but in that sort of situation, where it's my life or all our lives... I'd like to think I would choose to spare the rest of you."

Marila considered for a moment, "Your species is way too cavalier about dying, but... thank you."

I slung up, "Well, as may be, but there's another issue: Tension. Ship's line on Earth is really strong, has to be. When I had to serve on one o' the hospital ships, they had us watchin' a video regardin' why not t'be straddlin' line on the ship's deck. Under pressure, if the line on a ship breaks, it'll rip across the deck at the speed of a bullet, and enough force t'rip your leg clean off. It's got the strength and force t'rip a guy like Trayg in two. Strength's a trade-off, so we need to make sure we're not puttin' it to its proper limit."

She nodded, "Aye, ships I'm familiar with. Okay, but this still solves a ton of work for us. We have almost infinite fabric, and strong rope to work with. This should let us tie everything we need down for the storm. I mean, it's not a watertight fabric, which would be better, but even as it is, we just got some pretty significant advances out of this... WAIT!"

We both snapped to, looking at her. A realization had struck, "Is... is this how humans advance?! You get something trying to kill the lot of you, and you just screw around with an idea until it can save you all?"

Val and I looked at each other for a few moments before she shrugged and nodded, and I responded, "I mean, it's a mite more complicated'n that, but I reckon that's 'bout on-target."