Kyuse lay in the sun, enjoying the pleasure of the light; it still filtered through a few leaves, as he'd discovered, to his chagrin, that he'd overlooked the obvious problem in his plan to have a house up here, which is that trunks got narrower as you went up. The final platform, in the lower portions of the canopy, was woven from dozens of strands of narrow limbs, and swayed in the wind; utterly unsuitable to live on, but a nice place to get some sun.
His waterwheel project had been, so far, a dozen different failures, and he'd discovered that his barrel of water rapidly turned into a breeding ground for insect larvae; he just couldn't form a lid that formed a proper seal. It was utterly unsuitable for any of the purposes he had; he'd dumped the barrel, and left it upside down, until he figured out a better solution there.
The wall around his encampment was complete, and he'd even managed to make gates, of sorts, although he had to physically pick them up and move them. Hinges were well beyond his capabilities, even after he'd discovered that fish were a source of oil; he had to cook them first, but a wooden lever press could extract a small amount of oil. That hadn't been his intention, he'd just been trying to crush the meat and bones into a uniform paste, as he'd discovered that the spined fish that were always on the bottom of the river had really sharp bones that didn't cook soft. He wouldn't have bothered, except they had a different flavor than the other fish he'd been eating, and any variety in flavor at this point was welcome.
He'd also given in and tried two types of berries. The first had resulted in him spending a lot of time over the next few hours rushing to the latrine he'd dug, which was, while unpleasant, not terribly surprising. The second had resulted in uncontrollable vomiting, which when he started vomiting up blood, instead of dry-heaving as he had expected, had thoroughly put him off trying any more berries.
He'd had more luck with mushrooms, a source of food he hadn't expected at all. There was a yellow variety that grew in shelves on the trunks of some of the older trees which was particularly tasty, when cooked; it tasted like chicken, with a dash of acidity, and he ate it whenever he found a mature patch. The next mushroom he'd found had been a familiar plain white bulb, another variety of wood mushroom, and it had a solid earthy flavor. He tested the white mushrooms, now, however; there was a variety that looked similar, except it bruised blue, that had given him three thoroughly unpleasant evenings until he figured out the difference; the first evening he spent convinced that his fur was infested with spiders. The second, he wasn't entirely sure what had happened, but his loincloth had gone missing and he spent hours digging burrs out of his fur; he only had a vague memory that a woman was out to steal his books and he had had to stop her. The third evening had apparently been spent woodwarping faces, and in some cases just the impression of eyes, to stare from trees, again without a clear memory of what had happened. He still startled himself walking around, now; his little tract of forest had become thoroughly creepy, faces and eyes peering out of the bark in every direction.
But that was down there. Here, there was light, flickering a thousand shades of yellow and red as it filtered down through the gently swaying leaves. It smelled of autumn; he'd gotten used to the earthy scent of the forest floor, and hadn't realized how pervasive the musty scent was until he got up here, and could practically taste the leaves on the wind.
The platform swayed with a particularly strong gust; Kyuse moved a hand, to dig in with his claws if it got any worse, but it settled back down after a moment, swinging lightly to and fro. He should head down; he needed to make dinner, and maybe collect a little more of the fish oil. He wasn't entirely certain what he'd do with it yet - it was a viable candidate for oiling an axle for a water wheel, if he could get the wheel to be circular enough to actually rotate, instead of immediately catching. But even alternating between whittling and regrowth, he'd failed at that task so far; the axle and small wheel he'd made to test with had required a lot of force, and the wheel kept catching.
Hm. Maybe it didn't need to rotate freely at first, though. He could let friction grind the wood down a bit. Kyuse sat up, the motion causing the platform to sway again, mentally picturing it. He'd given up on the axles he'd made so far because he couldn't rotate the small wheel by hand, but a larger wheel ... he crawled across the platform, feeling a little more energized, and starting scaling his way down the very rickety ladder he'd made up of twined wood, more like vines in appearance, down to the highest level of the spiral stairs.
The stairs themselves took a while to descend, his thoughts whirling as he made his way down. The spiral had ended up requiring nine loops, and had gotten increasingly spare with materials as he ascended; here on the upper levels, he didn't have steps so much as slats, through which he could look down and see his house far below.
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He leapt the last flight, landing in a crouch on the soft ground, his joints popping lightly with the sudden strain, then rose and started at a fast walk towards his materials section, where he had his best axle sitting on a pair of V-shaped ... well, sawhorses, kind of. He'd tried to work out how to make a lathe, but ran into the same problem, only in miniature; the v-shaped wooden brackets had been an alternative solution, fixing his knife with a bit of grown wood to the bracket, and spinning the axle-in-crafting by hand. He examined this work; it was round enough, he decided, and moved to a nearby tree, to start growing out a long spoke, with a roughly circular hole in the middle. He'd begin with that.
Once mounted on the axle, which required a few good kicks for lack of a hammer, he discovered his next issue; the ground was in the way. The spoke couldn't spin freely. So he tried spinning the axle, which immediately caught; too much friction, not enough torque. He spent a few more minutes growing a new pair of very tall V-shaped brackets, and moving his ladder to heft one side of the axle onto one side, then over to the other to heft it there; the side the spoke was now firmly wedged onto was heavy, and his ladder creaked. He took a moment to reinforce that, as well; it was living wood, at least for another couple of days. He'd had to replace his ladder a few times now.
The spoke could now spin freely, which, predictably as he watched it happen, just spun the axle on the brackets it was resting on. The ladder was moved back to the side opposite the spoke ... then paused, spinning the spoke again, and watching the axle spin on the brackets.
It took an hour to move the entire assemblage to the river - he had to kick the spoke back off to move it at all, it was just too heavy together without dragging, which he didn't want to do. Nurture and woodwarp turned a couple of seeds into a new pair of brackets, which, after he got the axle mounted into, just underneath his little wooden aqueduct, he then woodwarped around the axle, without touching it; if he overloaded the side on the river, he wanted time to put counterweight on this side, instead of just having the whole assemblage tip over into the river.
Kyuse retrieved the spoke, but then was struck with the problem of the construct of the wheel itself; he had nearly tossed it in the scrap pile to start over again when a solution presented itself, and he pulled it out into the river, and grew the next spoke around the first, slightly off-center, but on opposite ends to be balanced. Well, in a traditional wheel, this would be four spokes. Paddles were added to both ends, and he cut off the connection to the submerged branch he was using. Two more, again winding them slightly off-center, and then he was confronted with the issue of actually mounting it; it was too heavy to lift.
He considered a rope, but there wasn't a branch overhanging the river that could support the weight. Then again ... he just grew the branch dipping into the water he had woodwarped the spokes from, forming a hard flat surface underneath the wheel, and then to slowly woodwarped to shove it up into place; he grew out some steps to climb up as it was pushed, maneuvering the wheel from a horizontal to a vertical position carefully; he wasn't sure if the spokes would actually support the weight. A couple of good kicks - the first sent him into the river, and he had to climb back onto his pedestal, but he braced himself for the second - got it seated.
It wasn't quite the waterwheel he'd originally envisioned, but the paddles slowly, laboriously, began to move in the flowing water; he glanced back at the axle. He did need to add the counterweight, it was pulling up, hard, on one of the support bracers.
The counterweight ended up just being a large disc he grew out over the end of the far end of the axle, adding to its dimensions until the axle sank back down into the brace. He reinforced the braces, and after the rotation had completely stripped the bark from the axle and braces, added a small amount of the fish oil, pouring it over the wood as it turned. It didn't seem to make much of a difference, but he'd try adding a little each day.
He now had a rotating wheel. Kyuse headed back and collected one of his ropes, and returned. He wrapped it around the axle, approximately where he wanted it twice, and then knotted it into a loop. The knot stuck for a few rotations when it reached the axle, and then fell free.
Woodwarp created a fist-sized cup - granted that his fists were rather large - which he had to unknot the rope, knot through the cup, then reknot into the loop again, to integrate. It gracefully followed the rope up, around the axle, and got caught in the loop. He spent a few more minutes using his knife to cut a small spiral groove in the wood for the rope to follow, so it wouldn't wind back over itself, and then the cup followed the rope around the axle, back down to the river, filled up, promptly dumped its contents out, and rode the rope back up.
It took a few minutes to work out a cup design that would work, with a lip to hold the water in, with only a small aperture. These were knotted in interval along the rope after a quick test, and water started rising up the axle, and dumping back down. A wooden halfpipe was extended out to connect the cups to his wooden aqueduct, and he had a trickle of water.
Following the dripping pipe back to his house, it was indeed a trickle by the time it arrived, but he held a wooden cup out into the fingernail-sized stream of water, and after a minute or so it was full. He took a sip, and then leaned over to spit it back out. He'd let it run a little while.
That evening, he cooked stew, and didn't have to lug a bucket back and forth. There were a lot of improvements to be made - he really needed some kind of cistern that wouldn't turn into a breeding ground for insects, in particular - but it was functional, for now.