The mighty Narwhal sat just outside the range of any falling pillars of the steel pile, should it become destabilized. However that also meant a grueling seven minute walk just to get into the shade of the steel pile around almost noon. And roughly noon it was as Jahwan rolled over to escape what light came in through the bubbled wide bow window.
Thunk
with a groan, one leg still on the bed, Jahwan awoke from glorious sleep. He couldn't head in until the afternoon, but he should probably check his pantry and make something on the griddle. With a few minutes of upside down staring at his cieling, and less directly the doorway to the rest of the narwhal, he stopped hoping food would magically waltz it's way towards his mouth. With a grunt of dissatisfaction he pulled himself to his feet.
Or tried, his hand slipping off the desk just to the side of his bed he fell into a pile near his spare parts he studied, with a couple clanks the small but precarious pile of items tumbled across his form. Jahwan was the epitome of not morning person. Most people were in the wastes. But somehow Jahwan's lack of corrdination after just Awakening in the morning trumped all challengers. One time he had been staying in a small commune for a while, doing g manual labor to get more fuel, when he woke up one morning, stumbled over his welding apron, fell into the engine room as it got caught in his legs, and managed to stop himself for only a few seconds by catching the steam release whistle cord and woke the whole commune. In doing so, startling himself, and faceplanting into the metal floor of the engine room. Sadly it didn't end there as after getting food and washing the one of only five plates he had managed to scavenge or buy, he had been walking towards the ramp to head out for his morning work, opened the ramp, and caught his shoelace on the release lever. He then tripped, and tumbled down the entire length of his ramp to taste the local dirt. What he found was it seemed more dry than he remembered.
But this morning he was in luck as he only stubbed his toe and burnt his fingers while trying to get the griddle locked in over the banked coals of the incinerator. Perhaps not healthy, but most stuff he burnt was wood or crystal anyway. He preffered to sell fuel to others in return for wood or crystal. Strangely crystals did leave a funny flavor on his morning tubers. It tasted sweet but gritty. Although compared to the typically bland flavor of sliced tubers, it was arguably an improvement. His grandfather had said they were some sorta variant of potato, but had less flavor. He also said something about being able to grind d it into dust and add water or something and eggs and he could bake it. Jahwan never did understand that. On a good day it already tasted like dust, why would he want to make it look like it too? And water was too much of a commodity, even if he had been able to increase the basin size. Then it might taste like mud. Which may also be an improvement.
At some point Jahwan promised himself to tame some of the whakacacks. They were flightless tiny birds that enjoyed eating what bugs could be found near plants. But he knew he'd need to trade a lot of crystals to get a breeding pair. Supposedly the eggshells were also pretty decent for things. Some said they were good for pottery if you smashed them up with water and dried them. Others said they burned nice and slow. Good for when you go to bed.
Jahwan finished his sliced tubers, and finished with that, began his daily chores and checks;
Plants: still greenish. Growing and the soil was still magically damp. He was glad he had thought of that drip feed pipe to put on top. A hassle, but we'll worth it.
Incinerator fire: a quick stoking and the coals glowed a little fiercer, they would be fine for a few hours still.
Bedroom: he looked in the door, kicked his spare parts back into place, and walked away, bed still a mess.
Stairwell and travel pole: thinking about it, he decided to head upwards. He could grab a broom and dust everything out on his way down today. And so up he headed.
Top floor corridor: the top floor corridor was rather narrow with closets and storage on either side, but then expanded into a room all it's own with a large water tank. Inside was his pride and joy, he had been around with his grandfather when he found something he called a "frij" and said that there was a part called a condenser coil. Having salvaged something for the day they finally headed back with their spoils, the condenser coil being what his grandfather called prime loot. Of course at the time Jahwan had no idea what made that piece of metal so special to others. But as he spent time with his grandfather his ability to engineer and under components rose to a masterful degree! At least considering the world's state.
They had worked long into the night to get the coil set up and able to work with the power supplied by the incinerator. But it had been worth it. Before they could support three people. Or two people and their little array of plants. But afterwards his grandpa had said they would be able to support as many people as the Mammothfish rigs. That was a lot. A mammoth rig was at least three times the size of the narwhal, and the narwhal was meant for three people tops! Now he could support five people and the plants for them, and maybe even let everyone get a bath on a daily basis! That was extravagant for him. As it was now though he would clean the pool daily and fish out chunks of ice. What a wonderful when he saw that for the first time!
Young Jahwan looked to his grandfather, a knobbly kneed stick of a man, but his wiry muscles we're well defined under his own leather wraps. The old man was peering through his rather overengineered goggles. They had extra peices of glass. When Jahwan had asked why, the old man had said; "sometimes I need to be able to look closer at things." Jahwan just assumed his grandpa was finally going blind. It certainly explained why he bashed his head on shelves so often. Didn't explain his sailors mouth though. That was a whole different barrel of fish.
The old man had taken the clear chunky thing that they had found floating in their water tank a few weeks after having set up the condenser and smiled to himself. He turned to his grandson and said, "why don't you see if you can fish out a couple more, we don't want those sticking on the condenser, keep that in mind while you do your rounds boy."
Young Jahwan nodded solemnly and turned to the tank of water, the play of light reflecting off the gently swishing water from the vibration of the Narwhal's engine purring away downstairs, his back to his grandfather. As he reached for a price of what he now knew as ice, he screamed as his grandfather cackled! The old man had pressed the ice to the nape of his neck!
Thinking back on the memory Jahwan smiled to himself. The will old bastard had taken any chance he could to play harmless pranks on Jahwan. Like that one morning he had rushed into the bedroom and yelled in his hoarse voice, "fire! We got a fire on the top deck boy! Geddup! We godda put out the fire!" Waving his weathered old pipe he used to get around frantically. Jahwan of course had tripped over his own feet, and ran up to grab the hose, when he came out on top of the Narwhal, there was no fire to be seen, but he faintly heard cackling of a will old bastard down at the breakfast table.
Jahwan finished knocking ice off the condenser, then turned to the machines beside it, one was the hose, he was lucky he had found such a long hose for this with his grandpa when they were younger. Since then he had made sure to keep a spare in storage once he'd found one. The other was a welder charger. By the power of finger sized crystal shards and a rechargeable battery that could charge off the incinerator, he had a mobile welder. Using the energy to start up a flame, and the crystal as fuel, by manipulating air and pressure it was able to produce a decently hot flame. Worked well too for starting up the incinerator when he let it die too. He had batteries downstairs, but those were mostly for emergency. Though he did need to run them down about once every 60 days to make sure they were fine. But they didn't do anything to help the incinerator start back up. Oh no, it was either the welder or flint and steel.
With his inspections done he checked the closets. Everything seems to be in place. So he grabbed the welder, hooked it to his right belt loop, and headed back towards the stairwell. On the other side sat a warehouse area, lots of hooks. It was very well insulated, even if it did look patchwork. His grandpa said something about cold storage, but he said they never found enough condensers. An unfinished projects he supposed. Looking in he saw a couple of steel drums, rather unprofessional in appearance, as they had been made by Jahwan, but they were water tight and had a loop, from which they hung on hooks in the cieling. He could never figure out why there were hooks in here. But his grandfather had said, to hold meat. Which was strange. When you had meat you needed to cure it with salt. But his grandpa was usually on the money. Maybe it had something to do with condensers. He wouldn't know until he had more. Oh well.
Everything in place jahwan opened the roof hatch with a bit of hesitation, this was liable to suck. And sure enough as he climbed the stairs to the top deck he immediately felt the pressure of the sun beating down mercilessly upon him and his poor rig. He had a set of sails that had been see together by him and his grandfather, just before the old fart had passed away like a fart in the wind. But that had been a couple years ago. Those first few months were truly the toughest for him. But his grandfathers teachings had helped him pull through. All those lessons with pipes and hand forged spears, the ways to hunt larger creatures, smaller creatures, and most important, how to scavenge. Jahwan looked across the bowsprit and saw the SteelPile in the distance. Seven minutes of hell he would be walking that. But not now. No he had to clean the stairwell and check on the lower floors. And so with his check on the sail and it's mechanisms done, he headed back down, sealing the hatch behind him.
On his way down to the engine room he grabbed the broom and swept on his way down, looking into the engine room, he saw the flicker of the incinerator, waiting, ever hungry for more. And then he promptly turned and walked into the kitchen. Inside the kitchen was a distillery which took water from the tank above, boiled it, turned it back into potable water, and then stored it in a big brass tank. Back when he was but a tiny little ball of bandages his grandpa would tell stories about making a flammable liquid using plants and water. Something he said they would drink. He remembered his naive way he looked questioningly at the fuel barrels. His grandfather roared with laughter, and said it wasn't the same thing. And that if he ever really wanted to try, he should do something with his tubers. He still had the instructions, he just didn't think he should do such a thing. However his grandfather also said it makes a good weapon, you put a strip of bandage in the top of a breakable container full of it, and you light it and throw it. He planned to test it if he ever found a Warren of beasts. But not today. He'd have to change over the output and clean the system out afterwards.
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The little metal chairs and table he had here in front of the pantry we're normal as always. Somewhat rusted, but still kinda shiny. The upholstery ruined by the weather where they scavenged it. So they had to tear it out and give it banded metal to be even mildly comfortable. Opening the pantry Jahwan counted his food rations. Lots of tubers, some peppers, and many jars of preserved veggies and pickled goods. Closing the pantry he wiped an oil stained finger across the top of the stove. It was set a bit low and wasn't as good at heating up quickly like the griddle over the incinerator, but it was useful for pickling things and boiling water. Soup was pretty good, but he always felt the need to fry up some time slices before putting them in. Dusting off the top of the half size stove he then opened the tiny little thing his grandpa always called an oven. It wasn't very big, certainly not enough for the big pot he cooked with. But he always wanted to use it. His grandfather had told him to scavenge whatever wires he could just outside the narwhal while he made them a treat. He said it was something from the family "cookbook". He was claled back in and had something he'd never tried before. His grandpa called it potato bread. Then looked off to the side and amended, tuberbread.
He still had the family cookbook. Called it an air loom. Whatever that meant. He tried to ask but was told, "it means my pappy gave it to me, and his to him, and now, I give it to you. Try out some recipes if you ever get the chance, and put new ones in. Its how our family works. Then someday when you find a nice girl, may e you can make her a nice meal." Jahwan just stared at his grandfather bewildered, after all, why would he ever want to do something like that? He knew his grandpa would make fun of him for it. "You must really like this girl, putting on your welding apron and breaking out the family cookbook!"
Looking back he wished that that moment could have happened. He would have been happy if he could bring a girl to see the old codger. Maybe get a few jokes in at his expense and say he'd have to teach a new generation how to be old and wise as the dust storms that come out his butt cheeks. Sadly that was never gonna happen. But he had an old picture of his grandpa. It was kept in a tiny metal and glass frame. It had cost them a bit of crystal to get one of the eccentric herbalists of the west to use his plants and pottery dyes for something like a portrait. But it was a good likeness, even if it was on chalkstone. It showed the old man, one arm around his grandson, as he knelt in front of the Narwhal, one hand on his whoopin' pipe, and one on the far shoulder of his grandson. His smile broken from yellowing teeth, his flyaway white beard, coated with sand. It had been a good day. He kept the picture in the sill in the kitchen, a little hoop kept it chained in place in the middle of the bubble window. Much like an old 70's car it bubbled outwards from the vehicle, giving space for something to hang. Like an herb pot. Jahwan kept a memory there. A very good memory.
Jahwan took a mildly clean rag and dusted the window before starting at the picture for a few seconds. He now wore his grandfathers old cape. It was a memento of a happier time. If not better. The one he had work. As a child was brown, made by his grandfather, hard worked leather, it was a good cape, but he outgrew it. He kept it in the closet near his workbench. Folded up, awaiting it's own child to protect from the wind and sand. But not now. Now was another day to survive. Jahwan blinked behind his goggles and swept the kitchen, pushing it into the stairwell and then down the bottom layer. Following his chaotic pile of dust down the stairs he looked around at what was both storage, and garden space. He nearly forgot he needed to check the restroom. Standing back up he looked at the one door in the stairwell that was most important for survival. THE BATHROOM. His grandfather had taught him much about everything necessary to keep the narwhal running. And especially how to make compost. Thankfully that was all pushed down the garden. It didn't make it smell better in the bathroom, but it helped the plants grow.
Slowly stepping back up the stairs, his boots clunking dully on the metal stairs, he opened the bathroom door. Stone tiles carefully chiseled and put into place using a mixture of clay and water. They'd been lucky to find that. He still had some. In case he needed to fix the tiles, or make pottery. His grandfather had told him that pots we're important. He wouldn't say why but he said they were decent for storage. Or plants. By that time Jahwan was a bit older and had started to wonder if his grandpa wasn't going senile. He'd heard tales of the old farts hearing words in the dust storms. Nonsense and crazy juice.
Walking in he examined the toilet. Seat seemed to be fine. Probably cold considering the sunlight wasn't shining in on it. The shower curtain was nothing more than a waterproof skin of leather cut into a square and hung from a metal bar. But it worked. The tub itself was something they had scavenged later on too. Before it was a tiny little thing made of hammed metal plates. Now it was a solid brass tub. It sadly did not see much use. Soapmaker he may be, but water was a commodity. For most people. He could probably water the sands outside for a while if he chose. But he was stingy with his water. After all, if his condenser ever broke then what was the big plan? He even hated that the toilet flushed using water. But his grandfather said if it didn't, then the system wouldn't work right and he'd have to either move it himself, or starve when the plants started to die from lack of nutrition.
So he put up with it. It usually sat in a container on the bottom level, an air vent to the outside world allowing dust in to absorb water, but also the horrid smells to get out. And over time it would break down into soil. Luckily in order to not deal with the new and the old mixing, he had a press inside. He just pushed down with the lever and it would push all of it to one side away from the pipe leak back to the toilet. That kept all the new stuff to the backside. And the fresh soil could be shoveled out onto the plants a couple times a year. After sweep the bathroom and wiping down the toilet with a soapy rag, he moved to the sink. The bathroom itself kinda jutted into the kitchen, as the engine took up all the space it could. Didn't seem to be an issue as the wall of the bathroom abutted the back of a counter, after that was the stove, and another counter. On the other side of the room not being stolen by bathroom space was the sink, a counter, and finally at the rear of the narwhal was the pantry, with the door by the sink counter. Most all sources of water flowed to the 'night soil' breakdown point. However the rest just flowed out through the trickle crop system. He had managed to put a filter on it to keep solid objects from passing it, making sure to put a T-junction pipe with a valve on it if he needed to change filters or just close the system for repairs.
With the bathroom finished he stepped out, closed the bathroom door, and once more stepped down into the belly of the Narwhal. Sweep the stairs as he went down with more dust, he contemplated sweeping it out the ramp, or putting it in a garden bed. Ultimately he ended up sweeping it outside. And so with sweep done, he stood at the ramp, staring off at the collapsed pile of steel in the distance, the wind warm and blowing against his face. He wished it we're at least blowing from the back and off to the side. He hadn't been able to use his sail for a week. It was starting to feel very costly.
Closing up the front ramp Jahwan checked on his plants, harvest a couple tubers, grabbed some gingots, and planted some cutting from them back into the soil. Gingots we're a strange plant, like if a carrot had extra carrot. But it had a sharp flavor and did wonders for the sinuses if you ground it up, the color was a splotchy orange on a pale background. There was a time his grandpa had squeezed some peppers and mixed it with ground Gingots... His nose ran so much, his grandad said if they could harness it, the Nawrwhal would never need to stop again!
Stuffing the Gingots into a pouch on the inside of his cape, he moved over and knelt before a seedling he had been growing. It was a strange one. He wasn't sure exactly when it was supposed to be done growing, but his grandpa had said that it needed a few years. By this point it was about the size of a tall bush, but had nothing to cover near it's roots. Based on stories of old he would have said it was a tree if it hadn't stopped getting taller last year. He noticed that it had made flowers a few months ago, but then they had died, and all that was left was some sort of nub on the end of many branches. Maybe it would be good for fuel, or it might actually grow something. He left it be. He wasn't in dire need of kindling right now. Or usually ever.
Squatting at the next planter, he grabbed up cucumbers and peppers. His grandad said that he had been surprised these buggers hadn't changed a lick since his days as a kid. Jahwan merely gave a mental shrug and he pocketed the ripe ones. He could pickle these and sell them at the next camp. After that he had a strange gourd tree. His grandfather had said he'd planted it when he were but a boy himself, and that when he turned 48 the thing finally started to produce. The gourds were surprisingly hard on the outside, but if you break them open along the top, you could scoop out the sweet fruit flesh inside. It was a treat he enjoyed once a week or so, and experimented with one or two other times. It made many gourds, but not all of them were ripe. They were shaped kinda like a banana if it were straightened, but larger and with rounded ends. The fruit flesh itself tasted like orange sorbet, and when left to chill in the water pool for a couple hours tasted even better.
Rounding out his crops was what looked like a couple fields of grass. These were all on one side. It was a mixed planter truthfully. This one was what his grandfather had called a grain. And after growing some he had bought some rough stone, made a wheel of it, stuck a handle on it, and then put it in the belly on a little table. He called it a millstone with the base he carved later. Jahwan never quite understood what he meant by grain. But they usually ate it as a boiled meal. Sometimes he would come back in and find more crispy crunchy bread, but he never found out where it came from. The one last thing his grandfather had taught him was to care for some tiny ball he kept in the kitchen, but he said it only needed some grain once a week. Speaking of feeding things, he needed to look through that cookbook later. He was a quarter of the way through, but it always made him hungry so he had to put it down and get food. Then he forgot because he had to keep traveling or fix something or scavenge or hunt. Always a busy day.
Jahwan brushed the grain apart to see the second crop in the planter. These were a root plant, they were totatos. These tiny brownish red things were said to be like sweet potatoes. So said old man grandfather. He also said that it's juices reminded him of a tomato. Jahwan knew not either of these things, but he did know you could juice the totato for some stuff that was orange in color and went pretty well with tubers or even gingots. But it REALY went well with meat. Otherwise he usually just sliced them up and friend them on the griddle, or he just baked it near the incinerator. Doing so caused it to lose all it's juice, but it brought out a delicious slightly sweet flavor from the totato.
Some of the most difficult of his crops we're actually hanging near the high windows, they made little bushes of leaves that all pointed at the window, and down the backside they sprouted out long vines which grew wierd pods. You could eat the pods, but most of the time you wanted to boil them. Teeny beanies were a strange thing. They made his grandpa fart all the time, and one time he made this stuff he called chili, which was really good, but another time he went through this relaly long process of soaking and straining and made this little reddish-brown cube and it tasted funny. Not bad, but it was funny. His grandfather said it was like a normal bean for baking got hitched with a soy bean, and the kids turned out alright.
Plants getting married. That time they were in a village and so he had someone else come check on his grandfather. They laughed and said he was okay, he was just weird, and that all the old people said things like that. This just made it seem more likely that something was wrong with his grandfather because if it was common among old people then that meant it had to do with being old right?
He tried that logic on the adult and even his grandpa cackled and said, "technically he's not wrong. It IS related to being old!" And then he laughed some more. Jahwan never did find out the answer to what was going on, but he learned it was mostly old people of a certain time. As he grew up he met other old people, and they usually just talked about how the dust was better when they were young and aether was cheaper to bargain for. It still made no sense, but it was a different kind of nonsense than his own grandfather, so he figured it wasn't JUST being old that caused it.
Collecting his hard eat he walked back upstairs and into the kitchen, where he busied himself with getting a pot of water over the stove and set it to a slow simmer, before adding in veggies and totato sauce. If he left it to simmer down until night fall he'd have some veggie chili for dinner. Looking forward to that he went to the incinerator, tossed in a forearm sized crystal, stoked the coals to a more fervent life, and then set off back downstairs, opening the front ramp, and seeing the sun beginning to set, started off for the SteelPile.