8 - No teacups in the house ...

Jiushu entered her bracelet before she so much as fell half way down the hole.

'Thank god I can hide here' is the only thing she could think as the surroundings around her changed rapidly.

Tink…

Tnk..

..

Tin…

The bangle fell down the hole and came to rest at one of the ledges. Jiushu looked outside from the window. Only darkness of an abyss greeted her.

Damn.. she could not get out, for she will step right into abyss. She could see why such a big rock formation has stood so stably without sinking.

It's hollow all the way inside, like a giant snail has crawled out and left the shell here. Perhaps it did, for this is another world, even if there was a snail of that size, it will merely decompose after dying.

Who knows what prehistoric age of this planet looked like?

I digress.

She is stuck on a ledge, and can't get out. Even if she assumes MoQiu is going to be a good Samaritan, and come to rescue her after the debacle she caused, how is he to know where she is?

For one, she knows if she is lost, she must stay in one place and wait for rescue. It's a common knowledge taught to children on steppe. What to do.. What to do?

As she looked at the simple oil lamp in her room, she had an idea. She lit a stick and threw it down the hole. There was no sound of it hitting ground.. Damn.. she swore. It wouldn't be that the rock formation starts at the base of the mountain and then hollows all the way till the top, would it? She wondered. It's not impossible. Such caves existed. Finding them has a probability of one in million, but as a matter of course, they existed.

She could not keep throwing firewood down, for the amount she has is limited. She wandered around in her space, looking at the granary and storage. She probably wouldn't die of starvation, but she couldn't live on just rice. She checked the wild vegetables she has. Except for Chinese gold thread, she did not think others ever made it to being at least backyard gardens, even in supremely health conscious twenty twenty. 

Now she has time, she explored space. First she looked for information on granary. There are almost nine hundred cattie of rice grain, and a hundred cattie of rice. Thankfully, she insisted on storing the rice that's finished yesterday, or she would have been stuck here with just rice grain. There is no bowl to hold water, but she does have water, so she has to figure a way out. It is then she got a surprise. Other than vegetables and mushrooms she stored, the storage contained the rice straw.

Hmm…

She needs either jump into this abyss, or spend time within the space.

For abyss …

She doesn't know how deep it is.

She doesn't know if air at bottom is breathable. If it is not breathable, she will be stuck in the space forever.

For staying in the space..

She has plenty of rice, but no pot to cook it in.

She has plenty of water, but no trough to put it in.

She has some firewood, but not enough to live forever.

…

..

.

.

It's the decision between a bad place and a worst place, and she has no idea which among them is bad, and which, worst. Jiushu rallied herself. She is Jiushu, the unyielding. She will just have to find a way. Then, she had an idea. The lighted stick fell down with no sound. That means the hole is big enough to swallow it's light and sound. However, smoke will always move up, no matter how big or small the tunnel is.

Jiushu retrieved rice straw from storage. One acre's worth of rice straw fell down everywhere haphazardly. The space is the equal size of barren land and field. So, she had enough space to place straw, but it did not come back in nicely stacked bales like other villager's. she sighed and started gathering the straw, then threw it down the window. The work is monotonous, Jiushu gave a holiday to her brain. Soon, all the straw is thrown down. After that, she lit a sturdy stick on fire, threw it down the window.

What happened next, she couldn't have imagined. It is at once her answer and her nightmare. It is said that someone who lives infinitely, runs chance of getting imprisoned infinitely. It's just a simple probability. She has the feeling she is now infinitely imprisoned like that immortal, for, with the light stick she threw in, the cave caught on fire.

Fortunately, the burning heat did not have any effect on the inside of her space, but Jiushu could not predict how long it would last. The fire raged outside. She stood there, watching the flames in stupor for almost two hours. Then she decidedly turned away from the window, starting on the tasks she needed to do for longtime survival in the space.

First, she picked another sturdy stick, drew out a square three times the size of the water collecting rock bowl. She started digging along the edges, to make sure she will not lose the borders. The day turned into night, but the pond barely has its borders dug out. Jiushu is almost dying of thirst, but she held on. If she pours out the water without a plan, she will not have a drop to drink.

Since the borders are done, she stood at the pond's edge, releasing water in the middle. It must be said, the water has great momentum even if it's only for a moment. The water immediately rushed towards gutters she dug out, though they are more like trenches, and then splashed outwards, wetting all the loose soil around. However, this time around, the water did not flood any other places, like the very precariously standing house.

She drank water greedily with her hands. After all, she is almost at the stage of dehydration, it's not like she has an audience. So, she drank mouthful after mouthful, almost choking with the speed she's trying to drink. She controlled herself and drank slowly. The water couldn't taste sweeter. Once she drank enough, she stumbled back, laid on bare ground, stared blankly into the sky. The hopelessness of her situation dawned on her slowly.

The exhaustion set in after a moment. Jiushu slept like that, tired beyond words, with only water in her belly. She woke up with gnawing hunger, sore muscles and a bad headache. Regardless of how awful her situation is, she just needs to trudge on. Thus, she picked up the three stones she decided to make a stove with and made the primitive stove.

It is nothing but three stones placed in triangle shape, and clay put on them till they are like three mounds, making three points of tripod. The firewood is placed in the middle. She did not bother with starting a fire, she directly lit one from the fire in the window. She has rice, but no pots. She selected another short but really thick tree trunk from the firewood.

She mixed rice straw with some sticky looking mud from the pond and patted around it. When she is done, it's as if the little wood is wearing a hat. She took the stick with the hat and stuck the hat in the window to fire it. She lined it so the hat's edge would coincide with the window's ledge. She left it like that, returned to have a meal of wild vegetables.

Once she's done that, she starts digging the remainder of the pond, increasing the height of the boundary of the pond. As soon as the pond finished, she made another little clay bowl, this one, only the size of a fist. She offered her prayers to the angel with it, throwing the water down the fire rather than leaving it anywhere in her space. She had no idea at the time, how this is the moment butterfly flapped her wings, how this little action is the stone that changed the course of the river of fate.

She removed her own clothes, wrapped around the sturdy stick to remove it from the window. She put it on the stove, so she can cool it slowly. This is all flying by the seat of her pants. The pot did come off the stick, but it's a very weird shape, like someone made a round clay pot with bubblegum then hung it on a stake. All the same, jiushu would be thankful enough even if it were nothing but a tumbler.

She vowed to herself she will get bamboo shoots first thing tomorrow, even if she has to walk ten miles for it. If only she had bamboo, she need not have rushed to make this makeshift clay pot. In the first place, her main meal of the day is bread. However, bread seems to be almost unheard of here. There are steamed Mantou, but they are not what she's used to. Even if there were, all of them require far more tools, stone age, bronze age or steel age.

All she has here is the firewood she picked up and rice straw. She left the pot on fire and slept. It will cool in it's own time, if it did not turn out well, she will make another tomorrow. Anyways, she seems to have plenty of mud and straw for now.

The rice is harvested at night as usual. This time Jiushu waited for it, cut off all the tubers of Chinese gold thread. She knew that the root tubers had to be cut to plant. Only, she did not know how they were to be cut. Jiushu decided on keeping it simple finally. She planted all the other tubers as is. One is cut horizontally to plant, another is cut vertically. She marked those locations.

She laid down to rest only after planting all the other wild vegetables, whether it be a leaf or seed. After all, even mosquito meat is still meat. An acre is a large amount of land. Since she is skipping on paddy, she needs to at least like to fill the space as much as possible. The morning after dawned just the same as the previous one.

She is too scared to look at the field. Thus, she looked to the window as soon as she finished her morning routine. The fire is still going on strong. She brought the fire in, lit the stove. Her designer pottery sat pretty on top of the three prongs she set up, somewhat crooked. There were three indentations where she set the pot on her stove. The outward indentation that happened accidentally is stuck exactly like that. Rest of the bowl settled somewhat lower, like melted glass frozen before it could lose shape.

All the same, Jiushu dipped the bowl in water. Thankfully, the water did not all percolate. Some of it remained. What she has now would be enough for today. Tomorrow, she has to release one more rock bowl. She has a hundred and nine tanker size water left, but if the water keeps percolating every day, she will go lacking water in two hundred days. Jiushu did not worry about it. After all, this is the world of angels, and if an angel did not help even at the time of her worshipper dying, then her life is probably only till here. For a moment, Jiushu basked in her own coolness for fearlessness in face of death.