Expanding The Settlment

March 22nd, 0001:

Once I woke up, I followed my normal routine of walking to the river to wash my face before, for the first time in a long time, I was planning to actually do my exercises when I was making my way to the fireplace to a kook. However, I suddenly noticed that the kids brought into the settlement were all sleeping on the floor surrounded by leaves.

It was only then that I remembered that we still didn't have any houses built for them. Still, since I had about an hour before everyone woke up, I decided that it would just be best to get some of my workout done before I spent what would be the rest of my day helping make houses for them.

Once I finished my basic workout, excluding both runs, I was stretching and getting ready for my first run; as I did so, I noticed that Leo was making his way over to me. And once he got to where I was, he began imitating what I was doing.

Unlike how he had acted when he was imitating Omar though, he seemed to be putting twice the effort that I was into doing the exercises but not because he had to, sort of like he was trying to one-up me. And since I had no interest in competing with a kid, I just sort of ignored him.

A problem did arise though when he tried to surpass me as I was doing my run because he was not used to doing this sort of thing although he was fit. And the last thing I needed right now was for him to hurt himself, so I was forced to slow down, which he thankfully didn't find odd or suspicious since he just went ahead, keeping a very slight lead over me.

And although it was slightly annoying that he found joy in belittling me, at the very least, he found joy in something and didn't totally emotionally shut down after his 'brother' died. Regardless, as time passed and I was beginning to hit the thirty-minute mark, I had noticed that he had almost completely run out of steam as, at this point, he was just slowly jogging, so I decided just to call it a day and stop.

He seemed so proud of himself at that moment, almost like he had proven his worth, as for who he was proving his worth to although I would like to say that I had no idea it was pretty clear, perhaps this was his way of coping with everything that had happened.

With that finally done, I boiled some water for both him and me to drink before joining everyone else in eating breakfast. Once that was done, the kids went their own way, and I stopped everyone except for the mother and soon-to-be mother keeping them near the fireplace.

From there, I just pointed at the kids and then at the houses before walking over to the pile of axes we had put next to the boxes of food. Everyone seemed to understand what I was getting at and immediately got to work chopping down trees as I once again drew lines representing the different measurements that we would need to use.

Things were going a lot faster than before, mainly because everyone had gotten a better hold of how to use an ax and make more accurate cuts and hits than they were back when we were making the first set of houses.

As we were building the pieces we needed, I could once again see a familiar figure approaching. This time though, he seemed to be accompanied by a limping boy that I had never seen before. I simply assumed that had been hiding in the middle of the group back then though.

When Leo approached, he seemed more docile than usual, no longer hyperactive and curious but rather calm and collected, he was like an entirely different person, and I was confused as to why until I saw him constantly checking on the person that was with him to make sure they were ok.

Once his friend made it over to where I was, he began examining the wood joinery designs with interest and was having a blast connecting and disassembling them. He was like a kid in a lego store. The only difference being that he had almost no variety in what he could select.

I was immediately intrigued, as he seemed to be really interested in figuring out how the joints worked even though he was using them himself. So I decided to pass him an ax and keep a close eye on him to make sure that he didn't get hurt.

As for why I gave a child a weapon, it was because all of the children looked to be no younger than 10 and everybody else looked to be in between the ages of 15 and 19-20ish, meaning that there were people who could use an ax without any problem that were only 5 years older than them.

Which although it seemed like a huge difference when seen through the lens of people able to live for a hundred years as their current age was just childhood, it became a lot less important from the point of view of people that only lived to be 20 as being 10 meant that they had already lived about half of their entire life.

Plus, if the kid actually had a talent when it came to things like this, it would be best to know as soon as possible so that I could focus on teaching him as much as possible; that way, he might come up with something useful in the future, that was only if he ended up having a talent related to this though, as he might have been just here because of pure curiosity.