16 - Two Tents

We broke for lunch when I finished the notches in the supporting logs.

"I can't believe it's lunch time already," Katie noted.

"That's what happens when you work so hard all morning." Juliana said.

We ate chicken wrapped in the large maple leaves, with water from last night - still contained in the pink spiny rock-plant. While not a ham-and-cheese, we made do with what we had.

After lunch, we went back to work. I selected two sturdy trees at the edge of the clearing that were about fifteen feet apart. Once again using the Ancient as a lumber tool, I carved notches at head-height. Rope-sized grooves around the whole tree, and a sturdy notch on the clearing side of the tree, to insert the headpole without it being reliant on the rope to hold it up. Meanwhile, the other two wove ropes. They had a few solid lengths by the time I repeated the process for the second tree.

I dragged the logs I had worked on in the morning to the trees, and awkwardly lifted the top bars to lean against their respective trees. I lifted the other side to confirm the notches worked. The first one I had done slipped out of its notch, crashing to the ground. I cursed as it vibrated in my hands.

It attracted the attention of Katie and Juliana.

"If you needed help, you could've asked!" Katie shouted at me.

"I know. I didn't want to interrupt what you were doing."

She was halfway across the clearing when she spoke again, "Well now you have. What do you need help lifting?"

"I've got the lifting down. But if you have enough rope done, it would be nice to start working on these." I said, gesturing to the legs.

"I can do that."

She left and came back with a bundle of twine, which was the best rope we had for the time being. I helped her align the crossed tent legs, then went back to carving the tree for support. I dug deeper into the notch I had made for the top post, then tried it again. It held now. It just needed its own rope.

I untangled a longer piece - about six feet - of twine from Katie's pile, getting a playful glare as I moved back to the tree with it. I thread the twine through the hole I had drilled, and the top bar was ready to assemble.

Katie was done wrapping the connection moments later. I inserted the top in my notch in the tree, and lifted the other end, suspending the other half over my head. I had Katie hold it while I lifted the crossed legs to support the other end. She set it down, and we had a tent shape assembled.

She tied the bar to the legs while I tied the other rope around the tree, looping it back around a second time.

"What's next?" Katie asked.

I looked it over. "We'll have to cover it, but I haven't thought about how."

"I'm sure you'll think of something." she said, looking over at me with a smile.

"We'll for sure need to use branches to structure it, probably lighter ones."

Katie thought for a moment. "What if we wove the large leaves between branches? Then layer the leaves to make it leak resistant."

"That would work. I'll split the logs we have to make lighter branches."

I went over to the log pile, which was inconveniently on the complete other side of the clearing. I pushed my sword through one of the logs, and the Ancient once again overperformed, splitting it in half, as I wanted.

I repeated the process for another twenty trees-turned-logs, felling a few more to make sure I had enough. I dragged over a few to the tents space, where Katie was struggling to lift the crossed legs while holding the top bar.

"You could have asked for help." I said as I stepped in and lifted the triangle support. Her face showed relief, and her struggle was easily resolved. She handed me a length of twine to wrap the end like she had with the other. When we finished, I stood back to inspect our work. The two "tent frames" were angled slightly towards each other, pointing toward the center of the clearing.

"I know the plan was to make them two different tents, but it might be better to make one roof, and combine them." Katie suggested.

"I guess it could fit more of us, too." I added.

"That might be asking for collapse, especially if rain piles up on the roof." Juliana pointed out, coming up behind me with a bundle of twine.

"Rain would just roll to the right," I noted, "the right one is just a little lower. But if we get snow here, that would be a problem."

*Snow does appear during about a fifth of the year.* the Ancient commented, and I relayed.

"These tents seem like they're going to be temporary, anyway," Katie said.

"But we have the temple we can rest in. Why should we build temporary shelters just to take them down when we build new ones?" Juliana asked.

"We need to be familiar with our materials," I said, "video games have this kinda right, 'we can't make something we don't have enough skill to make'."

"So we're learning how to build housing by building bad housing?"

"We learn from our successes, but we learn faster from our mistakes." I said.

"I'd rather not make any life-threatening mistakes."

"I would too."

We talked more about it, and decided to make them separate tents like we had planned before. The first was done before it got dark, and Juliana practiced with the Sorceress to light a fire we could sit around for dinner.