Journal Entry 42
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Day 42

you ever fuck up your sleep schedule in like two days, you stay up late the first day, then the next day you solidify it with sleeping eight hours mid-day and now its a bitch and a half to fix, that's essentially what happened. I woke up late, with the sun already descending on the forest, and rolled out of bed, Lupe following behind, one ear inside out, looking as tired as I felt. I rubbed his head, correcting the ear, and we walked into my main hall and ate our breakfast tiredly. I poked my head out the door, finding that it had snowed more, I thought I had arrived at the end of winter, but it seemed like I had gotten here at the beginning.

I walked over to one the last tree I had felled and started carving it up, even though I had sturdy snow walls, I wanted proper ones, which would allow me to get rid of the snow wall, clearing up a bit of space. It took a while, but with patience and several breaks, I finished carving, still feeling lethargic. I shook myself, scrubbing my face with snow, wide awake now, the cold shock reaching my face through my now thick tangled mess of beard and face. I looked out, seeing the sun creeping down, falling below the treeline, and decided to take another snow bath, quickly grabbing a fair amount of snow, and bringing it inside, and used my shovel to dig a shallow pit about 6 inches deep.

I started stripping, Lupe watching on in interest, as I grabbed handfuls of snow, and scrubbed myself down, the dirty water collecting in my little puddle, not spreading along the dirt floor. I then washed and dried my clothes, stepping out of my puddle with my nasty feet, and washed those last, enjoying the feeling of not wearing socks or tight boots for the first time in a while, as I usually wore the tight boots right before sleeping, leaving my socks on for extra warmth.

I was very comfortable in my home now, being able to take off my leather robe, and my steel toe boots. I laid back on my cold dirt floor and relaxed, Lupe, coming up and licking my face a little, before nestling up on my left, head as always, resting against the Manaphage. We laid there for a bit, the smell of lunch wafting into my nose, I rose to my feet, and for once put my shoes on instead of my boots, and immediately felt the difference. I felt pretty refreshed now, plans to wash daily forming in my head, seeing as it helped me feel immensely better.

I grabbed the hunk of meat and the roasting stick, before throwing on my leather robes and heading out, Lupe's leash in my other hand, as I gnawed on my comically large chunk of meat. We wandered into the forest, following our previous day's path towards the rock and hole, reaching it after an indeterminate amount of time, the sun having completely fallen behind the horizon, plunging us into darkness lit by the Manaphage and Lupe's orange-red stripe. We made quite a pair, two glowing figures walking through a dark forest, the smell of roasted bird-beast wafting through the trees.

Lupe kept pulling me down into the hole, but I pulled him short, sitting down, and I gave him a chunk of meat the size of his head from my half-eaten chunk of meat. He gleefully ate it down, as I ate another quarter of my chunk. My stomach comfortably full, I took the Manaphage and carved a hole in the rock, washed it out with snow, and placed the remains in the hole, freezing them, planning on either eating them when we came back, or taking them back home, I still had a fair amount of meat, but I still didn't want to waste any.

We started into the tunnel, and quickly arrived at the bottom, once again sliding down from the top. We looked around, before going in a completely different direction, probably chasing down a smell I couldn't sense. Instead of winding around trees and circling back and forth, Lupe seemed to know where to go, he went in straight lines, occasionally stopping to sniff and course correct. I was somewhat worried, thinking that it might be another pack of glow dogs or something, so I kept a lookout for any mysterious lights, or signs of wildlife, noticing that around knee level there were claw marks, and what looked like antler or tusk scrapes, indicating that there was, in fact, a lot of other animals down here, just that they either avoided me like the ones up top, or they had entered hibernation or something.

We continued on for another hour, still marking trees as we went, gouging out finger wide, one foot long cuts with the Manaphage, around head level. Lupe finally slowed to a stop, before sitting down, panting a little. I looked around before noticing a rather large tree trunk ahead of us, about twenty feet around, with a very different kind of bark. I rubbed Lupes head, before walking forward, and walking around the tree.

We found a large gap in the tree, with claw marks, similar to the double-cat, and very old. I inspected them, finding that there were many, and all had been worn deep. I was worried, as I didn't want to walk into a nest of the beasts. But Lupe pulled me inwards, and I figured that if he wanted to enter, he must not smell anything living, right?

We walked in, glowing our way forward, lighting up more claw marks, and finding even the slightest amount of dust having settled deeper in. soon enough we reached the center, finding that the tree was hollow, making a big ring, and there was a slope upwards, and downwards, penetrating both levels of the under forest. I stood in awe, having found a way to the next layer, and felt a pull on the leash, looking down, I saw Lupe lift a hind leg, and piss on the ground, finishing soon enough, and looking up at me with what seemed like a smug look, like he had just bested the double-cat.

I chuckled to myself and started to climb up the slope up, slowly winding its way up the walls. Eventually, we reached the top, another ring of trees, this time, however, they were not completely connected, leaving gaps between each other, large enough for me and Lupe to slip through. Finding ourselves completely lost up top. Looking around, I found a good spot to tie Lupe to a tree and told him to sit and stay, which he did, surprisingly. I started to climb a tree to find out where I was, hoping to find signs of the mountain, or even if I could see the light smoke from my fire. Nothing, not even the tip of the mountain, I must have walked quite a ways further than I thought, and clambered back down the tree, noting the moon as being well above our heads now.

I got back down, and cut down one of the trees around me, quickly draining it as soon as it fell. Drying it out all the way, the sour earthy bitter taste drying my mouth out, and after a while, it was done, and ready for what I wanted to do. I gathered up all the branches and leaves for an hour, piling them on top of the large trunk, and started a small fire in the trunk, stoking it to the point it was burning merrily in the cold night, before I hurried back down, speed walking away. I planned on looking for a large plume of smoke when I got back, hoping I could spot my third way down from the forest roof, and we started to jog back home.

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