The scurrying of tiny feet woke him. At first Alexei couldn’t remember why he was in a cave, but all that happened yesterday suddenly hit him and he was confused for a different reason.
Why am I not hurting from all my bruises, cuts, and sleeping on the ground? He began poking around and even removed his bandages that covered the shablin’s bite marks, but although the dirty bandages and blood remained as testament to their existence, the wounds were gone. “What happened this time?” He muttered to himself.
After spending too much precious time waking his brain up and trying to find out how he healed, Alexei squeezed out of his cave to greet the first signs of morning. Dew covered plants as the sky slowly began to brighten. Wrapping the hilt of his flint knife with some of the bandage he planned his day. First he would eat, then begin making baskets. He would need containers to hold the many items he would need to survive, and there were also some neat fish traps he could weave to solve his long term food problem. If he had time, he would look for clay and work on getting a pot to boil water in.
Uncovering and digging out his peachberry, Alexei took out another segment and reburied the rest. They were remarkably undisturbed, even by bugs which might not be a good sign. “Hope these aren't poisonous,” he grumbled to himself as he practically inhaled the delicious fruit. Once again a euphoric and cooling feeling flooded his body, reinforcing the feeling he was only now realizing was remaining from yesterday.
Marveling at the indistinct coolness that diffused in his body and hoping it wasn’t the effects of a poison, he decided to head along the river in hopes of finding something weave-able after checking on the plants he left to be eaten. Nodding his head, he walked over to the plants. Only two items were disturbed at all, a yam like thing with purple flesh and something that looked remarkably like lettuce.
Tasting the later, it even tasted like lettuce, but lettuce didn’t grow in tropical climates, so that wasn't possible. Pondering the oddly familiar leafs, he began his search for weave-ables along the river. After yesterday’s encounter, Alexei was more careful as he traveled, making sure to look up into the branches above him frequently looking for would be ambushers.
After an uneventful thirty minutes, he ran into a grove of a bamboo-like plant that seemed would make excellent baskets, so he began cutting thinner stalks with his knife which he would bundle with nearby vines. Finished with his first bundle he froze as he was headed back for more.
He had heard something. A rustling in the grove that could signal danger. As fast and quiet as he could, Alexei climbed a nearby tree and hid in the foliage as he waited for the danger to pass. Unluckily for him, it came closer until it passed just under his tree, heading for the water.
‘It’ turned out to be a small group of the shablins, females and children by the looks of it. They sat silently just in the water other than sudden strikes with their arms that usually were rewarded with a fish. This kept up until most had a struggling fish in hand, then as quietly as they came, they left back in the same direction they had arrived from.
These shablins had been eerily silent compared to the screaming and slavering male he encountered before. Was it a male vs female trait? Do they have a camp, or worse a den nearby? Alexei shook the thoughts from his head and pried his clammy white hands off of the branches he was holding in a death grip. The shablins had scared him more than he realized.
After waiting another ten-ish minutes by his count, he dropped out of the tree and began to harvest with more urgency. After making three bundles, he lashed them into a primitive backpack and headed back to camp. He would have to explore more later to find where to avoid, but for now he would try not to head into the jungle.
Arriving at what he now considered ‘his’ waterfall, he stopped to catch his breath. He had gone faster than he had meant to and was wiped out. The dangers were getting to him more than he had realized, which led to hasty and panicked actions. He would have to stay calmer if he wanted to survive.
After mentally scolding himself, Alexei put his makeshift pack down and sat with his feet in the river as he began to cut the bamboo into variously sized strips and soaked them to be used for baskets. He spent the rest of his morning preparing bamboo and weaving baskets as fish nibbled his toes, though he had to relearn a few tricks, such as needing an odd number of spokes in the basket. By noon, he had two fish traps, two baskets, and a sleeping mat.
The fish traps consisted of a basket and a funnel, which kept any fish that swam in unable to find their way out. It would be best to bait them, but if he should catch a few even without, so he immediately placed them in the water and anchored them with rocks. The other two baskets were larger, and one had two straps woven into it so it could be worn like a backpack. He would use these for gathering, which today would have been clay so he could hopefully have few pots done by tomorrow, but he had spotted some near his weaving spot that would hopefully do the trick
“Speaking of the pots, why am I not hungry yet?” He looked back over the last two days as he spoke aloud. “I have only eaten peachberry, and I haven’t drank any water. Am I getting sick?”
Only time would tell, and he was probably better off not drinking any water that hadn’t been boiled for safety, so he put those thoughts into the back of his head with the rest of the recent mysteries. These would need to be thought about, but not while he had more productive things to do. Time to dig up some clay. Since he would need water to work with his clay anyway he placed the clay just a bit onto the shore.
Once he gathered enough, he began to knead the clay and add water till it was malleable and smooth. He then rolled some into a long snake, and began forming his pots layers at a time. Since every five or so layers he would have to wait for it to dry and set a bit, he worked on three pots at once. The first was a semi-large pot for steaming and boiling water. It would have handles on either side that he could set on rocks and raise it above a fire. He then made a smaller identical pot with a lid for general cooking. The last pot would be for storing water, and would have a lid and spout. He would smooth out the clay as the layers were added.
Building up the pots took the rest of the day, but as the daylight dwindled Alexei looked proudly upon his slightly misshapen pots. He would have to put them somewhere dry overnight, then fire them, but just getting this far felt great. He hummed to himself as he lit another torch and carried them into his cave, placing them on a natural shelf one at a time.
While I have this torch lit, I should check a little deeper into these caves. He looked into the two tunnel entrances that went deeper into the mountain. After flipping a rock, he carefully entered the left tunnel and slowly made his way into the depths of the mountain. He kept looking around at the walls and ceiling looking for more openings, but it looked like the smooth passage he was in only went one way.
When did the walls smooth out? He was startled with this realization as he examined the tunnel wall more closely. It was extremely smooth, even polished. Looking around the tunnel was evenly cut into the mountain, appearing more as a passage than a natural crack in the mountain.
Maybe there was someone living around here in the past? Trying to keep his hopes up he continued along the path until he realized another shocking fact. He didn’t know when it happened, but his torch was out and he could still see fine. In fact, the light level was closer to a noontime daylight in the tunnel even though night had begun outside, and he couldn’t see where it was coming from.
Is the tunnel luminescent somehow? Pondering this and the other mysteries he had been accumulating, he decided to turn around. He would head deeper with the rest of his food tomorrow and see what he could find.
Getting out of the tunnel wasn’t too hard as most of the path was illuminated, other than the last stretch. Looking at the intersection of where the polished tunnel met mountain crack, he realized that the joining between the two wasn’t smooth at all, and the rock was a completely different material. It looked as if the tunnel had just appeared in the mountain, displacing anything that was there before. Either they had brought in a lot of material, or something else was going on.
Adding that to his mystery list, he continued back into his cave and began to fill the other tunnel entrance with stones. That third opening gave him a bad vibe, so he wasn’t going to sleep until it was blocked off.
He sourced rocks from the edge of the cliffs outside his cave and made quick work of walling off the tunnel. That finished, he placed his newly woven sleeping mat which was more to keep him off the stone than anything else, and settled off to sleep.
Thanks for the chapter.