Closed These Times Of Change

[Karin]

50th Winter 516 AV
On Syka Beach
"Speech"
"Others"

The sweet waters of the Suvan washed idly at the shore, dragging cherry-red strands of lace-like seaweed in it's wake. Karin buried her toes contentedly in the warm water as she lay flat on her back on the shore. She gazed at the studding clouds through lazily half-closed eyes, but despite looking the picture of relaxation, she was a whirlwind inside. It had been just a few days since coming to the conclusion of building a more permanent structure, and she had revisited the bungalows on numerous occasions to understand their construction.

Now she was planning. The young Svefra's ramshackle shelter that she had constructed was adequate, but nowhere near good enough to act as a permanent place of residence. And she was determined to stay and weather it out. The past few days had been tough, but the days wouldn't stop in their endless ticking of time for a bad mood, so Karin forced a smile into her mind each day. She was getting more natural at it too. The surroundings were the main reason for that- the woman couldn't help but fall in love with the ocean again and again each time she woke. The endless sea stretching out in front, and the lull of the tide on the crystalline sands, the long stretches of shadow and light that played over the horizon as the sun set, even the chirruping of birds in the mysterious forest behind her.

The jungle was somewhere she needed to explore more, primarily because she had realised that to build a house, one needed wood. Driftwood was all well and good, but solid, long-lasting wood could only be found in the thick jungle. She baulked at the task of going into the impenetrable depths, especially because of how unnatural it was to someone more at home in water than under boughs. But it was neccessary.

Karin absently traced squares in the sand beside her, and ate some fruit she had found earlier, the juices dripping down her chin. Pushing herself up, she grabbed a handful of salt water and hastily washed her face clean, before walking back up the gently sloping beach towards her existing shelter. As she drew nearer, it became instantly clear that she would need a proper structure, and soon. The shack was squalid, dark, and poorly made. Her shipwright's mind frowned at the hasty construction, and the already wobbly-looking design.

It wasn't in a good location either- both too close to the trees and not far enough on the shore. She frowned, and picked up her quarterstaff and her hardly used journal, as well as a pot of ink and bent quill. Then the young woman walked steadily across the beach. She was looking for the best possible location. Her eyes didn't look for solid ground, nor indeed what might usually be considered good building land. Instead, she scanned for a stream, knowing she had seen one the day before. She also looked for relatively high ground, at least in comparison to the rest of the beach. She knew from first hand experience the anxiety of wondering whether the sea would be lapping at her feet in the morning.

She walked a fair way, travelling away from the still unknowingly named 'Treasure Point' further towards the Mercantile. Finally, the woman found the stream she was looking for. It was a decent channel, that faded into the sand halfway down the beach before re-emerging as it joined with the sea. Karin was glad to see too that the ground was a little more pulled away from the sea here, slightly raised. She grinned, her teeth showing white in a significantly more tanned face than she had ever had before. Here was the spot. She knew it. The view was beautiful, and as she bent down to dip her fingers into the stream, her fingertips graced against something hard. Withdrawing clasping the whatever it was with a handful of muddy sand and grit, the young woman gazed at a perfectly formed white shell. She washed it, and held it in her hand delicately, before running down to the seashore and throwing it with all her might into the foaming Suvan.

Laviku hear me. I return your creation, and ask you to bless me. I live for you. Thank you for this, for everything. Thank you!

[Karin]

"Speech"
"Others"

She walked back up the beach, through the stream. It's cool waters refreshed her feet, washing away the sand and the tiredness in her blistered toes. The site that looked right was just up ahead. She stepped out of the stream and walked around it's perimeter, kicking away any loose stones or debris that would be in the way, until the area was neater than the rest of the beach it was situated on. Karin dropped her bag in the centre of the space, and looked up into the jungle.

It was dark through the trees, but not the same kind of darkness as nighttime. Instead, there was a certain, heavy greenness to the place. The air was thick with the scents of leaves and blossoming flowers, and loud with insects and animals, somewhere in the depths. She began walking towards it. The sounds were so different than the clean, crisp sounds of the ocean, where the surf was loud and sharp. Here, sounds were cloaked in a different kind of wilderness, outside of her understanding.

It was like stepping into a building, she thought. Once underneath the canopy, she glanced around. Her aim was to look for wood and timber. Initially simply to stake around the outside of her new building site, so that she could find it again. The day was already halfway gone, so she knew she wouldn't have enough time to begin building a new shelter at this spot. Instead, she would begin working tomorrow.

Her head whipped round as she heard a rustling in the trees to her left, but it was only a monkey, wide-eyed and virtually indistinguishable from it's background. Karin stared at it until it let out a shriek and swung away, and then continued to scan the scenery. By now, she had ventured a little way into the jungle, and it was beginning to get very difficult to navigate. Although the trees were tall to steal Syna's light, plants still flourished on the jungle floor. Karin knew, because she was fighting with huge ferns that scratched her arms and made her sneeze from spores and pollen that detached as soon as she disturbed them.

Her hands pulled the leaves away roughly, and she half-fell out of the thicket, stumbling across a fungus-covered log. A flock of multicoloured birds all took off at once, beautiful if not for the guano they left in their wake. Karin swept a hand across her forehead, and sighed deeply. She knew exactly why she hadn't wanted to venture into the rainforest, and it was because of this.

Yet she could still just about hear the ocean, and feel it's distinctive tug. The Svefra began to turn back, spotting a faint animal trail in the ground that made walking a slight bit more easy. It was as she was getting closer and could see the white of the beach that she spotted a ripe target. Some young tree had fallen, it's roots were rotten, meaning she could take the whole thing. It was only a small tree too, and the beach wasn't far...

The young woman grabbed the branches as firmly as she could, and dug her feet into the soft ground, and then she pulled. The tree shook, and she fell backwards as one of the branches she had been holding snapped. But she tried again. Grabbing her knife, she unsheathed it and began to cut the remaining few links between the tree and it's rotten roots, then took a strong grip of the branches again. This time, as she began to huff and heave, the small tree started to follow her as she tugged it out onto the beach.

By the time she got to the sands, she was red in the face and sweating copiously. The sand proved more difficult to traverse too, so although she was a few metres too far away from where she had wanted to be, she simply sunk down onto the beach next to her conquest and took a rest. A large cockroach fell out of the roots and scuttled back towards the forest. Karin swept her hair back from her face, and considered her next move.

[Karin]

"Speech"
"Others"

The young tree she had requisitioned was an uncomfortable seat, but then that wasn't why she had taken it. After her rest she felt more energised, and stood up to stride towards her site. The tree she had would work well as it had many branches, she decided. So she jogged back to the tree, and sized it up with a focussed look on her face.

Then, rubbing her hands together, she began. She had a knife, but nothing like a saw. The latter would have helped better than what she planned, but it was difficult considering she didn't have one. So instead, to break the branches, she used her bare hands. Using the trunk as a prop, she pulled with all her might, and snapped the branches off one by one by one. Each was still covered in small twigs and little leaves that fluttered off like feathers from an animal carcass around her, until the beach was virtually green.

But she had a decent pile of branches, and she began to carry them to the patch of sand she had cleared. It was growing hotter, or at least that was how it felt. The sea kept beckoning it's finger, the cool of the water would be the perfect balm. But she persevered, almost doggedly. Her fingers were torn in places, and had numerous little splinters and cuts that climbed her arms. But she grabbed the first branch, and drove it into the sand with a grunt. Then the next, and the next, until she had driven each branch into the ground, making a roughly square plot.

Finally, with protesting muscles, she walked back to the now bare log, and dragged it to the plot. By the time she had finished everything, Syna was beginning to fall out of the sky again. The afternoon was in the latter stages of it's life as she dove into her pocket and ate the last portion of fruit she had picked, now bruised and vaguely fermented. The sharp, bitter tang of the skin left her mouth feeling alive with flavour. Her stomach rumbled, but by now she had got used to the feeling of never quite being full, and ignored it.

The day was good. Tomorrow work would begin anew, but for now she had somewhere to look forward to living, properly.

[Karin]

"Speech"
"Others"

51st, the following day

The Svefra was glad, when she arrived at the shelter spot, that her stakes had not disappeared in the night. It was an unlikely outcome of a night's log-like sleep, but it was still a small kind of relief. There were several things to be glad of that day too. One was her newly purchased saw, a fiendishly sharp object that seemed to gleam with unnatural shine in the bright, airy light of the jungle beach. There was another purchase, and this was a spade that protruded from the sand at a funny angle where Karin had haphazardly placed it. Each were brand new to the woman, who had bought them that morning from the Mercantile, as James had been opening. There was a certain excitement about obtaining new equipment. She had little money to spare, but although in many aspects she was quite tight with her mizas, when she needed to she didn't hold back what might be useful.

They would be useful too. There were tasks that could only be done by the right tool. Her hands, and sticks, and knives, wouldn't help when faced with construction such as this. So she rolled up her sleeves to the elbow, and began.

First came the levelling of the ground. Her first impression was that the beach was flat, but she walked the surface a few times, then lay down, then remembered she had a level in her pack and got it out to see that it was certainly not level. That meant digging. The sharp of the spade bit into the sand, and Karin shovelled and shovelled until she had exposed the earthier sand underneath the drifted dune-like, fine sand that lay on top. That was important, she felt, because living with only the dunes underneath her had shown that they were not as stationary as one might think. You couldn't build anything on something that moved. That was why boats had to be built on land, for instance. The shifting motion of the sea didn't help construction.

it would have helped to have a wheelbarrow, although the young woman didn't know what such a thing was anyway. As it was, she lifted each pile of loose sand and deposited it several metres away by hand, out of sight, out of mind. It took a few bells before she was finished, and that initial wonderment at the new, shiny spade had faded and grown into a begrudging resentment. Petchin' spade. The amount of times she had knocked her shin with the blade would surely leave a few bruises the following morning.

Then it was the time for placing the supporting structures. She had a few ideas of how to construct the hut, but of course none of them were tested. The first was that she simply make a more permanent version of her lean-to. It would be easier, certainly, but the squalid little shelter was already beginning to lose it's appeal. The second idea was one she had observed in the structures around the settlement. It was obvious that most, if not all buildings, couldn't be simply placed onto the ground. Most of the constructions in Syka had some form of stilt to keep them from the ground. Karin didn't trust her skill enough to make anything raised, but she did at least need to make foundations and corners for her walls to rest against.

That was where the fallen tree trunk came in, and the saw that had so far remained unused. She hefted it, and stared at the log, then realised that despite her knowledge of certain areas of carpentry and the years she had been carving, she had never dealt with the raw goods. That small fact made her eyebrows raise, and she placed the blade of the saw against the rough centre of the trunk. Without fanfare, she began to saw at the tree that would eventually become the four corners of her home. It took imagination, but Karin could almost see the walls rising as she worked.