Leafy Water (Solo)

[Talya]

Timestamp: Summer 64, 515 AV

It had rained the previous night, making it impossible for Talya to enjoy her journey out and into the Wildlands as it meant that the sky had been covered in grey and she could not see the stars. Overcast, they called it, when storm clouds overtook the pale blue, and made it impossible to see what lay behind. She smiled at the word, it didn't seem very fitting to her, but she couldn't quite place her finger on as to why that was. In any case, she could hear now that the rain had stopped- there was no more pitter-patter upon the canvas of her one person tent, which meant that it would be safe enough to go outside. So she stretched out her arms, and moved outside her tent. She found that the world was sunnier than when she had left it. That a few storm clouds rested in the distance, and seemed as though they were rolling away, or perhaps, being pushed out by the few white fluffy clouds that lined the pale blue sky. The sun hadn't risen very high yet, it was still low in the eastern sky she noticed. It was still rather early in the morning, she realized, and its golden rays, rather weak, as though they were still trying to break through the rainy haze of the previous night.

With a sigh, Talya turned away from the sky, and stepped farther out of her tent. The green grass was still rather wet, as the atmosphere hadn't had a chance to absorb the more than it had the morning dew, she thought. The ground too, beneath her feet, felt far wetter. For once, she could hear it, and secondly, her feet sank a little more into it than they had the day before. It was nice though, it felt like a damp cushion. With a smile, she looked back at her tent, the lop-sided thing she had hastily put up for protection, and sighed. She would have to take it apart if she wanted to move on with her day, and have the chance to head back into the city. So, she set herself to work. She began by walking around the tent, and moving over to each of the four pegs that supported it, as much as kept it in place. They were made of wood, and bound to the tent via string. There was one at each of the four corners of the square tent- north, east, south, and west. She knew if she did not undo the binding, she could not take apart the rest of the tent properly, so she began by bending down, and untying the knot to the east. First, she undid the bit that she had wrapped around the peg.

The hempen strip of rope had gotten wet in the rain, and compacted. She found it hard to pick apart, even with her nails, but eventually, she managed to undo it. From there, she untied the bit that had been laced through the bottom of the tent itself, and found that she faced a similar difficulty- not only had the rope seemed to harden in its knot, but the water made the rope a little slicker and harder to grip. And without good purchase on anything, it was harder to do everything. Everyone knew that- it was simply a rule of the world. In any case, Talya soon found herself to be gritting her teeth as she struggled with the knot, and finally managed to undo it a few minutes later. With this now done, she pulled the strip of rope away from her tent, and held it firmly in her right hand. Then she moved to the northern portion of the tent, and unbound it from its peg as well. From there, she moved to the west, and repeated the process, before heading over to the south to do this one last time. She struggled with this knot the most she found, as it seemed to have caught most of the rain, making it the most slick. She tried to bat some of the excess moisture off, but it didn't seem to help much, and it took her nearly a full ten minutes to untie the knot.

OOCNote to self: request lore on deconstructing a tent, and another one on the meaning of the word "overcast."

[Talya]

When she had finally finished, Talya straightened herself out, and took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. Then, she set the small pieces of rope on top of her rucksack, and moved back over to her tent. The next thing she should do, she thought, was remove the canvas from its supportive wooden beams. She did this by moving around to the eastern corner of the tent again, to start things off. She bent down, and held the tent support beam in one hand and the canvas in the other, and pulled the canvas over the edge of the wooden beam. (There was a small cutout in the canvas for the wooden beam to go through). When this was done, she held onto the canvas lightly, lowered the beam back onto the ground, and then let go. The canvas jumped back, and now she knew, her work would be far easier. She moved onto the northern side of the tent, and repeated the process, which allowed for the canvas to slide halfway up its wooden frame. Then she moved over to the west, and undid it, and then finally, removed the canvas from the final side. Without anything to keep it in place the wooden frame snapped back, and flattened itself out.

It flopped in the air, and then finally collapsed onto the ground. Talya smiled as she moved forward, and plucked the canvas off the ground. She took a few more minutes to fold it, and set it on top of the rucksack with the little strips of rope. From there, Talya knew all she had to do was pull the pegs out of the ground, and brush off any dirt that may have gathered upon them, and unravel the frame before putting everything away. In comparison to everything else she had already done, she supposed this would be easy work, and set to it. She began with the frame of the tent, which was a large cross in shape, that had been bound together with another small strip of hempen rope. Talya untied this part first, and pushed the rope into the far recesses of her right palm. This left her with two long sticks. They were each comprised of two sticks, (making four altogether). Each had been hollowed out on one end, to allow for a person to force another into it, extending the length of the sticks. They were easy enough to pull apart if Talya twisted them a little, and she did this with ease, leaving her with their component parts.

All that was left then, as she placed the rope on the canvas, was to gather the pegs. She walked around the area, and collected them all, by leaning over a bit and tugging them out of the ground. When she was done, Talya returned to her bag, and pulled everything off of its surface, and placed it all on the ground. She realized that she had already messed up, and undid the canvas, letting it unravel. She then lifted it higher, and moved it through the air as though she were fanning out a towel on the beach. When it had been fully spread out, she reached for the pegs and wooden sticks,a and set them on the edge of the canvas. One after the other, on top of one another, in cases where the edge filled up completely. Then, she grabbed the edge of the canvas, did her best to hold the wooden pieces in place, and rolled the canvas over it, until she reached the end. Then, she went back and collected the little strips of rope, and used three to bind everything in place by wrapping the pieces all around and then tying them. From there, Talya went for her bag, and attached the tent to the bottom with the space pieces of rope, so that it hung from it like a log. When she was done she dry washed her hands and noticed she was thirsty.

[Talya]

Talya could feel it within the dryness of her throat- the way it ached dully. Could sense her need in the way her heart beat a little faster than she thought it should. So, she undid the latch to her backpack, and reached in. She rummaged around a bit before she managed to pull her waterskin out. She lifted it to her lips as she pulled off the stopper, and tipped it out into her open mouth. But there wasn't so much as a drop. It was bloody empty. She shook it around and glared. How could it do this to her at a time like this? Frustrated, she refastened the lid, and silently wished to herself that she had noticed this sooner, so she could have put something out for the collection of rain water the night before. Now, she would have to find some water for herself, and then purify it for drinking somehow, which she knew could be more than an ordeal. Especially since she knew, as she had traversed this portion of the land several times before, that there was no natural source of water around. But with the recent rain,s he hoped, she could get some off the lands and the plants.

With this in mind, Talya picked up her bag and swung it into place upon her shoulders. Then, as she began to walk away with her waterskin in hand, she remembered how wet the grass was. She could feel it caking to the surface of her boots, some of the moisture cooling the suede leather, while even more seeped in to meet with her skin. She smiled as an idea came to her, and instantly, she dropped to the ground in a kneeling position. She studied the vibrant green grass- it was heavily laden with moisture. So she leaned in a little, as she brushed the cap of her waterskin away with one of her fingers, holding it in place, as she brought the mouth of the skin down to the ground. She pressed it against the grass, and then used the index finger of her free hand to try and knock the baby, transparent beads that clung to the grass into the waterskin. She nudged them lightly, delicately, but still, they broke against her skin, and fell back into the soil after trickling down her skin's length. That simply would not do, so she decided to try something else. She guided her finger over to the edge of the grass, and then pushed down, and moved her hand away, flicking the blade and tossing the beads into the air.

This proved to be far more fun than her previous method, she realized, as she could watch the beads arc in the air and then fall, but it wasn't much more effective, as she could not catch many of the beads with the mouth of her waterskin, if any. Although she was convinced, she heard the distant plop of one or two as they made their way. Even if it were working, only a little, the method was frightfully slow, so she decided to try something else. This time, she held her waterskin against the grass, and then pushed the grass down, so that the blade moved at an angle. It was forced downward, until its tip ran into the opening of her waterskin. In this way, she was able to collect even more rainwater, but the progression was extremely slow, as she realized each blade contained a maximum of three beads. In the cases where there were three- she could collect perhaps two, before having to move onto the next one. When she did this, when she shifted, she would knock the rain off a lot of the blades, before she could get herself situated to collect more. Thus, this proved to be a terrible method, and after collecting perhaps thirty droplets of water with it, she gave up, and decided to try something else.

[Talya]

Talya looked around at her surroundings. She saw the trunks of several oaks, and maples, and perhaps a sumac, and the bodies they belonged to. She saw a few shrubberies scattered around their bases, intermingling with their roots. She saw wildflowers here and there, and some vines covering the trunks of a few of the trees. She saw the grass and the soil beneath them- a few puddles within. That gave her an idea, maybe she could dip her waterskin into a puddle, and be done with it. For all that would leave is the purification of the water through boiling. With a smile, she got up and walked around the forest a little, in search of softer ground, (as that meant it was more water logged). Whenever her feet squelched more in the earth, she tried to move in that direction, thinking it would lead to water. She wove in and out of the treeline, moving into small clearings, and patches littered with stone. Eventually, she found a few deeper puddles, but one was too muddy, and she deemed it unworthy- as she would have to filter the water before she could even burn it to make it fit for consumption. The rest were in the grass, causing it to sink. She got a bit of water from this, but not much, as several of the puddles looked to be filled with bugs.

Talya realized this was no way to collect water either- as there was always something wrong with it. She had to find another way to do what she needed to do, so she kept on walking and looking around as she thought on it. As she moved, a drop of cold water fell on her from the tops of the trees, and it was enough to spur the memory that kids liked to stick their tongues out in the rain and collect it. It made her wonder if the rain was pure, and safe, fit for drinking. But then she thought, that they never seemed to collect a lot, and if they weren't drinking much of it, it couldn't be very harmful as there wasn't enough of it to be. Besides, she thought, as she remembered the look of water streaming down a window pane, there were beads that looked like they had something dark at the center, like dirt or a piece of dust. She thought then, that it was around this that rain would have to form. Each and every droplet needing that one dirtied element to hold it in place. She couldn't drink it directly, then, she thought, and would have to boil it as she had always intended. With this in mind, she continued, as she still needed to collect more to burn in the first place.

Tal moved through the trees again, and looked around her. She was moving into a thicket of shrubberies. Some of which looked as though they bore honeysuckle, and others nothing but leaves. Some had little red berries on them, that looked a bit brighter than cranberries, but she knew it wasn't those, and she wasn't sure what they were, so she didn't stop to collect them although she was getting a bit hungry now, as she didn't know if they would be poisonous and make her life even harder than it needed to be. However, those bushes had long, lobed leaves with teeth on the ends, and on those leaves, she could still see rainwater. The beads shimmering a faint gold within the sun's light. This gave her an idea- if she could funnel the beads into her waterskin, she could collect water in much the same way she had with the grass, and much faster too, as the leaves were far larger than the blades of grass within the clearing that she had left behind. So with a smile and a sparkle in her eye, she moved over to them, and opened her waterskin, holding the cap back with her finger as she guided the opening under one of the leaves.

[Talya]

With her left hand, which was not holding the waterskin, Talya moved in. She guided the hand over the surface of the leaf, and then back down, so that its fingers closed around each end, pinching it delicately, and shaking it a little. This knocked some of the rainwater away and onto the ground before she had the chance to right it, at which point, she directed its pointy edge into the mouth of her waterskin, and managed to force several beads inside. This made her smile, as she delicately pulled her hand off the leaf, so as not to knock into any of the others, and push the moisture away. Slowly, she moved her hand over to another leaf nearby the first, and a little to the left. Then gingerly, she set it back down as she moved her waterskin beneath it, and then pinched the leaf with her fingers. Causing the edges to rise up and for the leaf to furl, so that it formed a sort of slide that the beads ran easily down and into her waterskin. She could hear it plopping as she drained the leaf, and then moved onto the next one, and then another close to that.

In the process, her arm brushed against some of the lower leaves on the bush, knocking a lot of the water off, wasting it as it seeped into the forest floor to feed the plant itself. Talya grit her teeth, this frustrated her, although there was still a lot left to work with, she knew she would have to be a lot more careful so she wouldn't waste it all. With this in mind, Talya moved over to the next leaf and tipped it back. She let the water run into her container, and join the rest of what she had already gathered. She kept following the same line of trees, moving along the bush, until she had exhausted it and herself trying to collect the rain water. She had only gotten perhaps a quarter of her canteen full with all of the water she had gathered from everything else. It wasn't much she knew, and it would be even less when she boiled it off, but at least it was something. Even so, she felt the need to collect more, and moved onto a nearby bush to collect even more water, before swirling the contents of her container around. The level didn't seem any higher than before, and she was getting pretty thirsty and hungry. So she decided to stop and at least take care of her thirst.

The only problem was, was that she would have to boil the water before it was safe for drinking- she had learned that lesson the hard way at the beginning of the season. Of course, this task wasn't exactly hard. She just didn't have a container of her own to put the water in as she boiled it. And the waterskin would burn if she put it over a fire, the same as if she used the canvas of her tent or something. She didn't have a pan of her own and would have to improvise. Perhaps she could use a rock- they were naturally occurring, and would not burn within the heart of a fire. She had seen people cook on them once or twice before, so she thought it would be safe. The only problem was, she had to find one with a bowl shape so that the water wouldn't spill out of it, and she had to find one that wasn't muddy from the rain, or mossy, as this could potentially contaminate whatever she burned. She also had to find something flat enough, for the heat to rise through, right? For if the stone was too fat, the heat may not travel all the way through and boil the water, and it would be heavy to lift out of a fire, let alone at all besides. She would have to keep this in mind as she searched for something to use.

[Talya]

Talya walked through the forest with her eyes trained upon the ground. She was keeping them peeled for the stone in question, and moving along to the north, she thought, judging by where the moss grew most heavily on the trees, and where the sun was currently positioned as it climbed in the sky toward its zenith. She moved past a grouping of bushes, some with thorns, as they dragged and scratched at her clothes as she moved through them, and shook off the water on the leaves with her body. She moved past them, and into what lay beyond, moving through the trees unheeded, until about half an hour later in her trek, she came upon a scattering of rock and stone. Some of them were larger boulders, but some were smaller pieces that lay on top, as though they had been broken off by harsh weather. Some of the smaller ones had been inbedded into the earth as well, and Tal ignored these as she searched, flipping some of the stones over to see their bodies, when they looked promising, but she couldn't find anything as she moved along. But she did not give up and kept on searching.

Talya scoured the earth, and turned over stones. But nothing seemed as though it would work, even still. But still she tried, and circled the area once again, until finally, she found a rather small stone, with a dip in one of its surfaces that she supposed could hold water. It was so small though, that she might have to use it a few times over, before she could actually boil all the water she had collected. Even so she shrugged, and picked the little stone up as her stomach rumbled, and moved over into the forest again, in search of a clearing where she could light a fire and boil her water. When she found a small clearing, she set the stone down on her bag which she had slipped off of her shoulders, and pulled some of her Zeltivan rations out of them. She gave them a munch before moving on, leaving all of her things behind as she went in search of firewood. She decided she wouldn't bother with much kindling. When she had the sticks she would need for the fire, Talya went back to her belongings with them in hand. She moved away from her things and into a more open space. Then, she took two sticks from the pile she had deposited seconds before at random.

She placed one of the sticks directly in front of her, and the other, she held in her hands. She placed its point against the center of the stick on the ground, and then rolled her piece of wood between her hands. Rain water and bits of bark flaked off it onto her clammy skin as she rotated the stick faster and faster, as though she were trying to drill it into the other stick. Several minutes passed, but nothing happened, the stick at the bottom didn't so much as smoke. But she kept on trying and trying, then picked out a new base stick to try, thinking that the first had been to wet. But she found the same fate awaited her with that stick, and then the one she tried after that. They all seemed to wet, (which made sense since it had just rained), so with an exasperated sigh, Talya dropped the damp wood, and moved away. She collected her belongings, and with a groan, began to make the trip back into the port city of Zeltiva, all the while telling herself that she would get a nice breakfast, and a good drink of water as soon as she had gotten herself there.