(tentative) Play It

The air inside my little fur cave was growing warm from the sun beating down on the underside of the furs i had left facing up the night before, which turned out to have thin pools of dew collected on the salty skins that i tasted only to find it undrinkable. Nothing about my camp seemed to have changed during the night as i stretched out and examined myself in the light of a sun that had only just fully risen over the horizon before i had crawled out onto the slate slab, but much of my sunburn and blistering had peeled away healthily in my sleep to leave behind a dark yellow glow to my once pale white skin. "Another day of this sun... and i'll be bronze," i speak for the first time in a hoarse croak, having to stop and hack dryly after using muscles that had never been used before in the game from a throat that had not seen anything to drink since logging out.

Sitting on the edge of my campsite slab with a melon and knife in hand, i survey the surrounding beach for flats of slate already the rough size and shapes i would need and pick out not only the few i would use but several spares for each of the basic tools that i would need to deal with my tutorial threat. Then get off the island. First, though, i needed at least the materials to make a weapon and to figure out for sure what i would be up against and the best way to plot out all of that was from at least the lowest steppe portion of my slate formation some thirty-off feet up a sheer but pocked and pitted cliff face roughly eighty yards down the beach from my camp to reach the twenty-degree incline of the first steppe that lead to another, much sharper incline as a means of climbing to the second, middle, steppe in the semicircle-like mountain formation.

Eating the entire melon for my breakfast, i take a few minutes to hurry about the area collecting the flat slabs of slate i had been mentally prospecting to pile up on the edge of my slab foundation before walking off down the beach to get my early morning workout out of the way. The ground around the face of the cliff that i was aiming to climb rose up somewhat to meet it with all of the rubble that had fallen away from the mesa, shortening my initial climb by several blessed feet as i worked my dry, cracked hands over the surface above in search of something to hold onto before placing my first foot on the slate. After getting all of my body off of the ground and mentally refreshing myself on the few manmade rock walls that i had climbed in preparation for the beta, finding and checking hand- or footholds in the roughly edged, weathered slate became a quick process until the new flexing and stretching of my hands that had spent all the day before curing in the sun and salt caused them to split painfully in places against the stone.

One hand slipped at the top edge, sending a shudder down my body as i momentarily lost balance and tried to bear the shock with my other outstretched limbs, and like a dominoe falling in line to lip of a small crevasse in the slate supporting the toe of my left boot started to crunch, but the outcropping of rock i gripped tightly in my right bloody hand held fast and allowed me to shift my weight to my entire right side also supported by a somewhat broad clift in the cliff. Finding a new foothold first for my left foot higher up in another larger crevasse that i could fit as much of my toes as knuckles deep, i reach once again for the first steppe and force a tight grip through the pain before stepping up the cliff face to reach my right arm and most of my body over the edge of the steppe followed by my right knee to heft the rest of my weight over the edge. Standing up on solid ground after nearly five full minutes of climbing, i find myself examining my hands more than enjoying the view of my island affored me by my height and watching the slow drip and drop of blood from the creases of my palms to the steppe on which i slowly walked upward. until i subconsciously stepped over a large crack running across the steppe and stopped to do a doubletake.

Not only did the full on fault in the mesa continue across to the far edge of the first steppe, but it also grew larger as it neared the deep incline to the next steppe where it actually formed a massive crevasse in the ramp-like incline wide enough for me to fit through sideways almost two feet taller than i was before it grow too small to fit a person about a quarter of the way up the incline. An innate curiosity drew me toward the dark maw of the mesa fault, and the fact that it was only a few yards away from the highest point on this steppe, so it was with no small amount of self control that i temporarily ignore the crevasse in favor of making my way closer to the edge of the steppe. Despite being level with the tallest treetops on my island on the first step, at least a third of the island itself was still blocked from view by a combination of the intermittent groves of yellow-blotched green cane trees, shrub-like citrus trees, and otherwise hilly terrain.

Even with the hindrances in my view, it was easy to pick out the trampled trails in the tall, wild grasses of my island of an animal that was obviously short and broad like i would imagine a boar or wild pig to be and from there it was easy to see that the cleanest or deadest of paths that marked the most frequently used game trails i quickly found out which of the groves in the forest my apparently omnivorous quarry frequented. While most of the groves were the larger citrus groves in the higher grasslands closer to the beaches with two or three scattered cane groves around the middle of the island whose edges were barked with splayed areas of broken canes that looked the be splintered or broken apart entirely close to the ground, nearly all of the game trails on the island lead back to a single hill near the center that was dominated by an otherwise dense grove of what was arguably the biggest canes that i should harvest if not for the bowed center of the grove and numerous partings leading down and away from the hill to the other game trails. "Everything i need all in one place..." i murmur, checking to see how my voice was doing and noting with some satisfaction that my throat was feeling much better than my hands, "Just gotta kill whatever lives in there, first."

Another voice from behind me shocked me stiff, despite its familiarity, saying, "I'm honestly dying to see if you can even get down from here with seven quarter-inch cuts on and around your palms and fingers, let alone fight... whatever is out there. You could stay and watch the trails to see if anything shows itself, but you also want to run off and save the damsel in distress. What to do, what to do...?"

"Take a gander at yonder hole in the wall to see... if it widens out or has any mineral deposits, first," i reply casually. "Slate is a mostly metamorphic feldspar silicate... with other minerals from surrounding factors, other minerals in high enough pressure and heat areas... would have gathered together as impurities in applicable... layers and areas of the stone throughout the forming process of these formations. similar to how the iron island is... uninhabitable from metal poisoning and rubble, the more numerous slate formations... bearing such large concentrations of iron have broken apart with expansion and... weathering and so on to give us all those pretty exposed veins, a fault like this usually forms from expanding... air pockets from water formed geodes or more naturally formed mineral deposits during formation.

"Neighboring islands support minerals necessary to form this... or that precious and semi-precious stone, iron is a common ingredient in crystals such as amethyst and garnet, feldspar and quartz being the difference between the two respectively," i go on, enjoying the chance to show some of my cards to the professor in a one-on-one environment. "This slate formation is a rusty brown and gray combination of iron oxide and feldspar, with the simple fact that its a silicate at all supporting the possible presence of quartz, which offers a variety of possibilities from citrine to topaz to quartzes to... garnet. Economically, however... a place as rich as these islands which seem to be moving- suspected thermal venting is involved, which would indicate perpetuated growth of the archipelago- probably has an intense market where civilization... is finally found to the point where the only value in any... of the stones i find will be in bulk weight and whole specimens."

"It's like finally getting to breathe, isn't it?" Professor Harlen asks after i finally turn around to face him, wearing a calm and almost even pleased look. "When i was picking out applicants, i tried to be careful with the kind of brains i brought in through a quote unquote contest, but i went out on a few limbs and so far i am not disappointed. i told everyone that i and the greatest minds in every field i could get involved on this project designed this game to be as realistic as humanly and digitally possible. just the random number generators alone constantly at work in the expansion of these islands take up so much closed network space that we really couldn't run anything more than the Wandering Isles in the OR. after the beta i plan on repurposing this room as an external data center to maintain the Wandering Isles for the full version of the game, but for now it does just what i need to test you players.

"Well done on the surveying, Zai, if that had been a pop quiz minigame you wouldn't be able to make it down from here with all of your prizes," he goes on, walking away to look into the abyss of the mesa fault. "Congrats are in order, as well, not only for the achievements of climbing the... mesa- as you call it, second in line to reaching the top- and finding this point of interest, but also for tracking the general whereabouts of your... tutorial threat. After that brilliat display of geological study, I do believe i was right in assuming now was a wonderful time to show up and make life easier by introducing you to your first ever minigame," he adds with dry enthusiasm.

"Oh boy... what do i do and what do i win?" I ask with the same lackluster joy that he was exuding with a broad grin on my face.

"In the spirit of geology, i am going to give you a guessing game," was his vocal shrug while visibly straining to keep a straight face. "You are going to guess what three minerals are in the highest concentrations in this fault, and for everyone you get right is a one-pound specimen of each stone waiting for you back at camp, as well as two correct guesses giving you two pounds of random material pulled from this chasm and correctly guessing all three minerals awards you an economically designed trunk to store it all in. So... What three minerals are you most likely to find in here?"

Looking out over my island once again as i carefully considered my options, i ask, "Does saying quartz and its variants like smoky quartz and so on count as one answer?"

"Yes, it does."

"Then the most present mineral would be quartz and company, followed by... citrine and then Amethyst," i finish after turning back around to look almost hopefully at the professor.

"Oh my, i was kind of hoping you would have said garnet instead of citrine... because then you'd be wrong," he says after a trail off of his own. "I always knew you were more of a realist than an optimist, an optimist would have tried for the garnets. But..." he adds, looking from me to the fault line as the echoes of faint skittering can be heard coming within a few seconds before a myriad of crystalline pebbles and shards came rolling down the inclines of the steppe and stairway, "I know for a fact that there are some nice big garnets in all of that going off to join your specimens in their spacious wandering cane trunk designed by layered cane halves pegged by cane tips around a whole cane frame and lined with a curtains of crushed cane portions the ensure none of your valuables slip through. for additionally security, a lining of one of your furs would make the trunk not only water resistant but nearly air tight with its pre-fitted lid with the fur addition in mind."

"Sales really is the biggest part of video games, isn't it?" i ask wryly of the professor after the crystals had disappeared from view. "I also have a question about the game, healing more to the point. before we started playing, you told us that our avatars naturally regenerated over healing and did so much faster than we heal in reality. exactly how much faster do we heal?" i ask while looking down at my already dried hands for emphasis.

"Using twenty-four hours in reality as our base cycle, our avatars can heal as much as six times faster with the cycle being shortened to four-hour periods, persistant issues such as dry skin not withstanding," is his swift response. "I'm sure it is obvious to you that this means that you could work out as many as three times a day to the effective worth of six days in reality spent alternating between burning out and healing. Your hands, however, will require a topical treatment or two before they actually stop cracking. Since there's nothing even similar to lotion around for miles, i can advise you that among the citrus trees there are small vining flowers that are innately magical from the plant's absorbing different forms of natural energies and make a great combination with crushed coconut pulp to make a salve. soak something to wrap your hands with after making it- probably while in the field because of your tight schedule, and then another soak before you go to bed should clear the issue."

"And here i was, about to just let it heal organically the one time i actually forget that i am in a fantasy virtual reality video game," i remark with a laugh and no small amount of gratitude before turning toward the faulted incline. "Now, if you'll excuse me, i have a mesa to climb, an enemy to identify, materials to slap together, and a pretty young damsel in distress to go save."

"By all means," was the professor's farewell before he was simply gone while i approached the cliff edge of the incline. Unlike the nearly vertical climb that i had made earlier, this incline was about twenty degrees less sheer and allowed me to relatively crawl and around the large cracks and treacherous pitted areas around the fault while keeping not only my island but my neighbors as well within my periphal view. This climb only took a few minutes despite taking advantage of the ability to stop and rest on the incline and have much more of an upward climb, but the middle step itself was an ever so slight doward incline toward the vertical climb that lead to the top and tested my balance with the sudden change from upward motion to downward.

My hands were more or less shocked to the point where i no longer felt the individual splits in my hands and instead just experienced a perpetual equivalent to a dull throb, but i was more surprised by how little freshly wet blood i was leaving on the final climb than the fact that my hands were bleeding again. Luckily for me, this portion of the meza had formed with opposing layers so that instead of a grain that ran up and down like everywhere else i had climbed with only small cracks or juts of rock for holds this final stretch had a horizontal grain that allowed for deeper and larger holds as well as entire ledges that i was not only forced to climb around or go over but could also stop once halfway up to catch my breath. From either the ground or any of the previous steppes i had no idea that the second step angled downward, which had increased my final climb by nearly thirty feet that i was unprepared for, but the top steppe turnned out to be perfectly flat but for weathering with a view an almost unhindered view of the archipelago around me.

Wind was the first thing i noticed about my own island after making my way tiredly to the far edge from where i could look down, the way i swept across the grasslands of my island in a uniform direction, and how one of the game trails of a central citrus grove were rustling across the flow of wind with the passage of something low and broad. "There's no way it isn't you, so... thanks," i breathe with a sigh of relief and thoughts of the professor a few seconds later as i watch a short- probably young- flat faced warthog with straight, stubby white tusks parallel to its snout sauntering almost unsteadily toward a broken citrus tree i was sure bore only rotting fruit. "You both gave me and showed me... a drunken boar."

Excitement replaced most of the feeling in my body as i returned to the opposite side where i could climb down to the second steppe, but i did not abuse the first traces of what i suspected were in-game adrenaline by rushing my way down and even stopped to rest halfway to the second steppe so that my hands themselves would have the energy to make it all of the way back to the first steppe before stopping to rest on the edge of my final climb to the ground some twenty or so feet away. My calves and my shoulders hurt more than anything else, it had been a few months since i had switched to bulk training and put them through such repititious strain, but the rest of my back and my quads that i made a point to push to the limits every Leg or Upper day still felt fine. Luckily for me, if Professor Harlen's programming was as accurate as he says, i should be healing even while doing the rest of my chores and be more or less fit to fight by the time i even get to the boar.

I finally messed up and hurt myself a little, the rocky bottom came rising swiftly up the last few feet to meet be after a crack in the cliff supporting my left foot crumbled away while i was reaching for a new handhold below me, landing heavily on my side across several boulders despite managing to keep my arms under my head and ribs. My hip bore the brunt of my weight down the side of a leaning boulder, rolling me down to the rocky sand where i simply lie there for a few moments wondering skeptically if i had done anything to deserve the fall before finally pushing myself up to my feet. Nothing was broken as far as i could tell, but my hip already had a dark patch of skin forming almost the size of the palm of my hand and walking was suddenly twice the chore it had been when i had originally made my way to cliff.

"Feels fantastic, never better," i argue with myself pointlessly as i reach the slate slab i had decided to set my camp on, climbing up to pick through the flats of stone i had gathered earlier only to find my eyes drawn to the short, broat cane chest that i had won from the professor sitting right outside my tent. Igneous is better than metamorphic, i admit to myself after finding a decent triangular piece of slate about as big as both of my hands side-by-side to make an ax head from, walking away to raise the rope-hinged lid of the chest to look down inside. At the top were three prismatic stakes roughly ten inches long apiece of richly black smoky quartz, deep violet amethyst, and a fiery orange citrine, all of whome were perfectly flawless as though they had been formed this way naturally with broad, flat points.

Taking out the broad, flat prismatiz quartz stake, i measure its proportions against my hand to find the body and spine of the prism just over two fingers thick with a broad, flat point as wide at the very end as my middle finger nail. "Flawless... hardness probably between seven and eight... a little light knapping and the facets making the sides can becomes edges," i muse as i mull the long prism about my fingers, admiring its size and weight and how perfect it seemed to be for the purpose i planned on giving it. "Yeah... you're gonna make a beautiful weapon," i decide at last, sliding the flat-bottomed prism into a pocket of my canvas cargo pants before closing the chest and climbing down from the slab with my preferred slate flat.

Pressing the broad, bottom flat of the right angled triangular piece of slate against the smooth side of the camp slab, i walk down the length of the slab dragging the slate against the side in one long smooth grind that wears down one side of the flat toward the middle at a thirty degree angle. Walking back down the same side of the slab with the opposite side of the flat held in place, i alternate sides of the flat with every pass until each side had undergone three long grinds that met in the middle for a fair chopping blade with two inches of draw down to the cutting edge. Switching to wearing the flat side of the right angle point behind the ax face, my new few passes wear the back down to angle into itself and deepen the back point into a full-on spike more like a tomahawk over its original fireax shape.

Picking up and dropping a small boulder to break it up as much as i can, i take the smallest of the whole portions that break away to throw down and break even further until a small, relatively flat round piece only a little smaller than the palm of my hand broke away. Using the rounded end of this slate like a whetstone, i grind and file at the top and bottom sides of the thickest area of the axhead just an inch or two from the draw of the spike and a little over a hand back from the face of the ax. Pocketing the slate whetstone after grinding a recessed notch in the top and bottom of the slate a little less than two thumbs wide, i fit the axhead between my belt and pants behind my back with the face downward before climbing up onto my camp slab.

Despite the fact that i wanted very much not to stop and take a break with the sun over halfway through the morning sky, i had to carefully sit down for a few minutes while slowly eating my way through another melon before finally taking a second look at my hip to find that the original dark patch was now a dark purple while everything around it was a graying yellow that looked more like it was healing even though i could tell it was still in development. Loosening the canvas belt a little in its salted green bronze rings to pull my pants high up on my waist before cinching my belt once more, i draw my starter knife from its light tan leather sheath and unwind from my satchel the remains of my last shirt to untwist and start cutting down into a single, long stretch of wrapping. Wrapping first my left hand to cut and tie before carefully doing the same with my right hand, i use the excess to replace my satchel's drawstring and fill the breast pockets of my canvas sweater with some of the few large nuts that i had scavenged from my lifeboat before emptying the rest of the nuts into their crate.

Cutting a stretch of the two-inch thick, coiled fiber rope the length of my forearm from my giant coil, i finally sheath the knife once again to put on my empty satchel and work on plying apart the coils from the rope almost idly after climbing down from camp. The nearest cane grove had not been a very large one, but it had plenty of adult canes from which to make the things i needed and, more importantly, it was almost in line with my camp near the side of the mesa just around one of its crumbling lower walls. Tying the ends of the individual lengths of twisted cordage together to store more safely in my satchel as i walked, i kept several of the longest cords in hand to start braiding together in basic three-strand patterns which would suffice for making tools and weapons from.

Setting down my satchel and the head of my future ax in the short, sandy grass at just a dozen yards or so beyond the edge of the grasslands that was still littered with a few scattered rocks, i walk the last couple of yards to the scattered patch of canes. There were only a handful of trees here both tall and big enough to cut down for a raft, but plenty of the trees growing out from around them were the perfect sizes to cut down and work into handles and spear shafts and with only as little work with my knife as carving a notch in the base segments big enough to fit my knife and crunch all of the way around like a can opener. Repeating this process on several more canes than i needed until my hands started to stain their loose wrapping scarlet, i return to my supplies to drop off my haul and sit on a small boulder nearby to start cutting down two trees.

Keeping a length of one tree that was made up of three-and-a-half lower segments roughly ten inches long apiece but for the half to use as the handle of my ax, i set the rest of the tree aside to make into another kind of spear before notching and carving out a length of tree longer than i was tall by a segment-and-a-half to use for my prism's spear. Taking up my ax handle to split the top segment simply by pushing my knife down from across the top, i slide the head of the ax down the split segment until the bottom notch fits over the following segment and stays in place while i split and break away the two sides above the head to make a wide notch in one side and a slim fit on the other that i use to fold over the top of the ax like a clasp while i retrieve one of the braided lengths of cordage. Wrapping the cordage twice around the head of the ax in a simply 'X' and between the excess of the clasp so that when i tighten the cordage it tightens the clasp and ax down in place, i tie it in a half cinch that i could continue to tighten without it loosening more than tightening on itself before tying a second length of braided cordage around the axhead in an opposing 'X' to the first so that i can tie it off at the bottom of the axhead and tighten it enough to create slack for the previous not.

Alternating between cinching the cords one after the other until there was no longer any reasonable room to improve before retying either cord in proper knots to complete my ax, i grip the face and then the tail spike of the ax to test them with light tugs that find no give in my weapon before setting it aside to take out my smoky quartz hexagonal prism and measure it against the few inches of split spear shaft. Satisfied that the prism was skinny enough to work with the shaft for a spearhead, i draw my knife and use the exposed metal tang of the leather wrapped handle to lightly strike at the top edge of the outer facet. My specimen of smoky quartz had been a prime example of its name with a vague outer layer of transparet crystal around a large, dark heart of almost purplish gray 'smoke' that blotted the light from passing through the prism, and it was this heart that i breached at the very edge of the prism after lightly chunking out flakes in lines running across the top, middle, and the bottom where the denser portion of the quarts was exposed only at the cutting edge on either side of the outer right facets.

Flipping the prism over to start knapping the same way on the opposing side from the first that was now ridged with facets from flaking, i only just manage to breach the smoke this time without taking too much off of the other side with an edge that included a very thin layer of the clear quartz skin. Lightly rapping away the vague points in the edges on either side to compensate for the layer of skin with downward strokes from the spine of my knife, i switch back to the tang and use one of its corner to carefully press and scrape tiny pieces of the blade around near the flatly cut base of the prism. Gouging out notches by which to tie the spearhead into place, i fit the completed spearhead back into the split segment at the top of the shaft and wrap the next length of braided cordage twice around the base of the segment and notches as tight as i can manage before tying it off completely and wrapping the loose ends up the split segment to press and secure it against the body of the prism with my next set of knots.

Using one last length of cordge to wrap from the top knots down to the base of the segment where i tie the cordage off in all its excess back and forth around the notches in the prism, i carefully test the completed prism spear to find its socketing as snug and firm as the ax's, i take up the rest of the ax handle tree and carefully cut the top off at an angle where the hollow of the cane point was big enough to fit the tip of my pinkie with a tapering point like a syringe. Cutting the head of this spear off with two deep, angling notches on either side of the cane two segments down to give it a 'V' for a bottom, i trim the remains of the shaft down to just an inch or two of the segment from which i had cut the head remaining and easily split the segment to fit the bottom of the head snugly into place. Retrieving two of my smallest cane trees to trim down like the last spear with detachable heads that i hollow out by pushing smaller lengths of cane through them.

Sheathing the handle of my axe through my belt opposite my battered pelvis after finishing my arsenal, i leave the other trees where they lay and continue off down the edge of the grassland toward one of only a few clusters of windward leaning coconut trees on my island with my shorter javelin run through my satchel and my prism spear in hand. Plenty of coconuts on the ground still maintained darkening but otherwise whole outer husks that meant they contained enough of both meat and milk to satisfy my needs, so i barely had to spend more than a minute or two gathering coconuts in my satchel around the javelin before picking one from the ground to cut open as i walked deeper into the grassland toward the center of the island with plenty of citrus groves between the warthog's den and i. Despite being on the move while slowly shoving the knife into the coconut after almost three full minutes spent shucking it, twisting open a hole through which to sip the coconut's contents only took a few moments.

Never in my life had i really liked the taste of coconut, but i simply fell in love with the wet husk cooled milk of the small coconut inside as i sipped the entire thing dry on my way to my next source of hydration. Breaking away small pieces of the coconut's shell once i reached a large corpse of small and large citrus bushes and trees by sticking my finger in the hole and pulling chunks away, i scrape some of the soggy meat from the inside of the coconut off with my teeth from each chunk to chew on despite the fact that i still disliked the grindy texture of its meat once chewed dry. Taking out another coconut to shuck slowly as i searched about the shrubbery for the flowering vine i had been told about, i find them growing from the base of one tree where another tree seemed to have been torn down and trampled and uproot two of the short, thick vines growing among the dried remains and pull them away to bring the whole vines and their flowers back to the emptied coconut.

Plucking a single small, bell-like bloom with an outer lily white hiding an explosion of blotchy yellow and green rings, i sniff the flower to not only find its aroma soft and sweet but dewy and wet which turned out to be large droplets of clear nectar when i turned the flower up to the light for examination. Popping the single one-inch bloom into my mouth to crush against my teeth and the roof of my mouth with my tongue, i find the initial surge of nectar sourly sweet like a lemon until the rest of the flower went bland in my mouth while i filled the coconut with the others. Spitting the flower out after filling the coconut to the rim with flowers from the vine, i draw my knife to start smashing and cutting the flowers down into the meat to create a thick mash of shredded petal and pulp to which i carefully added short spurts of milk from the other coconut after punching a hole in it.

Taking drinks with every shot of coconut milk added to the mixture throughout the process until most of the meat in the pestle coconut was scraped from the inside and stained vague orange and green smears throughout the light, almost creamy mash that i tilted over and started whipping like eggs. Once the entire concoction had taken on a dark orange and green puke color from the pulverized flowers, i add another ounce or two of milk to thin it out before emptying the remaining half of the coconut into my stomach and whipping the salve up one last time. Splaying the fingers of my right hand to stretch the wrapping the had pinkened with my fluids since putting them on, i hold the pestle coconut in my left hand to pour its contents slowly and carefully over my fingers and down into my hand before trading hands to repeat and setting the coconut down to somewhat painfully rub and wring my hands together to work the oily mixture into my skin and its splits.

Dipping my tongue into the coconut out of sheer curiosity, i find the remains of the concoction to be a sickly sweet mixture of bitter nectar and sweet coconut that i spit unceremoniously back into the coconut before nestling it carefully into my satchel that i tie around it with a length of bare cordage to secure it right-side-up position while i walked away from the citrus grove nestling my remaining vine around several quickly picked citrus fruits in the remaining space of my satchel under my javelin. The sun had traveled even higher in the sky by the time i finally came within crouched view of the citrus grove in which i had last seen the warthog some thirty yards away inside what seemed to be its most used trail on this side. I scanned the area thorough through the brush of thorny cirtus shrubbery surround tall, broad trees with branches hanging low with the weight of fruit, but i already knew that if the boar was still here that it must have been sleeping because i could hear nothing but the soft rustle of the wind and a myriad of small and large insects in the grass around me.

The pull of my leg when walking in general was the rhythm to a dull throb covering the entire side of my hip, but closing the distance on the grove slowly in a crouch sharpened the pain considerably when coupled with keeping the handle of my ax or my spare javelin from catching the ground or grass while holding my spear and a javelin in either. i was blessedly quiet despite the awkwardly labored effort of stealing up and in to the citrus grove, which became only more difficult picking my way among the chest and shoulder high citrus bushes clustered far and wide within the grove until i found my way back to the trail i had left because it looked around the outskirts of the grove. From this small opening, i could straighten up and peer about my surroundings several yard within the grove to find where my current trail reaches the trampled out center of the grove.

Following along the widely winding trail toward the center of the grove instead of taking another possibly noisy shortcut, i keep my eyes scanning my surroundings as quickly and thoroughly as i could manage in search of signs that gave away either my or my quarry's positions until i rounded the final turn in the trail of parted shrubbery. Right in the middle of the clearing in the grove lay my target some hundred or so feet away, lying on its side so that its large belly appear bloated toward the raised side and snortling slowly and softly in a deep, drunken stupor from all of the hoochy citrus it lived on. Closing the distance to about thirty yards to ensure my accuracy while trading the javelin from my left to my right hand, i simply stand there for a moment watching the three-foot-and-some-change long creature slumber and estimate its weight and height at two-and-a-half feet and maybe three-fifty-pounds.

"This doesn't feel like a game," i breathe softly as i heft back my javeling with the new trickles of adrenaline into my system that seem to sharpen and slightly zoom my vision on the warthog. Leaning back and for room to step and then lean forward into my throw of the five-foot spear, i launch the javelin more or less straight ahead of my so that it dropped naturally down into side of the warthog's outstretched neck who awoke with a wild, screeching squeal kicking and bucking up to its feet. The javelin fell away from its detachable head still deep in the animal's thick neck as it finally bolted to its feet and circled in search of what had struck it. my second javelin was drawn from the satchel and back to throw long before the warthog noticed me and stopped in bleary bewilderment with blood flowing feely from the hollowed needle of a spearhead protruding from low on the side of its throat, then it was flying with somewhat less accuracy than the last to plunge into the inside of its chest and shoulder and spurred the beast into a feral charge straight for me.

I started to regret getting closer to the clearing as i draw my final javelin with the warthog swiftly closing the distance despite the spear hanging loosely from its chest and striking the ground, i feel adrenaline flooding through my panicing system and forcing me into a mad dash of my own for three running steps until i was within reach of the warthog's youngly straight but long tusks. My fourth step was a raised foot as the boar lowered its head in preparation of contact with my legs, providing my crazed choices with the perfect place to stomp down and push off of so that the boar's face was shoved down into the dirt hard enough to buckle its front legs while i leaped forward around its lower body that rose up over its crumpling front as the second javelin finally broke away from its head. The leg i landed on buckled from a sudden, sharp pain that spread throughout my hip, bringing me to a fast kneel while the warthog somersaulted over on its side to start scrambling back up to its feet, but i was still the first one back up and moving with my final javelin held low and at the read to thrust forward and down into the animal's ribs so that it was driven back down to the ground where i pulled it free of its head.

Air rushed out of the hollowed spearhead in a low whistle as the boar started to squeal, but as the whistle faded the squeal grew wetter and choked with the deflation of the lung that i had punctured, stunning the already disoriented and draining animal more than long enough for me to grip my smoky spear in both hands and stiff-arm thrust it down under the warthog's kicking front leg where i hoped to find its heart. my spear punched straight through the boar's torso and into the ground underneath, ending its struggles only a few moments later as i continued leaning on the spear to keep the boar from kicking free in its throes. For a moment, it didn't click in my head that the animal was dead, just lying there waiting for any opportunity, so it was nearly a full minute of continuing to pin the boar's corpse before i finally realized that it was over and shakily lowered myself to my knees beside the dead animal.

It felt real, as far as i could tell as i ran my fingers over its lightly scarred body and through its short bristly mane, but the fact that it was dead just did not feel real. "The other lung is still inflated, the bladder and colon isn't relaxing, the jaw is clenched," i say somewhat loudly after several minutes of both resting and examing the animal whose other lung i collapse with some light pressure to its chest. "Otherwise... its a real deal dead animal," i finish after resting, finally drawing my knife to stab into the warthog's belly and start tearing and sawing up to its chest while organs and blood gushed still warm from its recent life gushed out from behind my blade.

Retrieving my spear from the corpse to free up tension in the organs still pinned inside, i finish field dressing the animal by taking out the last of my braided cordage to tie the boar's back and front legs to each other around the shaft of my spear for transportation. Fire seemed to pour throughout my leg as i struggled to stand and raise the hefty warthog's remaining three hundred pounds up to my shoulders, deafening me to my own agonized scream as i miraculously straighted and then was forced to lean with the incredible weight. Tears blurred my vision for a little while as i took my first, shaky steps forward, but the agony in my hip subsided down to a markedly sharper version of its original throb and my vision cleared even as i pushed recklessly through the brush on my way out of the grove.

I was not foolish enough to leave the trails and walk straight through the grasslands from this grove so close to the center, but i had no choice other than to cut across or around certain parts of the trails that took me close to the swampier lowlands. by the time i even came close to the first cane grove where i had cut and crafted my weapons, i had to not only stop but lie down in the ankle and knee-high grass beside my burden. It was more than just my leg, the highest weight i had ever worked with was two-hundred-and-thirty pounds while dead-lifting, which meant that this boar had to be no less than seventy pounds more than my max so there was never any hope of having lifted it without the adrenaline of fighting it that was now all tapped out.

Long was the only measurement i could give for the length of time that i spent lying on my stomach and just breathing in the almost lemony salt grass my face was crushing, but finally there came a time when i could finally climb slowly up to my hands and knees and then up to my feet entirely where i drew my knife to set to work lightening my load. no matter how sorry i felt for myself, my main priority was to preserve the animal's hide as best as i could and to do so meant that i had to cut lines from either end of the field dressing that reached up to the ankles of all of the animal's feet. Sawing the field dressing wound up the warthog's sternum and throat and all the way to the underside of its chin, i carve rings around the ankles of the boar from which to start peeling its hide down to its shoulders and haunches to spread out on the ground underneath.

Viciously unhinging the warthog's jaw with quick twists of my knife, i work the face of the boar away from its mouth and tear away the tusks by hand to finish peeling the skull of the boar before carving the meat of its neck back from the tubing of its throat and its spinal column that i break and rip away to decapitate the animal. Storing the neck meat in the chest cavity of the warthog before moving on to the joints of its legs with my knife and then hands to break the legs free of the body, i untie the freed limbs to wind a single length of cordage through the tendons and joints of their ankles before tying them to the bottom of my spearshaft. Running the chest cavity through the killing blow on the head of my spear, i stab a hole through portions of the neck meat to run the other length of cordage through and tie the meat to the shaft of my spear within the chest cavity.

Leaving it all carefully on the ground with the fatty skin splayed out underneath, i walk off to the cane grove with only a slight limp to retrieve one of my large cane trees that i carefully cut the largest segments from as i return to my butchered carcass. Using the broad face of my ax to scrape at the fat coating the hide, i piled up every squelchy bit of the bloody mess on the side of the ax from each limb portion to be scraped and scooped off into the segments until i came time for me to scoop the loose fat from the exposed meat by hand and deposit in the cane canisters. Lidding the two mostly filled segments i managed to gather with the larger ends of their predecessor segments, i store them away in my satchel before slowly standing up with the redistributed and lessened weight of the and then curling the rough two-sixty pounds of weight remaining up to my chest and then raised over my head to rest across the backs of my shoulders where i can change my grip on my burden and start walking once more.

I effectively hated life as a whole by the time i got back to camp, but i was still in one piece and the combination of relief and petty satisfaction that came from unceremoniously dropping the dead beast backward onto the slab of my campsite was somewhat worth the effort of bringing it here. Taking the canisters of lard from my satchel to stand on the slab near the boar spear, i look up at the sun that was only an hour or so from its zenith and then only a few hours from setting down over the top of the volcano and casting most of the islands into an early twilight. Breaking open one of the nuts from the breast pocket of my sweater to find it clustered with litte seeds like peanut halves, i simply dump and shake either half of the nut empty into my hand and eat them two or three at a time before taking a citrus from my satchel for peeling.

Eating another cluster nut like the last and taking bites from the slightly sour citrus like and apple to wash it down, i find only a few seeds in the fruit except that the few seeds i did come across were nearly the size of my thumbnail in the softball sized fruit. tossing the seedy central scraps of the citrus aside, i decide that another set of nuts was in order after taking the time to shuck and puncture one of my few remaining coconuts for something more satisfying to drink while eating. Climbing up to my campsite where i can deposit the remaining contents of my satchel safely nestled in my cargo net outside my tent before heading back off from my camp slab entirely with only my ax and knife and one pocket of nuts to weigh me down for this trip.

My first destination was passed another coconut cluster at which i stopped to fill my satchel with drinkable nuts before continuing roughly a hundred yards deeper into the grasslands toward the outer shore of my island. i was worried at first about how well my ax would function against the surprisingly tough cane trees that grew nearly twice the size of the previous cane grove, but after experimentally chopping into the base of one cane tree to crunch and break almost halfway through it, i almost glady start swinging the ax into the following cane trees that tumbled over in only two or three swings. Four seemed to be the lucky number for when the hard outer shells of the canes finally started chipping away the edge of the blade, seven marked the point at which i could only chop with certain portions of the blade after a few areas of the blade crumbled away, eleven for when i only had one portion of the ax face left to use, and finally i somehow managed to break down a total of fifteen cane trees before the head of the ax broke down so much that it fell free of its binding and handle in pieces after a single swing into a sixteenth cane tree.

Storing the empty handle between my belt and waistband behind my back and its freed cordage in my satchel, i start gathering together the giant cane trees that i had chopped to drag out of the grove where i take a moment to start making some impromptu decisions. Emptying my satchel of its contents beside my stack of cane trees and my empty handle, i make my way carefully but briskly back across the island to my camp where i remove the pork quarters and neck meat from my spear to fill my satchel or tie about my belt before stuffing into my nut crate all of my remaining melons, coconuts, citrus, and even a few of the smaller slate blanks. carrying the fifty-pounds of crate and contents in my hands back across the rockland to the grassland and then to the outer beach, i am forced to stop at every edge of whatever i come to for rest before carrying on again.

The sun was just barely hanging what looked like a few inches above the top of the volcano by the time i relocated my boar spear bearing the heavy coil of rope to balance the boar torso, and was as good of a reason as any to stop and open up one of the coconuts i had been stopping to collect on my trips back and forth for something to drink while sitting on my stack of cane trees. Taking it easy on my hip had brought the pain back down to its original dullness despite the hellacious straight that i was putting myself through, but i had tried my best to prep myself for this with weekly endurance training wearing arm and leg weights and a vest clipped with as much as eighty pounds of ten-pound weights for jogging at least a mile three times a day on a treadmill by the time i couldn't increase the weight on myself anymore. My back and legs and arms all felt like aching gelatin that literally seemed to vibrate as my hands trembled opening more cluster nuts or holding up my coconut, but i still had two trips to make and failure was no longer not only because of Emma's need for assistance but because i had run my big mouth.

Getting up from my seat almost twenty minutes later, i start shambling back across the island with the sun finally touching down behind the top of the volcano to my camp where i had left my cargo net and trunk of crystal prizes. Wondering how much weight the trunk could actually hold, i follow the professor's advice while dismantling my tent by emptying the contents of my trunk onto one of my furs that i then layer out carefully over and in the trunk smoother out as best as i could manage. Covering my haul of stones that only filled the trunk halfway with another fur, i lay larger slabs of slate on the fur and fold the excess of the second fur over them in layers until i could just barely shut the lid over the new forty pounds of content.

Giving my arms a break by tightly wrapping my trunk up in my empty cargo net to bear on my back like everything that i had brought with me from my lifeboat, i make my way once again through my island without bothering to stop for resources of any kind or stop at all for that matter until i could finally deposit the trunk from my cargo net and start walking all over again with the sun a third of the way under the rim of the volcano. If i thought i hated life a few hours ago, i was dead wrong because it was not until i was bearing a load of slate flats wrapped safely in the rest of my furs as a small bouder more than large enough for me to sit on with both a smooth top and bottom increased the weight of this final load to almost a hundred pounds as it dragged down to my rear. Stopping simply was not an option at this point for fear of smacking myself with a sixty-pound rock, so it was with great time that i returned to my stockpile looking at a sun that was only halfway set over the top of the volcano.

Hoping that i would not end up regretting this choice, i cut down my prism spear at the segment beneath the head and the largest bottom sement of the shaft to use as an impromptu knife and sheath by notching holes in either side of the holster segment's through which to run the ends of a length of cordage and tie them off into multiple large knots too big to fit back through the notches. Testing the sheath by dropping my new knife into the segment to see that the thirteen-inch segment contained enough of the handle as well as the blade to keep it from jostling out before undoing my belt by several loops to run it back through with my hanging holster next to my belt knife. Using the eight-odd inches of my smoky dagger's blade to saw and chew through the cane trees almost as quickly and easily as i had chopped them down, making the work much faster than if i had used the smaller iron knife, i section the trees into thirteen poles that were a more or less uniform seven segments long with their outer segments open at the ends and two more that were nine segments long in similar fashion cut from the bottoms of the trees.

Laying out these poles as the bottom of my raft with the longer two at the front and back ends, i lay out the rest of the trees over the top in an alternating pattern using the open bottom segements hanging over the edges to measure them against each other until i can no longer fit the remaining trees on top. The sun was already setting behind the volcano by the time i marked the trees with quick saws and set to work cutting them off at the appropriate lengths, leaving me to work in an unusually bright twilight as the shadow of the volcano stretched out over the land and consumed my island with every passing second that i laid out the newly cut poles. Sawing light cuts into the open segments at the ends of my base poles through which to run cordage while a slow chill crept across my body with the shadow of the volcano passing over, i actualy found relief in the sudden, heavy cold that did wonders to sooth my stiffening limbs as i finished prepping the base and body of my raft.

Holstering my dagger to find a seat on the piled remains of my cane trees with my spool of rope in hand, i undwind and untie an entire twenty-foot length of rope from the coil to sit back and leisurely untwist the cords of the rope while my eyes adjusted to the strangely bright gloom of my island from the handful of remaining hours of sunlight streaming in from around the sides of the volcano over the outer side islands and surrounding ocean. Taking a short break from work in general to peel and eat a citrus slice by slice for hydration as well as something to do, i soon set back to work by braiding the lengths of cordage together into my personal brand of rope as quickly as i can manage with the almost impossibly long cords. Ending up with nine lengths of braided rope that were nearly three times as long as my body, i use my steel knife to start notching small holes in the sides of the open ends of the body poles before lining up and notching the tops and bottoms of the open segments of the front and back base poles as well as a single set of notches in the top and bottom of the inner base poles' open ends.

Running my first legnth of rope up and down through the bottom and top poles until i reached the end of the for first lower open segment, i start feeding the line straight through the sides of the upper poles until i reach the far side's open segment and once more feed the line into the front base pole through the individual poles at the end. Tying the original end and its excess into an impassible knot, i stretch the opposit end of the rope until i can heard the canes creak and groan in a threat of caving into the base pole before tying it off thickly as close to the notch as possible with a small loop at the end. Repeating this tedious process once again on the back end of my raft before it is secure enough to flip over so that i can feed a third and fourth rope through the open ends of the inner base poles and simply over the closest possible cane pole to be cinched off in similar fashion to the front and back poles.

Fidgeting with the roughly cut bottom of my new dagger handle as i considered my twelve-inch tall raft, i wonder at just how much weight the raft itself can carry after thoughts of myself having to cart my belongings and then possibly more cane supplies when the few hundred pounds of cargo i carried on top of my own weight before finally deciding that my knew weapon was a more than good enough tool with which to cut another couple of trees and then section them and my excess out to augment the raft. The only issue was in actually doing it as i lumbered off from my impromptu construction site with my dagger in hand to return to the can grove that i had made my raft from, where i almost hastily sawed down six more trees to be dragged back under my arms. Measuring the whole bottoms of the trees against the underside of my raft in similar alternating fashion to the way i measured the top side, i mark my trees with faint scrapes before cutting them at the next closest segment in line before dividing them in two groups of three.

Notching holes in the sides of these poles just as i had done with the top poles, i run my fifth length of rope through the ends of the bottom poles and the ends of the base poles around the rope for the top side before cutting the line with enough excess at either end to cinch off. The next few minutes were spent rushing around each of the corners of my raft repeating this process with the larger cane timbers that would hopefully increase my bouyancy enough to sustain the estimated load of around five hundred pounds. Trimming down the remains of my trees for several different sizes of handles and spear shafts, i take the largest portions of the remaing sections of trees to notch and run rope through and bundle tightly together into small pontoons which i then shove and proportion between the top and bottom layers of my raft just behind each of the corners before tying the ends of the bundle ropes to either the top or bottom poles of the raft.

Running two of my remaining whole lengths of braided rope through either of the loops at the front and back opposing sides, i simply toss their loose ends into the raft before i heft up my boulder to place carefully nestled in the inner corner of the middle and back end base poles in preparation for transport. Taking the two longest, eight foot, poles that i had set aside from my sectioning, i cut sets of two large notches in the open ended segments of either poles through which to fit a single portion of cane three segments long through the bases of each pole's end segments. Notching these intersecting poles down their entire lengths, i feed through even smaller lengths of cane roughly the same length of the end segment of the poles after notching each of their ends and the end of my oar shafts.

Lashing these segments to the intersect pole before running rope through their ends to cinch together until the canes are leaning into the center from either side, i toss my completed oars into the underside of my raft before i set to work making anchors for the oars out of two smaller cane poles and two brass cargo anchors from my life boat. trimming the ends of my anchor poles down to their next segments so that i could push the brass pegs down through the wood between segments, i cut notches in the bottom segments of the anchor poles and then large notches in the outer poles of the top of my raft marking what i considered the front of the middle of my raft. Setting the anchors in the underside of the raft, i do a quick estimate on the weight of the raft and the weight of my individual items before adding to the raft my trunk of rocks and crate of food.

Squatting down to grip the front base pole of my raft from behind, i stand up with its weight and start dragging it down to the beach with my sled of almost two hundred pounds while wondering at how much time had passed during construction. If my arms and back were anything to go by, it had been over an hour in which i had built my raft which equaled out to several hours of real-time spent healing, and would hopefully be enough as i dropped my raft off several yards from the salt and suds of the waves on the shoreline Emptying the contents of my raft to flip it over right-side-up on the sand to put on the finishing touches, i run the oar anchor poles through the holes i had made marking what i considered the front of the middle of my raft in the top side poles and running the excesses from previous ropes through the anchor pole holes to wrap and knot several times around the top poles on either side of the raft.

Leaving my raft after retrieving another citrus fruit to eat on my way back to my construction site where i start the thirty-minute process of of ferrying the rest of my belongings to the next checkpoint where i finally drag my raft out into navel-deep water. anchoring the raft in place with the shaft of one oar run through its anchor and thrust as deep into the wet sand below as i could manage, i take up the closest lead rope floating nearby to tie to the intersect of the other oar that i stake futher up in the shallows in case the slow but steady current wrapping around the side of my island should uproot the first oar. Retrieving first from the shore the remaining shaft of my prism spear bearing the boar and rople to take out to my raft that floated mostly on its pontoons with the bottom layer of poles resting just beneath the surface of the water, i bring the warthog torso and the coil of rope together at the center of the spear shaft before hefting it up onto the raft and pushing them toward the middle of the raft that settles somewhat on the six lower timbers while bringing the rest of the pontoons between the bottom and middle into the water.

Retrieving next only my boulder and a length of cane that i push out into the water ahead of me with my body as i walk back to the raft, i set the heavy, round slab of slate on the edge of the raft and push it as far inward as i can manage by hand before taking up the cane rod and pushing the boulder into the center of the raft. The raft settled most of the way into the water by the time i had ferried out my crate, trunk, and cargo net of slabs and cane lengths, but the sudden addition of my one-eighty and clothes barely seemed to disturb the raft as i placed the outer anchor oar that i had brought with me in its anchor with a quick notch and tie off of its own full length of braided rope. Organizing my belongings with the fur wrapped slabs of slat crowded in my my crate and trunk on the sides supporting my rope and boar spool, i untie the legs of meat from my belt to stuff into the chest cavity with the necklace of neck meat before finally covering everything with the cargo net and tucking the edges deep underneath my belongings for traction before pegging the net down with broken brass anchors.

Taking my seat at the front of the middle of the raft on my boulder that i slide out with me, i first check the sky to see that it was now the golden our before true twilight from the pink and gold coloring of the clouds before checking my belongings to be sure everything was secured in place. "Ready," i say after notching the bottom of the current anchor oar and running it with a safety rope to its anchor, "set," i go on after tying the leading rope at the front of my raft to my wrist, and then finally, "go," right before i pull up the anchor oar to release my raft to the gentle tug of the current wrapping around my island. Rushing to proper the oar in its anchor before taking up position at the middle of the nine-foot wide raft with the handles of either oar in grasp, i dip the outer oar into the water and work it around its anchor slowly to lightly paddle my rafter faster forward with a constant angle toward my island while only dipping the inner oar to straighten out my path out of water that was becoming too shallow.

The first trickles of adrenaline fueled by sudden fear began running through my system as the canal opened up further ahead to the waterways between islands and their much faster currents, but all i could do was grit my teeth and use the extra energy to steer and paddle even harder from the outside to almost drift through the changing currents angling from the canal to the other water ways until i was rounding the back of my island and forced to dip and pull with both oars to fight with the current coming in from the other side of my island. Climbing quickly down from my raft around the back of the other side of my island, i lead the raft as far up into the shallows as i can go before i start the long walk of floating my raft upstream along the side of my island until i was far enough forward to the next island over to once again board my raft. Rowing as hard as i could at an ever so slight angle with the current across the channel between my island and the next bearing a thick forest of tall trees around small granite rises in the back middle of the island that i could just barely makeout in the fading light over the treetops.

Angling around the back of this island just as i had my own to find its rear side almost straight whereas mine had been rounded, making for almost still shallows through which i could more leisurely paddle along until reaching the next canal that would bring me to my destination. Much as Emma had described it, her island was beaches of yellow silt and white sand dotted with coconut trees and rose slightly inland before dipping sharply into a shallow bowl landscape broken only by a single large clay hill over which grew dense thickets of a myriad of trees ranging from citrus to sprawling island oaks. What caught my attention the most about Emma's island was that far up the beach from me near the front of her island was the flickering glow of firelight from the crest of her beach on which i could make out a structure of coconut palm fronds and the silhouette of somebody sitting with their back to the firelight down the rise from their camp.

Drawing my much flashier quartz dagger with which to wave while turning this way and that as a visual signal, i keep going for a few moments until Emma suddenly bolts up from her seat and waves either arm over her head back at me for a few seconds before jogging down her beach toward me with an only vaguely noticeable limp. Departing my raft once again to pull it along up the shallows as fast as i can manage in knee-deep water, i stop as soon as i feel there is enough distance for me to angle across the football field width of the channel nearly a quarter of a mile up the coast of the island between emma's and mine and climb onto my raft for what i prayed would be the last time. By the time i splashed into the shallows of Emma's island to lead my raft up her coast the last few hundred yards to meet the young lady who had long since stopped jogging, there was a long moment of breathless silence in the shallows when i finally caught up with the short, blond haired girl wearing similar canvas cargo-style clothes as i was with the addition of a straw hat made instead from the ends of palm fronds and their leaves.

Looking back at my raft tugging at my arm with the current, i grin when i return my gaze to her bright green eyes and shove my foot down my throat by saying, "Your chariot awaits."

Her eyes widened in surprise just a little at my remark for a moment, but then she looked back down the beach at her fire whose flames were somewhat smaller than earlier only to look back at me with a grin mirroring my own. "May i," She asks almost playfully, holding out her hand for my own to which the raft's lead was tied. I held my out to her palm down and bent at the wrist as if presenting a ring with one finger twisted in the braided lead, which she simply reaches around to grab the rope actual and start pulling the raft in to where we were standing.

I knew long before she even started climbing into the raft that i was going to hate myself for a lot of reasons by the time i made it to her camp, but i could only hope that it would be worth it as i started off through the waist-deet water along E mma's shortline. The cold water felt incredible to my submerged hip even as i pulled the raft against the flow of the current, but the rest of my upper body quickly let its opinion of the situation be known as my vaguely healed muscles start tearing all over again much less than halfway to my destination. "Jesus," he her exclamation about ten minutes into pulling her along. "I thought Professor Harlen was just using you and the boar as a reference, but you really fought a boar! How big was it?"

"Big," was all i could think to say at first, looking over my shoulder to see that Emma was drinking from a coconut while eating a handful of the smaller nuts in my crate. "Once i finish butchering it for real and most of the bones are gone, it will be almost two hundred pounds of meat," i add after looking ahead once again to the fading yellow light of her camp. "I had to cart the boar- and all of my stuff for that matter- at least two miles around my island before i finally had everything set to go. believe me, it wasn't easy... i spent probably the last four out of five or six hours just transporting crap. Doesn't help that i hurt my leg climbing my mountain this morning... made it up and most of the way down just fine, but the last steppe had a crumbling crevasse that dropped me the last three or four feet right on a rock. I'll show you my hip once we stop."

"You didn't get injured rushing to my rescue," Emma states more than asks in disbelief.

"Actually, i wasn't rushing at all," i cannot help but laugh in response. "I was trying pretty darn hard to take my time because i had adrenaline in my system from the excitement of everything that was happening. Then, just because i was going slow, the mountain decided to speed things up a bit. The boar itself wasn't that bad, though, if i am right from the damages to the citrus groves on my island and from watching it eat, my enemy lived on rotten fruit and spent all of its time drunk as a skunk. i just happened to come up on it while it was passed out, got a free shot on it right in the neck with... one of these," i add after fishing about my pockets with my free hand to find a blood stained hollow cane spearhead, which i unceremoniously tossed over my shoulder after a quick call of, "incoming!

"Thats the one i put in its lung, there as another in its collar and the first that i had thrown into its neck," i continue as she seems to examine the weapon and remark to herself quietly. "They're just the ends of canes that i hollowed out and fit into the next segment, something to speed up its bloodflow and tire it out as fast as possible during the fight. Drunk and startled from sleep as it was, the boar's blood was so thin and heart rate so high that by the time i actually got physical with them it was so unbalanced that they pretty much flopped over and let me kill it. I doubt we will be so lucky against your tutorial threat. Any idea what we are up against?"

"Saltwater... crocodiliad?" She asks uncertainly. "I'm pretty sure thats the word for what the group of them are called, but i don't know if thats what they would be in the game. Its almost as long as you are tall in the body with almost as much length in tail, but Professor Harlen says that they are born at three feet long and its less than a year old. The adults probably get big enough to eat you or I whole."

"Anything that gets born with a size of three feet will usually get big enough to crush or eat you," i remark with a soft chuckle, thankful that her tutorial target was young and inexperienced. "Once we get to your camp, i can start making weapons just for them before we go to sleep. What kind of weapons and equipment have you put together?"

"Well, originally i just had this kind of fishing spear i made with one of the broken wall rings from my life boat and my knife, but i found this area of the bank near the far side of the island where there are these big clay... growths?" She asks hesitantly. "They're kind of like boulders and while the outer layers were easy enough to break through, the insides were really hard and strong so i kinda smashed it like porcelain and used this big round piece to grind a double-sided ax from. Other than that, all i have are coconuts and a couple grapefruits from yesterday. When i spotted my croc, it was coming out of the much at the bottom of the basin and i realized something. that thing has perfectly camoflauge."

Coating themselves with mud or sitting still for incredible lengths of time were most wild crocs and gators and the rest did naturally, this guy must live his entire life in muddy still motion. "Well... i cant remember if crocs had parietal eyes or not like a lizard, but his sight is still based very much on light and motion. With luck we can use the mud against him... something about the island must be keeping him here. Have you noticed any animals or fish in the mud that are probably its food source?"

"Yeah, this really ugly frog-fish things the professor calls a gelpy, its got two hind legs amd this long skinny body," she replies almost instantly, sounding both horrified and fascinated at the same time. "The biggest i have ever seen is the length of my arm from elbow to wrist and spotting one without it jumping out of the mud for a bug is as hard as spotting the croc without it going after a gelpy. it was while i was trying to gig one in the shallow waters at the back of the bowl where the island is washing out that i actually saw the croc and decided it wasn't worth it."

"I don't blame you," i say after a thoughtful few moments. My island had bore no traces of ingame animals, but Emma's island was ripe with not only small game but in-game small game. "But, depending on how our healing and my fight with the croc goes, we'll be able to round up a few of them and see what they taste like."

Snorting with a sudden bout of laughter, Emma quickly stifles herself before saying, "Ew. No. I was desperate before, but you brought real meat with you. those things are so slimy the mud slides right off of em when they jump, and boy can they jump. i dont want to even touch one anymore."

I had to fight back my own laughter at these remarks, but it was a hard fight that i only won by biting my lip. "Fine, but i want to... gig one... just for the tutorial points. As long as the two of us joining up doesn't give that croc a growth spurt overnight, I'll make it. Mind opening a coconut for me?"

"Of course not," she says, tossing the shells from her nuts out in the water. "On a scale of one-to-ten, how bad would you say your leg is?"

"On a scale of on-to-ten? One hundred," i reply almost casually. "From the way its been feeling and the origins of the worst pain, when i fell i cracked my hip in like three places. Landing with my weight on the leg while fighting the boar shocked them apart like tectonic plates, and the strain of lifting the boar kinda crunched em together but further away from the actual pelvis. I was actually born in reality with a kind of disassociative nerves thing. i feel pain- oh God do i feel this pain- but its like... there's this wall that it just doesn't get passed, thank god momma liked drugs or i wouldn't be walking right now, eh? Unless its something like a broken bone in my shin or thigh, i can still walk, the actual joint of my pelvis is still intact so i can still move the leg. This water certainly helps, nice and cold, but its still there. waiting for me to go to sleep and wake up so it can say, 'stand up to pee? no, you crawl to the bathroom'."

"Does that actually happen?" She asks in relative horror.

Thinking back to my early days of dead lifting and then running on the treadmill even before adding weights, i say, "Oh, you can bet money on it that i'm gonna need you to pull me up on my feet tomorrow. once im in motion, though, like Newton says, i tend to stay in motion."

"You're not an 'object', you're a person, but no i dont mind acting on you in the morning to help you get going," she says with a quiet laugh. "Just dont expect me to help you use the bathroom."

"Have you used the bathroom in the game?" i ask curiously, now realizing that i had never taken the time to see if that was even a thing. "In all honesty... i probably should, i don't know if this is healthy for my character or not. this is two days with no bathroom breaks..." i trail off with a laugh. Then, "In all seriousness, though, there is a very real possibility that i am going to die tomorrow in all that mud and muck, so i would really prefer it if you weren't around to watch me get ripped apart. if i do die and get eaten, there's a small chance that the croc will be so hungry from living off of these gelpy things that it will go ahead and deathroll me to pieces and eat me instead of waiting for me to rot and break down a bit like other crocodiliads- in which case its going to be a very full and very lethargic stuffed reptile laden down with an extra one-to-two-hundred pounds of manmeat. That will be the best time for you to go after it, while its injured and sleeping off its meal."

Emma said nothing for several long minutes, and then when she finally did speak she said, "I dont want to really think about it like that, but i'll respect your wishes and stick to camp whenever you finally go after the croc. Just... just try not to die."

Neither of us said anything for the next few minutes until we got to the small stretch of beach vaguely illuminated by the tall pile of glowing coals that had once been Emma's fire, and even then it was just a few words of coordination as we both worked my raft most of the way out of the water and onto the beach where i can stake it down with the oar handles. Emma opted for transporting the boar meat and the few supplies that we would need to camp while i set to work stoking her fire at the camp and resting my own injury at the expense of hers. At her camp i found enough coconuts of varying ripeness to last a single person a day not counting the three or four citrus along side, a much larger stockpile of dried grasses and palm fronds than actual citrus and cooking wood aside from large chunks of what looked like a dead coconut palm.

Using my quartz dagger to pile up the remaining embers and burnt wood in the middle of the large clay hunks surrounding her fire and still emmenating warmth, i crush together a large wad of grasses and fronds to place on top of the embers under a football sized chunk of dry rotting coconut palm to hold it all down while i started blowing gently on the bottom of the crushed tinder. After the first long, slow breath i could see the glow of dark orange light through the tinder as thin wisps of smoke started rising up from under the palm chunk, and the smoke from the slowly burning grasses only grew thicker with the second and third breaths until flames licked out from underneath the opposite side during my fourth breath. Blowing as softly as i could without holding it the palm chunk down the keep the fire from burning too much on the other side as flames once again licked up the opposite side, i gather citrus twiges and broken pieces of frond to pile up around the opposite side if the growing fire before i finish the fifth breath and begin the sixth.

I did not even have to continue blowing after the sixth breath as flames grew out from all sides to greedily consume what remained of the tinder and char the thickly porous palm hunk on top, warming the rest of the kinding piled up around the fire by the time Emma had brought back all of the boar and laid it out on its own skin on the lightly grassy hilltop. Surrounding the growing fire on all sides with more of Emma's stock of citrus wood and topping it with thick portions of fronds, i follow soon after her back to the raft with renewed aches in my leg that slowed me down dearly until i got to the raft and could catch my breath while organizing the gathered wood with Emma. Setting off with a sled of most of the three largest branches loaded with all of the small wood, i slowly crawl back up the sloping beach to camp where the fire had grown to consume all of the citrus kindling with healthy yellow flames while darkly charing the old palm fronds on top surrounding a brightly glowing but flameless chunk of palm tree.

Using my knives to carefully drag the small clay boulders further out from the fire by several inches for every boulder while Emma returns with the first of the other completed wood sleighs, i surrounded the fire in copious amounts of my own citrus and hardwood kindling and top the entire thing with the remains of Emma's dried grasses to smolder brightly and smoke thickly before i follow after Emma to help transport the rest of the wood. The smallest of the sleds were made up of the gimpiest branches and smallest pieces of broken logs, so i took the time to rest up by lazily putting the three of them together into one much larger sled that i start off down the beach with as Emma returned from her second sled and then lapped me once again by passing me with her third. i considered a joke about how this was not an injury competition, but the air i needed to drag what ended up being the last of the wood from the raft made it hard to come up with a joke at all until i could finally sit down beside the roaring fire.

Even Emma was taking a break now, politely looking the other way as i pulled down the hip of my cargo pants to examine the visibly swollen and darkly bruised skin until i did the same while she examined the holes in her leg. "I have a dressing you could use on that," i say after finally getting up to examine the large stock of wood that we had compiled from the raft. "I need to use it when i finally redress my hands before bed. probably going to slap some on my hip and even try eating some. its just some flower and coconut stuff, so it shouldn't be toxic- especially if its safe to put on open wounds like my hands. I'll go get it in a sec when i go back to get some cane trees to set up a spit and rack for the boar."

"Then i should definitely come with you," she says over the rustling of her own clothes being pulled back up. "I can carry the meds and more of the food stuffs while you carry the cane goods."

"Alright, but do you know how to set up a smoking or curing rack by any chance?" I ask while waiting for her to get up and join me for what would hopefully be our last trip to the raft.

"I know how to salt and press meat for jerky but i dont know how to primitive cure it that way, no," she replies once we set off down the beach.

"It's pretty simple, just gotta make it a little thick to keep it from burning. by the time we're done the fire should be burned down enough to spread out under the rack setup," I say as she starts to leave me behind. "I'll explain as we go, once I catch up to you."

Emma was once again leaving the raft by the time I got there, but she was stubbornly hauling the boar on a sled of its hide and and a some loose rope, which was fine by me because that just meant all i had to worry about was collecting several cane poles and some extra rope to make my way back to camp with. Much of the beach was brightly lit by the size and strength of our fire, leading my to wonder if i should not add more wood before setting to work on the rack, so it was with little regret that i placed a loose ring of large old logs from my raft and topped the fire itself with the branches that made up the last sled of dregs i had hauled to camp. Waiting until Emma was done drinking down a coconut, i say, "Could you unwind some of that rope into smaller cordage and then braid it together in really long lengths? I'm going to set up the legs for the rack and then the frame for the rack before i start butchering that boar."

"No problem, three strands or six?" She asks after swallowing a mouthful of coconut meat, picking up the rope she had dragged the meat and food with to start plying apart.

"Six-strand belts would be perfect," i say appreciatively, drawing my heavy quartz knife after picking out four lengths of can tree to cut up into a set of six- and four-foot lengths which i proceed to plant one of each side by side at four points around the fire. Using my slimmer iron knife to carefully punce holes through to top segments of each ple just above the actual sections, i cut the largest bottom sections of each of the cane remains from the poles and hammer my iron knife down them with a rock to split each of them in two halves. Fitting the halves through each of the holes in the rack legs, i use my own cordage to tie the newly fashioned pegs tightly into place before i use another whole length of cane tree to measure the distances between each of the legs that i mark with notches.

Using the notches to section other cane trees into a frame that i simply peg and tie together, i carefully fit the frame over the racks to be sure that it fit and the current pegs could also support some weight before taking it off the legs and bringing it over to Emma where i can measure it against the few six-plus foot lengths of strapping she had managed to complete so far. Each of the four current straps were long enough to wrap from one side of the rectangular frame around the other and back again with several inches of excess after tying them off. "Okay, the legs and the frame are self explanatory, but this is the fun part," i half-ass explain as i sit down with my own length of rope to ply apart and braid into similar but much longer straps. "However big your rack is going to be is pretty much how long, or a couple times over, your strapping should be, and then you just place a peg beside every wrap and knot to tie them to. I'm going to make the really long weaving straps, you go ahead and keep making exactly what you're making and we should be done or as good as at about the same time."

"If i didn't know any better, i would almost say you were a professional at this," Emma remarks after a minute or two of silence in which i was plying apart my rope before planting my knife in the same log as hers to wrap three strands of plied cordage around for a six-strand celtic braid. "Surviving out at sea in bumfuck nowhere and killing stuff."

"Technically, you could say it has been a lifelong passtime of mine, killing shit," I reply with a wicked grin. "Feeling it when i get messed up messing something else up... that's new. And exhilerating. I'm gonna' have to talk to Doc about this adrenaline kick i go on every time i see something, because literally i will just see an animal or something in the distance and first impulse is... attack. Aside from that, video games all my life and nine months to prepare for this beta project have made me... my difficulty ranking."

Finishing her current belt and tossing it in the empty space that had once been her growing pile of them before i applied them to the frame, she says, "I mostly did a lot of book study and practice runs at stuff like starting fire and handling a knife in lots of different ways for my game prep. I have also always really liked the idea of archery, have gotten a couple of training bows from my parents all my life that i never used until beta prep, and I'm honestly not that bad at it if i say so myself."

"Oh, well if you can use a bow then that changes everything," i say with an exaggerated sigh of relief. "Can you arc an arrow? Depending on your aiming and opportunities, an arrow that arcs down from a hundred feet or so would probably be the only thing to pierce it at vital depths. But, i can teach you had to grind slate tools by grinding out some different arrowheads for tomorrow tonight and tomorrow i can show you how to make a basic cane bow." And something a little heavier for myself if time permits.

"I actually kind of can arc an arrow, but like... one in five... or ten find the mark," she admits a little sheepishly. "Otherwise i can definitely 'hit' something like a crocodile if you can draw it to the surface. How well depends on the target as much as me, but at least every arrow will hit it from the top of the bowl with a clear visual."

Working the slack from my braids and the tangles from the strands, i say, "I have complete faith in your abilities for the task ahead, all i really need from ranged weapons is to make it bleed so we can spot the blood in the clay shallows once i get down in the bowl. Until i actually get into the line of sight and fire of your bow, take every shot you want because every little bit will help. An arrow to the side behind a front leg will cut its mobility or retreatability and probably its actual ability to deathroll, which will save me loads of worry once im down there, but enough arrows anywhere in general should make sure it thinks twice about grabbing me and trying to twist around in that muck."

It was about nine-o'-clock at night by the time we finished our braiding and then only a few more minutes before i was done applying the straps across the wdith of the frame and my own long belts wo wind over and under each of the width lines down the length of the frame and backe up again several times before pegging and tying all of the weaves in place. "Some of this doesn't have enough meat to bother butchering, like these racks of ribs, so those can just dry out in the middle as they are and we can pick at them tomorrow. These back and neck straps, quarters, and fatty brisket however need to be portioned out to cook faster. I'll work the quarters from the bones, you just chop those straps down to sixinch length and cut them down longways with one half at about two thirds so that portion can be filleted."

"I know a little about this part," Emma says somewhat cheerfully as she drags the boar hide and meat over to our work area while i start tamping down the mound of embers and spreaking them out before scattering small pieces of branches and kindling over the fire area. "Every three years when they lift the hunt ban, my dad takes us all out on a hunting vacation and we usually bag a couple of different things- even helped bring down a bear just last year. But I'm not bad at butchering."

"This is actually my first time, if this actually counts," i admit after coming to side down on a clay boulder across the boarskin from Emma. "I won't lie... i have never been the recreational type. Please don't think that i am bragging, but i was born a genius long before i ever got my Cynapses, so i was thrown through excellerated schooling until i done with puberty and could recieve my implants at fourteen and started college. I had made the mistake of slacking in my physical education, so by eighteen i was two-fifty and downright pasty to be almost three-hundred last year, but when this game came out i slacked off on my company to start doing push-ups and then i was actually chosen for the beta back at two-fifty and i sold my company to retire early and hit the insane button on my game prep."

"You owned and sold a company?!" Emma asks incredulously once i was done, sitting carving the torn hams from a hind leg of the boar. "I have a really nice job in pharmaceutical, myself, but I'm nowhere near retirement yet."

Trying not to slip with my knife while sawing it precariously along the bone, i say, "Yeah, i started out fresh from college designing Cynaptic security software. I got ripped off by the company i was working for when they claimed and sold a military-applicable program to a foreign government, and like any smart person i not only had my own loopholes in the program but also a personal countermeasure to get into a system that used the original program. Sold it to our government and ratted my company out, they went bankrupt and moved overseas within the year and i used the money from the sale and a grant from the government to make my own center- which is still mine and is being rented by contractual force by my old company- where it went from me to a couple of fresh graduates every year.

"When i sold the place, the first thing they did was cut the apprenticeship and started hiring graduates and experienced programmers at their leisure without the eventual threat to their newly formed board of directors," i go on as i set aside large chunks of meat on the skin. "They still come to me when issues come up in their private projects or when someone offers to buy them out- i get royalties if they sell- and i still have plans for certain systems and programs to sell in the future if i ever need money for something, but that's not even what I'm proud of. I dropped from two-fifty to a lean one-seventy in nine-months and still put on over ten pounds more muscle before getting here. I even grew my hair out!"

Stopping in her own careful cuts, to laugh, she says, "That's probably the 'over' part of 'over ten pounds'. I don't think i can imagine you with short blond hair, i actually do like the shoulder-length you've got going on."

"Bald." I correct simply with as straight a face as i can manage. "You would have to imagine me Mr. Clean bald. But not Mr. Clean body. Just the dome."

We both laughed at that pretty hard, but work went on in silence for a long time in which she finished her cuts of meat before i was even done with the second hind quarter so that we both ended up freeing the brisket and abdominals of their fatty connective tissues after deciding to treat ourselves with whole front leg portions roasted and dried overnight. Leaving what would have once been bacon if not for being whole chunks cut free of their fat as they were and cutting the freed pectoral meats into long, thick cords of rope, we carefully array the meat aroung the ribs and shoulders placed in the center of the rack before the two of us each took opposing corners to raise the rack up onto the top pegs of the legs. Checking the time by looking briefly out to sea to see that the sun was already fully set by now, i say, "One last trip to the raft to get the slates and we'll be ready to settle in for the night- and i will do it. Stay here and use some of your chopping blocks to smash up the old dried up stuff and strip bark from what you can't please."

Sitting down and getting up so much was killing me long before i got to the raft where i was actually forced to stop and rest for a moment before even looking for my slates, and then it was just to grab some rope to drag my boulders on while wearing my pants satchel and stuffing my cargo pants with slate blanks of all sizes. The boulders alone were too much for my leg despite the snail's pace that i managed to maintain, but the axe pieces about my shins and feet weighed down my legs even more than the pockets full of arrow and spearhead sized pieces. Almost fifteen minutes later was when i finally made it back to camp when Emma finally came to my rescue when i was not even half of the way back to camp, and then it was just to scatter some crushed bits of wood about the bright glowing bed of coals about four feet below the rack of wild pork while she placed the two flat-topped boulders i had brought at our seats on either side of the boarskin that now sported slate blanks.

Closing my eyes and taking a deep steadying breath before even picking up a piece of slate, i take a moment to find some level of appreciation for the searing hot pain in my leg that was probably horrific infection before opening my eyes and saying, "Pain. Sucks. Alright, take that one really big triangle near the middle and do what i do with this little egg-shaped flat to that one long angled face on it. Don't try to remove the angle as you work... just kind of use it," i finish lamely before i set to work flattening the wide bottom portion of my thumb-sized piece of slate with circular grinding on the slate boulder in front of me.

"It's fine to do small circles as long as you keep it moving from end to end and keep it even as you go," i reassure her as we work and she stops to let her arm rest with only the middle of one side of the ax face sheering down and i switched sides on my own arrowhead project. "My piece just happens to be small because i am making your arrowheads for tomorrow. Once i finish making the base and notches of this arrowhead i willshow you how to do full grinds along the length of the ax, but it really is the same principals as sharpening or plain putting an edge on a knife or actual ax- we will probably be doing this for all of the stuff we make out of iron once we finally make it."

"How long do you think it would be before we actually have iron tools and weapons?" Emma asks after a minute or two of just watching me grind. "Honestly, considering everything we actually have and can get to, how long do you think before we have iron?"

Taking a few moments to consider this as i grind the very edge into a short bevel at the bottom of the arrorhead, i pick my sharpening slate from my pocket and start slowly grinding shallow pits in the sides of the stone about half an inch above the base. Then, "If i was alone, it would take me about three days after the grace period. I would have spent my grace period more thoroughly farming my own island and jerking the boar to last a month or so instead of the week this smoke dried meat will give us, and i would have built a proper barge to transport it on. Probably some time around the first day setting up a camp on that island i would have noticed from the washout of your island that there was clay here and my second day would have been spent gathering a couple of grass lined cane boxes of my own worth of moldable clay and fired it slowly overnight similar to the meat.

"Second day would have been spent mining and pulverizing workable oxide and stockpiling wood from another island," i go on while switching sides back and forth enough to grind shallow notches in the sides. "Third day would have been spent building a giant fire around a bunch of clay molds for an anvil, some hammers, and some blanks plates and bars for tools and weapons. If it didn't take all day to make those, i would go ahead and start firing molds of ingots for future use or trade. However, if everybody gathered on iron island on day three of grace period, we could have iron on day one after grace and weapons and tools on day two since we already have your islands clay. Without the clay, we or I would have had to chisel and grind crude molds in slate boulders, but the only real issue for us is wood. Mass amounts of wood.

"These are the grinds you want to mimic once you finish leveling that side your way," I advise while switching to harder pressed long downward strokes of the full length of my arrowhead slate across the surface of my boulder. "Anyway, just if we made one anvil and one hammer for every person in the group it would be a seven-by-seven foot pit about three feet deep in the sand and constantly- very carefully- overloaded with wood and fanned to stay as hot as possible. But, i am pretty sure people will want swords and axes and mining tools as soon as possible so those molds will have to be thrown in as well to make a roughly ten-by-ten pit to smelt it all."

"It sounds- and this looks- so simple when you say it," Emma seems to complain while struggling to even out the side of her ax face.

Flipping the slate over in my hand to start working the other side of the developing edge inward to make a full blade, i say, "I actually practiced this with a couple of different stones IRL, slate is by far the easiest because you just have to grind it for an edge, but its pretty fragile for stuff like chopping wood. I can break blanks off of flint even though i suck at knapping them, but i can also just smash a big hunk of flint and find a piece with a useable edge for woodcutting. Obsidian is kind of fragile, too, but its so much sharper than slate when broken or knapped right that it doesn't even matter. As for the smelting... yeah that really is the easy part.