Winds Of Fate and Change.

Invasion!

Three months have passed since the journey to Falco Cliff and I'd worked my way up to 10,000 push-ups with 197 pounds, on my back, in the form of my wife.

Hand and feet crawling up to 3½ miles with my 278-pound father on my back.

Lunges for 10 miles carrying 150 pounds.

My vision is like constantly looking through binoculars that never lose focus with distance changes.

I can even see microorganisms if I use a simple magnifying lens.

Cirri's journal revealed a lot.

She'd fallen in love with Fernando Garcia, the geneticist author of the first journal, and it was his child that she carried to term.

Their son had continued making entries in her journal and, he described his physical appearance in surprising detail.

"Instead of hair, like my father, I have feathers on my head, down my neck, to my upper back, and on my wings.

I have legs, like my mother, from just above my knees and down to my feet and tallons.

My wings are larger than my mother's and my eyes match her's.

My skin is the color of coal and, from the elbows down, I have scales like those of my legs.

Each of my eight fingers; six digits and two thumbs, have talons.

Writing is a challenge, however, I still enjoy it.

If not for novelty, then for communication, at least." He'd written.

His entry made me even more excited to welcome the child my wife is carrying.

I'd been practicing my marksmanship, extensively.

I am a sniper, as my father called it.

Albeit with slugs.

The shotgun's accuracy leaves a bit to be desired but Dad said it's not the gun, it's the ammunition.

He made special slug loads that are pointed in the front and tapered in the back.

He said that they travel faster than the speed of sound and accuracy was no longer as big of an issue.

Recoil did increase by a lot, though the shotgun is heavily constructed.

Over the next few weeks, Perina and I scouted the trees for more knot holes that were further up and found hundreds of them.

Perhaps the best was one that was forty feet below where the tree had broken off.

Below the knot was an, otherwise, very healthy tree.

It was also the largest tree, in diameter, that we'd found, at 74 feet across at the break.

I hewed the inside until I reached good seasoned wood and we built a roof to shed rain.

Afterward, I collected as much dry grass as I could. crushing and grinding it into soft fibers, I set it aside and started making a sofa like the Falcon Elder's.

I'd used much of the wood that I'd cut to make a frame and then, using some decently preserved fabric that I procured from some ruins, I sewed it to holes that I'd drilled in the frame.

Tacking leather to the frame, I stuffed the grass into it as I stitched it and, in the end, I had a piece of junk!

I cut the stitching and gave up on making a sofa.

Instead, I made the largest cushion that I could with the fabric.

The paper tube that it was rolled on said that it was 50% Hemp/ 50% Flax Linen upholstery.