The Walled Cities

Chapter 22

Time moves quickly when you have things to do all day long. Constructing the shelter that I thought of when I had gone into the grove of trees, was turning out to be more time consuming than I had thought. On its own the structure was not that complicated, yet I was injured, alone, and doing my best to feed myself and Kaelyn who was still unconscious. At least through all this I had developed a routine for all the work that I did every day. 

Each morning after I added wood to the fire and started two cups of tea, I worked on the shelter. Using a cut flexible branch of trunk, I weaved it into the stricture in a circle pattern. The structure itself was a hut that was made of bent poles tides of at the top, and thin poles weaved in between. Sure it was not a cabin, but with only myself and so much to get done each day, I did not have time or the energy to build a cabin. There would be enough room to fit both of us, a fire, and some spare room for storage, but just enough.

After three or so hours of this, by which I had to guess, I stopped and checked my traps. Besides the initial fish traps, I over the last two days had set some small deadfall traps for rabbits and a few gorge hooks in the stream for fish. Between the gorge hooks and the fish baskets I had caught three fish over the last two days. They were not large but each provided a day worth of food.

While checking my gorges after having pulled up both fish baskets empty, an otter popped its head out of the water. In a blur of movement I drew and fired my pistol, hitting the otter in the head. Moving quickly despite my crutch, I slid into the stream, grimacing as my leg hit numerous rocks. Doing my best to ignore the pain I grabbed the otter before it was carried downstream by the small current.

Not wanting to stay in the stream any longer than I had to, I made my way to the bank. Spotting my crutch which I had dropped in my haste to get into the water, I tossed the otter besides it. Using both hands I climbed up the bank to the crutch and otter. Tired but knowing I was going to become cold quickly, I lurched as fast as I could back to camp.

With my only spare set of clothes soaked from a rainstorm this morning, and having Kaelyn using both blankets, I needed to stoke the fire and dry out quickly. Hanging the otter up by its back legs in preparation for skinning, I grabbed a few pieces of fire wood. Careful as not to create a fire I could not maintain or burn wood too quickly, I gradually warmed myself up over the course of an hour. During this time I tried to decide what I was going to use the otter hide for. Both Kaelyn and I had gloves that were suitable until the snow came, and I did not want to use the otter hide on a pair of gloves any way. River Otter and its larger cousin the Beaver were commonly used to make hats. Making a hat out of the hide seemed like a good use of it and when I had the time I would do just that.

Before I could start that process I needed to check on Kaelyn. Dry enough to move away from the fire I slowly, as my leg had stiffened up after the clash with the rocks, made my way over to her. Leaning heavily on the crutch as my leg showed signs that it was unable to support my weight, I clumsily pulled back the blanket and the top of her dress. Keeping my eyes focused on the task at hand, I quickly examined the stitched up wounds. I could barely tell that they had been stitched up as large scabs had developed over the wounds. Bright red in color from the cold air and still being fairly fresh, the scabs were a sign that the wounds were indeed healing. No black or discolored was visible and her veins were normal colored, indicating no infection of blood poisoning. 

Once my examination was complete I averted my eyes as I pulled the dress back into place before covering Kaelyn with the blanket once more. Whatever emotions I had for Kaelyn, now was not the time, especially with her condition.

Content that despite her unconsciousness, Kaelyn was healing, I carried on with my day. Seeing how it was around lunch time, I decided to change up my diet of fish and instead cook some of the otter. Before I could cook it though, I needed to remove the guts and other parts that were only good as bait. My leg was going to complicate this task as it had not improved and I struggled just to walk the twenty or so feet to where I had hung the animal up.