Surviving Arkadia

I followed Jethro up the hill toward a ridge line above the stream. I could visualise how the winds had come rolling down the mountainside above us, up the ridge, and smashed into the trees on the top of the ridge. The trees on the top were already stunted. They were hunched and bent over in the direction of the prevailing wind and, while a few of them had lost branches, none of them had come down.

The trees that had fallen were lower down. They had been tall and straight with broad canopies. It looked to me like the wind had hit them right in the canopy with enough force to take the whole tree down. Their shallow roots had been torn from the ground.

From the growth all around the felled tree it seemed like the storm had been weeks, maybe months ago. I wondered why it had taken Jethro so long to get to them. The hole left by the torn up roots was being taken over by saplings in a race to fill the gap in the canopy above. Most of them would lose. Particularly if I cut them down to use as materials.

Jethro took his pack off and set it down on a relatively flat stretch of ground. He reached into it and pulled out a heavy woollen blanket that was waxed on one side.

“There, now we’ve got a warm dry spot to sit down on later,” he said.

Jethro pointed out clumps of yellowed grass and told me that was the best place to start. “You can make crude twine with that. Even better is if you find any trees with smooth bark where the bark is peeling. If you can get a thin strip of the bark it makes a much stronger twine.”

Jethro took his felling axe and went to work on a particularly precarious standing tree. It had been partially pulled down by a fallen tree and looked like it might tip over at any moment.

I gathered dry grass while keeping one eye on him. I didn’t want to get blindsided by a falling tree on my first day.

I carried armfuls of the dry, yellowish grasses back to the blanket. Some of the pile blew away as soon as I let go of it so I went searching for something to weigh it down. I found a flat triangular rock. It was heavy enough to hold the pile in place and the flatter side might make for a useful work surface.

I gathered all of the dry grass that I could see in the area and then sat down on the blanket to make twine. It was weird how the knowledge of the method settled into my mind. I used my thumb claw to split the stem and separate the useful layer of the grass from the gunk. Then I rolled the fibres on the flat rock to loosen any surface junk and smooth the fibers. Then I added the twist with my fingertips.

After what felt like at least an hour I had enough to roll into my very first tiny ball of shitty twine.

I heard a soft “ding” sound. It didn’t sound like a woodland kind of sound. It sounded like someone hitting a small brass bell with a tiny hammer.

I looked around, half expecting to see some sort of Fae, since that was the only thing I could think of that might be making such a noise all the way out in the woods but there was nothing.

Jethro was midway through cutting a mature fallen tree into manageable logs. He was making plenty of noise but I couldn’t see how he could have made such a soft, high pitched noise with any of the gear I could see.

“Did you hear that?” I said.

Jethro stopped chopping instantly and stood up, alert, listening. “What?” he said, after a moment of apparently no hearing anything untoward.

“It was a little ding sound. Like a bell. Not very loud but I heard it clearly, even over the chopping,” I said.

“Did it sound like… ?” and Jethro imitated the exact sound with a spooky accuracy.

“Yeah, pretty much exactly like that.”

“You’ve really never heard that sound before? At your age? Strapping Beast girl like you?” said Jethro, sounding incredulous.

“No. I wouldn’t be asking if I knew what it was,” I said. I was getting angry and my Hyena vocal chords made it sound way more intimidating than I meant it to.

“Well I suppose you were punching a tree…” said Jethro. “Close your eyes and look at the skill tree.”

I did as he said and golden words swum in the darkness. YOU HAVE UNLOCKED ACHIEVEMENT: FIBRE ARTS. YOU HAVE GAINED PERK: HOOKS AND CHAINS. CRAFTING WITH FIBRE AND CLOTH IS NOW CONSIDERED BOTH GEAR CRAFTING AND TAILORING.

Above the words was a line of symbols. Most of them were greyed out but the familiar ornate tree was lit up. I focused on it and my vision zoomed in to one blinking light. BASIC CRAFTING was now a level 2 skill. Suddenly I knew what the noise had been.

“I’ve dinged,” I said it out loud without really meaning to.

“Did you get a ‘chieve as well?” said Jethro.

“Yeah. And a perk.”

“Now you see why I said to start with twine. Did you get the perk that lets you level tailoring and crafting at the same time?” he said.

“I think so,” I said. Not sure how to check if that’s what the perk meant.

“If you think about sewing or knitting it should spin the tree round to the right section,” said Jethro.

The moment he said it the branches in front of me turned like a dial and suddenly I was looking at an unfamiliar portion of the skill tree. The Tailoring Tier 1 skill wasn’t fully lit but I could see a tiny sliver of light in it already and as I focused on it a text pop up appeared TAILORING LINKED TO GEAR CRAFTING AT RATIO OF 1:1.

“Yeah, looks like they improve at the same rate,” I said.

Jethro patted me on the shoulder, “Well done,” he said.

With my eyes still closed I could see another text pop-up. “+1 TO EXPERIENCE GAIN, ALL SURVIVAL AND CRAFTING SKILLS BONUS FROM TUTOR”.

I opened my eyes. “Looks like you’ve got that tutor skill you were looking for,” I said. “I’m getting plus one off it.”

“Nah. I’ve still only got it at level zero but we’re both Survival types so maybe there’s a hidden bonus.”

“Unless it’s because you’re good at it?” I said.

“In what sense?” said Jethro, looking confused.

“In the sense that you’re good at tutoring. Clear explanations, good advice, shoulder pats, encouraging words. Those are all good things if you’re trying to teach someone something,” I found myself tailing off because Jethro was looking at me like I’d grown a second head.

Was a second head an option? Was it even unusual in Arkadia? I didn’t know but once the idea was in my mind I couldn’t let go of it. I did some surreptitious neck stretches, reasoning that if I had spontaneously grown a second head my first head would bump into it.

“What are you doing?” said Jethro.

“Neck stretches,” I said. “If I’m going to do much more of this twine stuff I need to start taking care of my neck and shoulders.”

“Good that you’re thinking ahead but first you should go forage and see if you can find yourself lunch.”

I realised that, judging from the shadows, that it had to be close to noon.

I searched the area and the surrounding trees. I found some mushrooms, more of the red berries, and some early nuts. I couldn’t carry very much. I had to keep stopping my search to drop off handfuls of food at the blanket.

Jethro finished dealing with his tree and sat down on the blanket. He pulled a parcel wrapped in waxed cloth out of his pack and opened it to reveal a sandwich.

It was a good looking sandwich. Thick slices of crusty white bread, a slab of meat and some kind of preserve. It smelled incredible. It was hard not to drool.

I joined him on the blanket, sitting cross legged, trying to ignore his magnificent sandwich and concentrate on my own food.

“Careful of those berries,” said Jethro. “They’re fine in moderation but too many and you get terrible indigestion.”

I filed the information away in case I should ever have to forage for someone else. “I’ve got a cast iron constitution,” I said.

“Ooh,” Jethro sounded genuinely excited, “that’s a good Perk. Don’t push it too hard though, you’re only actually immune to food poisoning. There’s still some higher tier poisons that will mess you up. Wait until you unlock the next Perk in the chain.”

I cracked the outer shell of a nut with my side teeth and tentatively ate the insides. It wasn’t quite nutella but it was pretty good.

I closed my eyes and scanned the skill tree to see if I could find the Perk that Jethro was talking about.

It was chained to Cast Iron Stomach but greyed out. LIVER OF A GOD. Focusing on it caused the now familiar text pop up. It had a long list of prerequisites. I had to unlock and then master Tier one distilling. I had to get the OMNIVORE achievement. I focused on that and it turned out to be EAT 40 DIFFERENT FOODS IN 10 DAYS. MUST INCLUDE ANIMAL, VEGETABLE AND MINERAL. ANIMAL MUST INCLUDE FLYING, WALKING, AND SWIMMING ANIMALS. CURRENTLY 2/40 That shouldn’t be a problem. Particularly not if it counted salt as a mineral, which it absolutely should. Of course I also had to get the SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME Achievement. That meant getting black out drunk.

The thought of trying to get black out drunk worried me until I realised that I’d be doing it with the virgin liver in my hyena body and not the battle-hardened liver from back in my old body. For extra efficiency I could combine it with mastering distilling. I’d have to test my own concoctions at some point. Might as well have some fun.

I looked down at my pile of foraged goodies. There were several kinds of mushrooms in the pile.

“Are these all safe to eat?” I said, waving my hands over the fungi in the manner of a model on a game-show.

Jethro considered them all carefully. He even picked a couple up to check the underside of the cap.

“These should all be safe for you,” he paused and separated out two of the fungi, one creamy puffball and one pale mushroom with dark gills under its cap. “These two would need to be well cooked before they’d be safe for most people.”

“I’ll hold onto them then. It’ll be a test for my cooking skills.” I wondered if cooked mushrooms counted as a different food to raw mushrooms for the purposes of the omnivore achievement. If a raw mushroom could poison you but a cooked one was a nutritious food then they really ought to count as different foods.

I’d found several broad round mushrooms with flat tops that looked like the field mushrooms that I used to buy in the supermarket. The thought of the supermarket gave me a stab of discomfort and I resolved not to think about it for a while.

The field mushroom look-a-likes didn’t taste of much but they weren’t actually bad and they were filling. I somehow felt another food added to the running total on the Omnivore achievement, as if I was now keeping track of it.

Jethro offered me a swig from his water flask to wash it down and I accepted. I could have walked back to the stream but that would have taken up precious time.

I went back to my twine making. I’d just had an idea for what to do with all the twine.