Lost in Transit

12

^^ Fort Gate ^^

Dawn came too quick.

I was still chewing my thoughts in a mind-numbing cycle of self-loathing and rage when I returned to the camp and took over the separation of the Moose from Clark, who seemed too worried about saving them to cut them to pieces so we could eat them.

Inside of four hours, I had all nine properly skinned and separated, the organs set aside for individual storage, and the offal tossed in the lake, so I began cleaning the pieces of Bone and Antler that had been taken from the Pits, sorting them into pieces that could be immediately useful; pieces properly sized for handles of weapons or other tools, and pieces that had little to no use; pieces too small or crooked to be useful as anything but Art or to be turned into charcoal.

That got itself finished, and I was still fuming, so I started on the trees, using the Fire Axe from the second train car to take all the lower-lying branches off of each tree, then having the Golems plant them into the stone along the edge of the plateau, about three feet away from each other. When they finished that but still had not even taken a third of the trees, I set them to forming a second and third layer, which effectively made it so that there were no gaps between the trees, except for the two openings; one at the waterfall so as not to interfere with Helen's art or the sunrise, (I wasn't that petty, not even as royally pissed off as I was,) and the other to the south, where the road met with the plateau; this one was the 'Gate', able to open and close and having a guard-post above it to keep watch from. Each side of the gate was twelve feet wide and tall, more than enough for any type of Merchant's Cart.

All the limbs that were chopped off of the trees were gathered together and shaped into wooden Golems by me, and set between the trees in the shapes of bushes, where they would remain unless needed, and the multitude of freshly de-rusted daggers and shortswords Hidden in their branches would get a new layer of rust. Wooden Golems required much less magic than clay or stone, so it wasn't enough to make me tired, but repairing the damaged golem with new clay was.

With that, I decided my work was done for the day, so I walked past Kindle and Luna, -who had arrived sometime this morning and been subsequently completely ignored by me,- and into my room for a shower and a nap.

—

"So... Luna pissed you off, huh?" Kindle sat on the edge of my bed, waking me up.

"I've been hunting and working for two days straight; I haven't slept since before the Challenge. Leave this for after I've had my two-hour power nap, please, I've earned it." I sighed.

"Mm. Letting you go to sleep angry, though-"

"-Will allow me to cool off a bit. Now leave before I snap your head off, Kindle; there's nothing you can do to fix this situation, and you're steadily making it worse." I sighed.

"Now look, this situation is-"

"I'm not some immature child who needs to be coached through a petty argument with her little friends; I'm a grown fucking woman who needs some goddamned sleep!" I snapped at her, and laid down again, turning the light off next to my bed.

She hummed and scooted over next to me. "Will me petting your hair make you more or less angry? Because I've wanted to since we met, it looks like a flower." My bare foot bodily kicked her off the bed, and she landed lithely on her feet. "Got it, another time then... sleep well, I guess."

I sighed and relaxed my body forcefully, one muscle at a time, starting with my toes. By the time I'd reached my shoulders, I was already extremely sleepy. The third pass didn't even reach my hips, and I was out like a light.