“We need a way to grab this sap,” I said.
“Someone needs to collect it quickly,” Trel said. “And they can’t touch it. Since they won’t be able to bring their hands close to the fire. We might need to collect it with a stick or something.”
“I will go get a plate,” Sheela said. “Then I will ride around on Hope, get as much as I can, and return. Which logs should we burn first?”
“These,” Trel said as she gestured to the stack. “We’ll start on the others first, but they’ll be done last.”
We went to work with a frantic energy. Sheela jumped on Hope and darted away while Kacerie continued to lay clay. Trel and I began to burn the logs after Kacerie, and the pink-haired woman managed to stay ahead of us since we had to set up the fire for all the holes and vertical cuts.
Sheela returned some half hour later with a surprisingly massive glob of sap sitting on one of our plates. It was about skull size, and I saw that she had used one of our other plates to scrape it off the trees and onto her platter. Trel showed her how to place it on the log, and then we carefully set it afire. The sap burned far hotter than I expected and we actually had to take a step back from the log because of the heat.
It also produced a thick plume of black smoke.
“You sure you want to do this?” Trel asked me.
“Too late now,” I said as I stepped back more from the foul smelling fire. “The sun is almost down, so maybe no one will notice. Let’s keep moving.”
“You got it,” Trel said. She and Sheela went to work on the first batch of trees, and I continued on the original plan of lighting the remaining ones.
The sun was just a sliver of orange on top of the western mountains when we finished lighting all the fires. It meant that anyone looking in our direction would have only seen the smoke for less than an hour.
“Okay, we are in luck,” Trel said when I circled back to her and Sheela. “This is burning much faster than I thought. We’ll be ready with this first batch of logs in a few minutes.”
“That’s great!” I said as I commanded the parasaurs to approach us and get ready.
“Sheela is going to get more sap and put it on the rest so that we speed it all up,” Trel continued. “I know how you hate bottlenecks. I think we’ll be able to get the logs in the trench with zero downtime.”
“Trel, you are amazing,” I said.
“Oh I know,” she laughed. “But I wouldn’t be this brilliant if you weren’t always pushing me to design and build new things. Sheela, Kacerie, and Galmine also help.”
“Are you actually giving me credit for something?” Kacerie snickered.
“If you want to make me happy, you’ll have some soap made tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’ll get right on that.” Kacerie gestured to the pile of flaming logs and rolled her bright eyes.
“Good!” Trel said as she clapped her hands together. “Have I told you before that I am a duchess? I need to have regular baths.”
“Sometimes I can’t tell if you are joking or not,” Kacerie sighed. “But yeah, I’m looking forward to making some soap. Tomorrow or the next day.”
“That log looks ready,” I said as I pointed to one of the first ones Sheela had put sap on. “It’s still smoking, but let’s get it over to the trikes.
Sonny followed my orders and rolled the log over to the trench. It stopped smoking by the time it got to the wall, and he was able to position it in a way so that Katie and Nicole could get their horns under it. Then the trikes lifted it up, and Trel and I went to work hammering our dowels into it.
The next log was ready as soon as we were done with the first, and the rest of the night blurred into an almost endless process of hammering in dowels, fetching logs, lifting, and hammering in more dowels.
The darkness became thick, but my eyes adjusted to the light of the twin moons, and we kept working.
My shoulders started to shake with exhaustion, but I forced myself to keep hammering, and we kept working.
My mouth burned with hunger, and I could sense that the other three women were skating on the edge of exhaustion, but I told them all to drink water, and we kept working.
Then we were setting in the thick logs that would make our new fort’s entry, and I realized we were almost done.
“The one on the top will be tricky,” Trel said as she blinked and rubbed her fingers across her sleepy eyes.
“I’ll have Bob and Sonny lift it up,” I said as I ordered the exhausted dinos to move over to the last thick log. I’d been thinking about how to do it and figured that it would be best if the parasaurs pushed it onto the trike’s lowered horns first. Then I had the trikes lift up their heads together so they brought the log up like a moving shelf. Then the two parasaurs would roll the log the rest of the way up the vertical pillars before it slid into place at the top.
The plan worked flawlessly, and we all let out a long sigh of accomplishment.
“Now the doors,” Trel said as she pointed to the rectangular frames she had already crafted.
“Sheela, let’s lift them in place,” I said, and we both moved to the first door. We were both beyond exhausted, but we managed to muscle the first one into place together. We hadn’t dug out the holes for the posts to slide into yet, but the door looked like it would work. We moved the next one into place, and then Trel asked us to secure them with four logs that braced the whole ordeal.
“Is that it?” Kacerie asked as soon as we had pushed the last brace up.
“Yeah,” Trel said. “That’s it.”
My vision flashed, and I blinked open my Eye-Q. Structures now said “3”. It was good progress, but I wondered what our camp would look like when it said “10” or “100”.
“Good job, team,” I said as relief flooded my stomach. “Now we’ve got about an acre and a half of space. We can build a farm, more huts, a--”
“Bathhouse,” Trel interrupted me.
“Yeah, sure. I feel a lot safer now. I hope you all do too.”
“Yes,” Sheela said. “Thank you for pushing us, Victor. We are all safe because of you.” The cat-woman smiled at me, and I gestured for her to come closer so I could hug her. She did so, and our lips met for a lasting kiss.
“Hey, when did that happen?” Trel asked. “And where is my kiss?”
“Come here,” I said and the obsidian-haired beauty stepped into my chest so she could kiss me.
“Well, I’ve just got hugs,” Kacerie said as she opened her arms to me. “You have saved my life a bunch, and I feel like we really have a chance.”
“Get in here,” I said to her as Trel and Sheela stepped aside for the pink-haired woman. Kacerie threw her arms around me and then surprised me by actually grabbing my chin and kissing me. It was a quick movement, but her tongue explored the inside of my mouth a bit before she broke it off.
My Eye-Q flashed again, but I didn’t need to check it to know what it would say. Kacerie had been a bit of a rocky start, but she was committed to me now. I was hoping our friendship would develop more, but first, I wanted to sleep for two days.
“The dinos need water, but they will have to wait until tomorrow morning,” I said. “Plan for tomorrow is just hunting and getting water. It will be a light day. Cool?”
The three women agreed, and we walked the hundred feet back toward the entrance of our smaller camp.
We’d almost made it there when half a dozen beams of light filled up the night sky in all directions.
“Shit,” I said as I turned my head around in an attempt to judge how far away all the pillars of light were. They were all different colors. Red, blue, orange, pink, green, and purple, but there was a pillar of light to our east that was silver in color.
This one looked as if it was maybe only a mile away.
“Victor, I know what you are thinking,” Trel groaned.