thefieldmod (thefieldmod) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-07-31 11:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | #time update, z - 1st tribe - day 31 |
Day Thirty One - Thick Air
The night is windy, gusting loose sand under carts and into the openings of lean-tos. It moans across the plains in the eeriest way, only made all the more creepy by the laughers on the far bank. There had been no sign of Olivia by nightfall, those who searched for her were relatively certain that she wasn't on the island. Around the fire in the morning it's widely believed she may have drowned while bathing. Olivia never hid the fact that she was terrified by the water, a very poor swimmer. The council asks that all eyes keep an eye on the water, as grave as that sounds, incase she happens to surface.
The winds die down into absolute stillness by morning. The surface of the lake is as smooth as glass without a single ripple. The day is still and hot. Gauzy clouds cover the sky, filtering the sun and insulating the earth. Over the afternoon the humidity builds to the point where you feel wet in the lungs when you draw a deep breath. Air fit to drown in. Any exertion at all brings sweat out on the skin. No one would believe that winter was around the corner today! The only areas of relief are the spring and the lake.
Two things of note are discussed at breakfast. The first is that Sophie and Rowan hand out small and crispy flatbreads with the usual breakfast of milk melon and grazer jerky. They have perfected the recipe of sweetgrind flour, fostriche egg, a pinch of hummabee salt and a splash of ungoat's milk. Two flatbreads per person and a small stack of them packed up for the lumberjacks to take with them for lunch. The second thing is Bazzer's presentation of two cured laugher hides. He proclaims them to be finished and offers them to the Council to decide where they would best be put to use. The debate begins! Shoes or shelter?
A couple of notable developments for those who haven't noticed
1a) the people who cook meals have been serving small flatbreads made from sweetgrind flour. These are roughly the size of your average pita and the bread is a bit gritty like cornbread. Jules has also mentioned that because of the fact they are pounding the flour on stone WITH stone, there might also be tiny flecks of stone in the bread as well. Please eat with caution.
1b) Making the sweetgrind flour is hard work, dammit. Exhausting work, actually, currently assumed to be undertook entirely by Rowan the Preggo and Sophie the Itty Bitty. Today, they are asking for help. They have enough dried sweetgrind now to have several people working on this and they specify that they're trying to lay in a bit of a stockpile for the coming winter. Any help would be wonderful.