Ria of Shadewood: Chapter 17 — Preparations

The sound of rain greeted Ria when she woke, and the early part of the day was spent enjoyably coming up with a tasty cookie recipe that was dry enough to pack for their journey. She was able to get two acceptable batches done before a lull in the rain made her put out the fire.

The rain was also an opportunity to harvest more mushrooms. Jarrel joined her mid-day excursion and taught her about the differences when tracking in wet weather. While hunting for herbs that could be dried and packed, Ria lucked into a fair amount of berries and nuts.

When rain returned later in the day, Ria was able to do more cooking. The nuts and berries greatly improved the cookies, but Jarrel recommended that she stick with just the nuts for the travel cookies. She dried the remaining berries while drying the mushrooms.

While she had been cooking, Jarrel finished his list of things needed for the journey and had busied himself toward that end. The first item on the list was ruggedizing and customizing their travel packs, basically adding wire rings for tying things on, straps to hold their sheathless weapons and bedrolls, and reinforcing the bottom and shoulder areas.

Ria was suspicious that future training would include her carrying the fully loaded travel pack instead of the moderately heavy weapon harness Jarrel had made for her. To prepare for that, she decided to train by carrying a full water bucket up and down the stairs several times each day.

The next two items on Jarrel’s list were bedrolls and a large portable tent. Jarrel explained that the nights could get very cold in the highlands during the autumn. Ria thought that the wolf pelts would make good tent material, but Jarrel told her to use those to make the bedrolls and warmer clothes instead.

Accepting that she would have to leave behind all the beautiful clothes that her mom made for her was one thing, but realizing that she would be arriving in her new country looking like a fur-covered barbarian made her sigh. The idea of wearing furs while hiking in the summer made her sigh again. She would have to design the clothes to be worn in different ways depending on the weather.

The tent was going to be a significant project as well. Since leather and furred pelts would be too heavy and bulky, Jarrel’s idea was to quilt together large pieces of cloth gathered from around the village and to coat the finished quilt with melted bee’s wax. Fortunately, the apple orchard had several beehives, so the needed wax was already available at the general store.

Jarrel also wanted waxed cloths for packing the food since the jars they were currently using were too bulky and might break. As it was, packing the stockpot and some smaller copper cookware looted from the mayor’s manor was already taking up a lot of space. Being able to place wrapped food and supplies inside the pots was helpful.

As for her magic studies, Ria was continuing to do control exercises and was working her way through the chapter on advanced meditation in the hopes of being able to use external energy to restore her depleted inner energy and to increase the amount of inner energy available within her body.

Ria was also worried about Ranger’s situation. Nothing could be done about Old Bess, but Ranger had already been abandoned once and would probably die rather than leave the farm even if she left the gate open.

There was a possible solution available to her. She could make Ranger her familiar. Usually, a mage would choose a magical creature in order to gain magical capabilities through the link, but mages and witches in stories often had a cat or crow as a familiar. If he was bound to her, she could bring him along, and he could help keep her safe.

The next four days were a blur of activity as she and Jarrel prepared the important things needed so they could set out on their journey at a moment’s notice in case bandits or soldiers showed up.

An important item on Jarrel’s list was potions for healing, bone growth, anti-venom, general disease curing, and so on. Unfortunately, potions were something the soldiers seemed keenly interested in. The ready-made potions had all been taken.

Jeni’s book ‘Basic Potion-making and Herbology’ was still in her bedroom, and there were still plenty of ingredients in the shop. Ria certainly wasn’t an alchemist, but she had helped Jeni out on enough occasions that she wasn’t hopeless at mixing potions and did her best to make batches of each of the potions and salves that were on the list, particularly the insect repellent and bug bite salves.

After giving herself a small cut to test the batch of healing potion and watching as the rubbed-on liquid slowly sealed the cut, Ria idly thought that by the time this journey was completed, she would have all the skills needed to become a hermit mage or a witch of the wilds.

Jarrel made good on her request that he process the wolf pelts. He also processed the deer pelt into buckskin. The rabbit pelts were in bad shape, so the fur was removed, and the pelts were cooked down to make glue. Those materials together with the fabric remaining in her mom’s workroom and the leather from her dad’s workshop were enough to make her ‘barbarian’ clothes.

The design Ria finally came up with was… well, in order to keep herself from overheating during the hot days, she decided to fully embrace the barbarian look.

The top was basically a ‘wide enough’ strip of wolf pelt wrapped around her chest and laced up the middle. The bottom was buckskin pants to protect her legs from brambles and such. The interiors of both were lined with linen so they wouldn’t chafe against her skin. She also glued and stitched felt to the inner side of her equipment belts, so they wouldn’t rub her exposed sides raw.

To meet the warmth requirement, Ria made a button-up coat that she could wear as a skirt by knotting the sleeves together. She put a lot of effort into the coat’s details, adding a wolf’s tail to the neck-seam and a layer of felted rabbit hair stuffing between the vest’s wolf pelt and its linen lining for extra warmth and using buckskin sleeves with wolf fur bracers for mobility and arm protection.

She also made matching gloves and knee-high boots with kneepads. The fur-lined buckskin gloves weren’t just for warmth. After experiencing what was required to gut an animal, she’d had enough of getting blood all over her hands.

The new boots were because the ones her father made for her were starting to wear and would never survive the trip. She required Jarrel’s help for some parts, but she made the boots extra rugged. Thick cow leather, hammered tin plates reinforcing the toes and heel, fur-lined interior, tightening straps with buckles, and a three-ply leather sole. The leather for the sole was glued together and stitched one layer at a time.

She did an extra step, covering the bottom with rabbit glue and melting down a block of her father’s precious rubber inventory to form a coating around the bottom of each boot, then she smoked the rubber coating to harden it. Rubber was only available through trade with Crysellian merchants, so her father only used it on his best works.

Jarrel was really impressed and made himself a similar pair of boots. He was less impressed with her finished clothing, rolling his eyes at her when she wore it for the first time.

“I’ve seen harlots showing less skin than that,” Jarrel scoffed. “Part of the reason I wanted you to make clothing from the wolf pelts was to provide you with at least some protection even if you aren’t wearing real armor.”

Ria’s face turned red. Exposing so much skin was embarrassing, but she was determined to stand her ground. “If I collapse from heat exhaustion, how’s that going to help us? Besides, I have my cloak for protection.”

Jarrel sighed. “Lot of good that’s going to do you if a wolf or bear pins you to the ground. Well, whatever, as long as you wear your coat properly when we get to the highlands, it’s probably fine.”