After running away from the deadly ‘creature’, the dwarfs fled back to the camp. They found Urist smashing away with a fist-sized rock in hand into another rock sized head. He kept hitting the center, breaking chips and making a hole in the middle. Next to him lay a smooth, tear-shaped rock that was big as a fist.

While working he heard a sound that made him look up to see the three sprinting through the forest. Their fearful faces instantly put him on alert. Putting aside his work, Urist stood up and walked to meet them. “What happened?”

Uria, short of breath, started to speak. “A furry creature.”

“Large ears.”

“Short legs, beady eyes.”

The girls spoke over one another trying to relate what they saw. He raised his hand up to silence them. “Alright, alright. One at a time. Uria, go first. What did you see?”

After standing there for awhile Uria had caught her breath, “Urist we saw this…”

One by one, the three gave their testimonies. As he heard more about the ‘monster’, Urist’s eyes shone with expectation. ‘If what they say is right, then they most likely saw hares nearby. If we can capture these hares alive, we could breed them and raise them for slaughter, for their skins, meat, and intestines.’

The skin would be useful for bedding and clothes, the meat for eating, and the intestines to hold water. With this information in hand, he planned how to capture these hares. First, he had to calm the girls and tell the rest of the dwarfs at lunch about the creature.

Urist wanted to laugh but held it in. “Don’t worry about that creature. Judging by what you told me about it, I’m guessing it’s a hare. It should be an herbivore, not a meat-eater. I’m pretty sure about that. It’s good to be wary of your surroundings when you can’t identify animals..”

It took a while to calm them down before they reverted back to their usual selves. Urist decided that it was time to get the charcoal. “Don't mind it for now. We’ll figure out if it was truly a hare later, for now, we need to get the charcoal into the cave. Uroa and Briana, grab a shirt and follow me. Uria, I have to trouble you to wait here by the fire until we get back is that ok?”

“Un.”

Urist smiled and set forth. “Then let's head out.”

Filter

Urist broke open the earth mound and smiled, seeing that the charcoal turned out well. Filling the makeshift shirt bags full of charcoal, they headed straight back to camp.

It isn’t activated charcoal, but it should work for filtering water.

Despite the river being clear, Urist didn’t want to take a chance of them drinking contaminants and dying. So it was time to start his three-part plan in making safe drinking water. He choosing filter water over decanting. His reasoning was that although decanting would have taken less work he had a few reasons in not doing so.

First to show Uria that the fire was important to their survival more then just for cooking. Second his unrealistic fear of not drinking filtered water as he did not know the biology of a dwarf. He didn’t know if there were particles that could be poisonous to their bodies. Although he felt it was a baseless fear with no truth behind it, something had been growing at the back of his mind to do it this way.

When we have more backbone I deal with this inefficient method later, he thought as he headed back home, dumping the coal contents from the shirt into a pile further into the cave. He retrieved the bronze sword and a shirt. Going to the fire, he sat down with sword and shirt in hand and cut off the shirt sleeves. Not finished with cutting the sleeves, he cut them further down to the size bigger than a water bottle cap. Taking the sword once again, he grabbed a water bottle and cut off its bottom. Removing the caps, Urist laid the cloth over it and re-screw it to the bottle.

The dwarf women watched on with curiosity and when he finished the first bottle, he turned to them, “I need one of you to start cutting up these bottles and screwing the fabric with the cap together. Somebody else, gather sand from the beach in one of the bamboo containers. I also need one filled with pebbles and one with bigger stones. Any volunteers?”

“I’ll take care of the sand and stones.”

“I can do the bottles.”

Uroa and Briana went off in their respective duties, leaving Urist and Uria by the fire. Throwing a log in the fire, Uria pouted that they were faster than her in reply. Now she wouldn’t have a job to do.

Seeing her displeased expression, Urist smiled wryly. “Don’t worry, I have a job for you as well. See this bowl I made while you were gone?”

“This is a bowl? It just has a hole in the middle of it.”

Urist felt like crying, but he remembered that she might not know what a bowl was.

“I mean who would want to eat out of something this crude?”

Clutching his chest, Urist leaned back, staggered. ‘I was wrong.’

He let out a forced laugh to hide his embarrassment. “Ha Ha… No, this isn’t a bowl to eat out of, it’s a mixing bowl or a better term would be a mortar. Using this small pestle you’re going to crush the charcoal into a fine powder which can be be used for the filter.”

Her head tilted slightly. “How do I do that?”

“Here, let me show you how to do it. First is to take some charcoal and then...”

Uria listened attentively as Urist talked through the step by step process. He put a few pieces of charcoal into the mortar, then picked the pestle up and started crushing the charcoal inside into tiny pieces, before grinding the pieces into a fine dust.

When he was satisfied with the consistency of the charcoal powder, he made a funnel with a green leaf and poured the contents inside a plastic bottle. By now, Uroa had returned with the bamboo full of sand and stones.

Thanks to the bottles being so large, he would be able to put many layers in the filter. The sand collected was excellent quality with no rocks inside. Pouring a layer of sand inside he moved onto the next step, putting a layer of stones inside. A layer of large stones on top completed the filter.

It wasn’t the greatest filter by modern-day standards, but by primitive standards, this was a first-class item.