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Chapter 31: Plan for Success

By the time we had arrived back at the Spider Cave it had gotten dark so we decided to hold off going into the cave. We set up a crudely created camp, I collected firewood and tried to start a fire, Emi was in charge of hunting for food as she had the most experience hunting with her sister and Foxy was in charge of setting up the camp. She said she had done it a lot before so we trusted her judgement.

I remembered reading in a camp book had a perused before in my previous life that I needed to collect some tinder. Luckily there were some Birches nearby so I collected the bark from the Birchwoods and gathered some branches too. I forced myself to try and remember how to build a campfire as I hadn’t paid much attention to the book as I read it.

I remembered that there was a reason why I should bring lots of different sizes of branches that had to be dry but I couldn’t remember how. So I breathed a deep breathed a deep breath.

What are the properties of branches? They burn so they are used in fires…so what are the properties of different sizes of branches…the bigger and thicker ones are harder to break…they also take longer to burn…Aha! So the thinner ones would burn easier…so they would be the best to use to start a fire.

I smiled as I figured it out and continued to work on the fire. I remember watching Bear Grylls on TV on how he started a fire. He seemed to build a small pile of leaves and then use some sort of fire starter to start the fire on the quick easy burning Birchwood which is filled with natural oils to start the fire. So I built a sort of tent with the little sticks and twigs and then set the Birchwood below it and I looked all set to start the fire. However how would I start the fire? I didn’t have a fire-starter on me and trying to start it with two sticks, I couldn’t quite remember how to do it. Was there other ways to start a fire? Perhaps I could use magic…but I didn’t actually know how to do much with magic…I could transfer and gather energy around me like I did with those dead insects and I could focus it on a part of my body like I did with my eye.

How could those skills help me? How could I create a fire flash point? It was no use just creating heat into my hands? I needed a spark… I tried to gather the heat into my hand focusing on bringing all my energy into my hands. I felt warmth spread to my hands as I was focusing but it was only warmth, how do I create a spark? That energy only warmed up my hands…Lets go back to the fire starter… it was metal usually flint and steel…what do I have that is metal? My swords that’s it! I held my swords and started trying to focus on putting lots of energy into my swords they heated up but weirdly I did not feel it painful. I held the swords are tried running one of the swords across the other… A spark! The spark flew down onto the Birchwood and the Birchwood started to catch fire. I quickly dropped my swords and put the Birchwood into the tent of twigs. It soon caught fire. It was at this moment I saw Foxy next to me.

She had sett up the camp and had obviously been watching me for a fair time struggling, she smiled, “If you were having this much trouble starting the fire why didn’t you ask me…I could have given you my flint and steel to start a fire.”

I was lost for words, on one hand I had used my ingenuity to start a fire on the other I could have saved a lot of time and energy just asking for help…”uhhh yeah thanks next time could I use your flint and steel.”

“Sure.” She smiled obviously amused at my whole experience in creating this lowly fire as she turned away to finish final preparation for setting up the camp she ended with, “You should probably pay more attention to the fire its dying out.”

“Ahhhh!” I rushed over and started feeding the fire to keep it alive. I heard her giggles in the background. I just saved it when it was on the cusp of dying. Foxy seemed different just then perhaps she felt more at home here. Or there was another reason…

Emi came back after a short while and she had caught a couple of hares in her traps. She skinned them with her hunting knife and I set about trying to figure out to cook them, I had been so used to using a pan at home that I was trying to replicate that here. Emi took over as she saw me struggling,

“Ahhh you’re so useless at these things.” She smiled as she figured out a way to spit roast them over the fire. I smiled too as I had as usual gone for the most complicated action when a far simpler technique could have worked.

The food wasn’t anything special as we had no seasonings so the meat felt a bit gamy but it was satisfying all the same. Foxy seemed to relax outside of the city and we were soon laughing and joking around. It was a nice break from the seriousness of adventuring.

Foxy had created one tent like structure out of the leaves and branches Emi was initially skeptical if it would hold but it did. Foxy had said she had only built one structure so we all slept in it. It was a rather snug fit but after being together with them for a while, especially Emi, perhaps they were becoming more accustomed to me.

Though it was tight fit I wasn’t complaining and I drifted off into sleep between them. I felt far more at home here than I had been in many of the places I had stayed in this or the past life. It was nice being together with people you care about. It was nice in a number of ways…

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