The first night out from the temple was a new and not altogether pleasant experience. On the advice of more experienced frontier's folk, he hadn’t packed his actual tent. Instead, he took a big sheet of waterproof gum cloth with some grommets sewn into the corners, and plenty of rope.

The set up went like this- find a big stick, a bit taller than you are when you are sitting straight on the ground. It should be quite solid and about two fingers wide. Cut one end into a long point, the other flatten, then cut a short, sharp slope around the top. So, a circle at the top slightly narrower than the width of the stick, slope, stick, point. Then get a big rock or handy chunk of wood, and bash it into the ground. The chamfered top keeps the wood from splitting. When it is good and set, carve a small notch on the side facing away from where you want your tent, away from the wind.

Tie a short bit of rope around the notch, threading it through the grommet in one corner of the tarp. Find the opposite corner of the tarp. Stretch it out in a straight line into the wind, then when it is fully stretched, stake it into the ground. Really nail it right on in there. A wooden stake is fine, just make sure it’s long enough and has a notch to keep the tarp from slipping off. Take the two remaining corners, stretch them out as far as you can, and stake as firmly as possible.

You have now made a plow point tent. Give yourself a hearty pat on the back. Sure, it’s not completely sealed, but you will be well out of the wind, most or all of the wet, and you can stay pretty warm, given how little space there is to heat. And speaking of heat-

Mazelton looked up into the achingly blue sky, turning fiery red and embellished with faint wisps of cloud. It would be a dry night, but he could feel a bit of chill coming in. Summer didn’t last long in the mountains. He would have to make a fire.

Mazelton had made fires before, of course. It had been a long journey on the trail, and she of the clattering wooden rings made certain that he knew the basics. Plus he had some fire starters and charcloth in his saddlebags, so he was well set there. No, the problem was making a fire that would last any useful amount of time.

He set about gathering wood. Lots of dry pine, which smoked a lot but also burned easily. And fast. Small twigs for the kindling, then small dry branches, and building up in size to wrist thick downed branches or even slightly larger standing deadwood. They would catch fast, burn well, and were reasonably easy to find. And the fuel would burn through in half an hour or less.

If it got really cold, he would be waking up every hour or so to add fuel to the fire. He didn’t think it would be quite that cold tonight, but…

“Cold is the number one enemy! You gotta stay warm. You gotta stay dry!”

She hadn’t steered him wrong yet. So he tried to remember what people without heat stones were supposed to do in situations like this. Ah. Bigger logs? Yes, that sounded right. Bigger wood took longer to burn. So. Find standing dead wood. Not too hard in a mature forest like this. He poked around until he found a likely looking tree. He gave it a solid kick, and it lurched to the side, cracking. Dead. Not a very big tree, but very dead and very dry. Perfect.

He took his camp hatchet and quickly hacked it off its stump. The branches were a bit hung up on the nearby trees, but he solved that problem with violence. Just yanked at the bastard thing until it came down and he could drag it back to camp. That, in a word, hurt. Yanking with a broken ribs? Every so slightly agonizing. But it needed to be done, so he did it. Then he started processing it. Twigs, sticks, branches. Then the trunk of the tree. It really wasn’t a very big tree. He could circle the trunk with his hands, fingers touching. But that was still a chore to cut through without a saw and only a little hatchet. Mazelton sighed, and set to it.

The trunk he cut into lengths of about four feet, piling them up in front of the tent. Then, because he really didn’t know how long the logs would burn for, he went out and did it all over again.

It was getting late, and getting dark. He hadn’t cooked dinner yet. But he was ready. He rubbed his hands together, and began the grand assembly. Two big paces from his “front door” he built a heat reflector out of the useless branches and needles, covered in a couple of inches of dirt. One big step from his front door, he built his cook fire. A nice little nest of tinder, with a bit of his char cloth in the middle. Use the steel striker and the accompanying bit of stone (Flint? Maybe. Probably? He didn’t know.) to cast sparks.

The sparks landed on the charcloth, which quickly started to smolder. He blew gently on it, and a little flame popped up. He fed it bits of dry grass tinder, which made a bigger flame. They went into a grass nest which cupped and wrapped the flames… making an even bigger, hotter flame. This went on the ground, and kindling was layered on. Then small sticks. Then, when a tiny coal bed had started to form and the small sticks had really caught, the real firewood went on.

Mazelton felt a warm accomplishment when he was done. He couldn't have made such a fire when he lived in Old Radler. He couldn’t have done it when he first set out on the trail. His fire warmed him the whole way through. Once he had a nice coal bed, he lifted the still burning wood to one side with his spade and boiled up a bit of instant soup in a heatproof mug. The mug was some kind of bark, he remembered, treated somehow to be even more fireproof. Just one of those things their ancestors invented.

He was still hungry, and still recovering. He made a second mug, and added some mushroom jerky for extra body. It didn’t taste very good, but hunger was truly the best sauce.

Would Danae reject him for looking like a skeleton? But how does a body gain weight on the trail? It’s just not possible! Maybe he would have to live in town for a few months, feed up, and then they would be wed? He hoped not.

“Town.” Flyspeck collection of huts, more like. And soon to be home. Mazelton sipped his soup and looked up at the huge sky. He could see some stars through the trees, the billions and trillions of specks of light stretching infinitely above him. Trying to wrap his mind around the word “home,” and what it actually meant to him. He didn't reach a good answer. He just knew that he really, really wanted it.

Safety, perhaps. Security and warmth. Being wanted.

Before bed, Mazelton dragged the bigger logs over and plonked them on top of his little existing fire. He packed lots of extra tinder and kindling in between the logs, to help his cooking fire spread and light the big trunks. He knew that it would be hard to burn through the bark, but he was not going to try and scrape all that damn bark off. More fuel, more tinder. The fires would spread along the big logs, and burn for hours, not minutes. That would keep him warm through most of the night.

He rolled out his groundsheet, then his sleeping pad, then his heavy blanket. His feet faced the fire, still in his socks, the blanket tucked in snugly around him. He was warm. Bastard the Cheve was sleeping standing up, some four meters away. It was pretty nice.

Twenty minutes later, Mazelton kicked down the heat reflector. It was too damn hot! But other than that, he had a remarkably nice night, and woke in much less pain.

The next morning was bright and a whisper of cool air reminded Mazelton that the heat of the day couldn’t last. He was still two days or so behind the wagon train. A walking cheve was a bit faster than an Auroch, but not that much faster. He tried to take a deep breath, and quit early. Broken ribs remained broken. He would not be moving fast today. Nothing for it but to make a small fire, cook breakfast in his mug, and be on his way. Bastard the Cheve got a nice brushing. Sure the beast may have eighty five percent of all known moral and spiritual defects, but he still deserved a clean coat.

Saddle sores wouldn’t be good for anybody.

So it was off they went, back along the river and admiring, or being intimidated by, the shockingly huge mountains. It was the damndest thing- you lost sight of the mountain you were on, so you forgot how high up you really were. Right up until the slope dropped away from the road and you realized that you would never be able to climb up again if you fell. You probably wouldn’t survive anyway.

He was morbidly fascinated by it. He could see the wagon ruts on the trail and the endless animal droppings ground down into the dirt. He started looking for a torn up edge of the road, something that would suggest a wagon went over the edge. He wasn’t hoping for anyone in particular to have an accident, but some unpleasant corner of his soul was really interested in seeing what that accident would look like. Would it tear up the earth as it fell? Would the wagon bounce as it fell? What would the wreckage look like?

Nothing to suggest anyone went over. He still managed to spend hours looking. Then the road fell back to the river and he found a campsite. It was a little eerie and a little sad. A huge puddle of trash and dung- human and animal. Bare, scorched spots where fires burned, or heat stones roasted the earth below.

Nobody had left him a note under a rock, carved into a tree. Nothing to show that there was a Mazelton sized hole in the caravan. Which was fair enough, he told himself. Most of the people who died or vanished on the trail didn’t get so much as a burial, let alone a grave marker. It was fair enough. But very lonely.

Was that home for him? Someplace where they were happy when you came, and sad when you left? Not just a place but a person? That seemed to be part of it. But he wanted that building. He wanted his little cabin, not their cabin but his cabin.

It would be one room to start, with one big window facing south over the garden. In the morning, he would open the shutters and let the light in, embracing the beauty of the world. Or he wouldn’t. He would keep the shutters closed, and he would stay in the dark, where no one could find him but the ghosts of those he left behind. He would keep the world out and curl up under his blankets and for a little while, both Mazelton and the world would forget he ever existed.

He would have to tell Danae. Sometimes he just needed to be alone, and a sobbing person didn’t always want a hug. As long as the hug was there when he wanted it.

It was all getting a bit real, now. Danae wasn’t months away, but a few weeks. He would have to… close the sale. What would he do if she decided that she didn’t want him after all? Go back?

With a sudden shock, Mazelton remembered that he still had Danae’s letter in his bag. He found a nice spot for lunch and stopped. He hobbled Bastard the Cheve, set out some water and mushroom jerky, debated the hard tack, and decided that it was calories at any cost. He soaked the hard tack in water while he carefully pulled out the little horn tube with Danae’s letter in it.

To my very Dear Mazelton,

It sounds like you have had an adventure getting to me. Will you think me vain if that flatters me? I hope not, because it does. It’s quite a thought- a big city polisher, traveling the breadth of the continent for an easement, a business plan, and me.

Mind you, I was reassured to get the letter. Knowing that you had made it so far, that you were so close, it made everything so much more. More what, I don’t know, but more.

I found myself scrubbing the barn. Have you spent much time in a barn? I guess you haven’t. Let me tell you, barns are not scrubbed. Cleaned, yes. Scrubbed no. But I want everything to be nice for you. Like you would come up the path and go straight to my barn, look around and go “Alright, it was all worth it.”

I’ve been trying to read up about the Ma Clan. What books we have aren’t much, and they don’t seem to all agree on what, exactly, the Ma are. They all seem to agree that people who marry in are well looked after, which is a comfort. I had to laugh. That same book suggested that the Ma dislike cities, and prefer to live as hunter gatherers. I guess New Scandie lets you split the difference.

Am I rambling again? I think I am. I attached a couple of pictures myself, this time. (Yours are wonderful, and I want to ask about them when I see you, but as I said before, I have no mind for art.). Look at how the orchard is growing this year! I’m having to thin branches at an amazing rate, which let me tell you, is a nice problem to have. You should come in with the harvest.

I… hope you can come to care for me. I think I have come to care for you. The man in my letters, with so much art and strangeness and, I think, grief. You leave a lot out of your letters, and I can understand that. Just come to me, Mazelton. We can sort it all out from there. We can make our home.

Waiting for you, and hoping,

Danae

Mazelton looked blankly at the river, not able to think. Barely able to feel the emotions that were too big for his heart to carry. Bigger than the endless blue sky and towering mountains. Much, much bigger than him. He was wanted. He had a home, waiting for him. He could be loved.

He groveled in the dirt, thanking the Great Dusty World for giving him such an undeserved blessing. That he would do his best to make sure his life and death enriched the world and its people.

Then, when the dust on his face started clumping from the tears, he knelt up and faced the deep woods. He slammed his fist into the bullet hole, feeling the barely mending ribs break again. He almost collapsed, but a lifetime’s vicious will kept him upright. He offered his pain to the Ælfflæd in a simple bargain- Keep her alive and well, until I come home.