Stone Age Mama

Chapter Six - Industrious

-Summer-

Belbet needed to make a travois. She had been planning to wait on making such a thing, but it would be necessary if she was going to bring back enough clay to make the smoker she wanted. Luckily all a sled/travoi really was, was a platform made of sticks, and a handle. She lashed together two long sticks in an ‘x’, one side small enough for a person to pull the two sticks, seven sticks lain across the much larger ‘v’-section to form a platform. Then, she secured one of their sleeping furs to it, figuring they could go without it tonight if it meant that they’d be able to save excess food.

Mohniit’s curious little eyes watched her the whole way, so she decided it was definitely worth it to bring him along. Perched on top of the travois, the little bunny bounced along as she dragged him down the riverside towards one of the red cliffs she’d seen on her walk to the willow grove. It felt oddly like not pulling anything at all. Her poor boy, she definitely needed to get them all more food.

While they were out, she also kept an eye out for suitable trees. Specifically, ones about the size of her forearm. She managed to cut down a few along their way, and Mohniit’s giggles as he helped her tie them on with grass-made-twine made her heart twinge. It made the time spent walking to the clay-deposits less monotonous.

Eventually, they reached one of the cliffs she’d seen, and she set down the travois. Mohniit clambered off of it, standing to the side as Belbet took out her oldest invention- the digging pole. She’d spent a while pulling all the memories Victoria had of clay and pottery to the forefront, and the first thing she knew was that you had to dig the clay out of the dirt, and mix it with water before it could be used.

Mohniit helped out, his little hands shifting the damp clay his mother dug from the earth. When she went down to the river (only about five steps away from where they were digging) to get water to add to the clay, he waited, patiently piling mud onto mud into tilting piles. Hauling the water was perhaps the most tiring portion of it, with the small stone-bucket they’d made.

She eventually managed to pile a large, wet glob of clay onto the travois. She judged it was big enough, and plopped her child on top of it. The wet slop sound along with his giggles kickstarted her own giggle. She lifted the handles of her travois and started the long, heavy trek back to their homestead.

“A, B, C, D-” She started, singing the song from Victoria’s childhood. She intended to teach the children to read and write, but for that she’d need some form of charcoal, or ink. And for now- An idea hit her like a lightning strike, completely knocking her train of thought off the tracks.

Charcoal would be a much better thing to have, especially for winter! The question was, how to make it. She’d heard of some people who made their own charcoal, but all she knew is it involved fire and wood. Lots of wood. Hm.

Eventually, they arrived back in camp, to see Eefim ripping apart the dried fur of one of the rabbits he’d caught a few days ago. He seemed incredibly frustrated by it, glowering in a way that reminded Belbet of how Deenat had glowered at her after Belbet had been exiled.

“What’s going on, Eefim?” She asked, setting the clay down, and stretching out her sore shoulders. She picked Mohniit up and set him on the ground so he didn’t hurt himself trying to drop himself from the waist-high pile of clay. She really congratulated herself for the fact that she was able to pull all of that without even getting out of breath. Her nephew looked up at her, and goodness, that was an adorable pout.

“My sling broke. So I’m making another.” Then, he turned back to the pseudo-leather, turning it into strings.

“Definitely a good idea to make another one, but I’m thinking of another weapon for you. You’ll need to help me make it, though.” She called, turning to her clay to unload it near a rock she’d mentally designated the ‘clay storage’ rock.

When she turned back for her next load, she realized that her words had cheered Eefim up considerably. He was staring at her with wide eyes and a small, hopeful smile. Sighing, she abandoned her clay, and picked up the sticks she’d brought back. Carrying them over to the logs they’d dragged next to the fire to sit on, she plopped down and picked up one of the spare axes.

“See, this particular weapon is called a ‘Bow and Arrows’. We take a long stick, and string a piece of rope from one end to the other. Then, we use that string to launch sharp sticks at things.” She paused, realizing how stupid that sounded, “Well… it’s more dangerous than it sounds.”

Eefim nodded, ever quiet. He watched as his mother’s sister used the axe to split the round wood in half lengthwise. And then, she stuck the axe in again, hitting it with a rock over and over to split the halved wood into an almost-plank. Belbet spent a few moments looking down the length of it, checking to see if it had a somewhat-straight cut.

“Hand me that rock? The one with the wedge on the edge.” Belbet pointed to one of the tools they used for scraping the fur off some of the furs. It was a rock they’d chipped down to a long, flat point, similar in shape to an ax-head but bigger.

She nailed this into one edge of the long plank, hammering it in in order to sheer long strips off the wood, making a straighter, cleaner surface. “You’re watching how I do this? This will be your job from now on.” She looked up and sure enough, Eefim was watching raptly.

“What we’re aiming for is a straight line. When you look down the length of it, you shouldn’t be able to see any bumps.” She handed it to him, showing him how to look down the wood’s surface. Then, she turned it around and handed him the tools. “Go on. You try.”

She supervised the boy’s attempts at shaving down the wood to a proper shape. Meanwhile, she worked her hands on making a rope, the extra fibers from the wood useful. While he was working on it, Deenat came back from out of the woods, a basket in hand filled with goodies. It seemed Deenat had taken a look at the herbs Belbet had collected and hung from the sides of their house, because she had bundles of herbs tied to the side of her basket as well.

“A lovely haul, sister!” Belbet praised, and Deenat, looking up from Eefim’s work, nodded. “What all did you get?”

“I found some more sweet potatoes, peapods that we can crack open and eat, along with a few of these-” She pulled out some small purple eggplant-like things. Beside these, she set carrots and some blueberry-sized red berries that, when Belbet tasted one, actually tasted like a tomato. Picking one open revealed tiny tomato-seed like seeds, which she wasted no time spreading out on a rock to dry in the summer sun.

“You did good, Sister.” Belbet praised. She turned her attention back to Eefim, who had finished smoothing out the wood somewhat. Belbet directed him next to narrow the two ends to almost-points, and showed him how to cut in a hold for the string.

“What’s this?” Deenat asked.

“Go ahead and tell her, Eefim.” Belbet encouraged, even though the boy looked panicked.

“...Bow. It’s a weapon that Aunt came up with.” He said, voice low and soft. Belbet had to wonder what had been done to make this poor kid so shy. ...Or maybe it was just his personality. Deenat didn’t seem talkative either, so perhaps it was a generic trait?

Leaving the two to talk, Belbet went back to her clay, only for a shout of triumph to go up. Belbet looked up from the massive armload of muddy clay to see her daughter striding out of the forest with what looked like a spear and- “Is that a bird??”

Belbet slopped the mud down onto the pile, before heading over to where her Dahnei was holding up the bird, its pheasant-y tail plumage swaying in the wind. “It’s a bird! I caught a bird!” The little girl was incandescent with pride.

Completely floored, Belbet reached out and ruffled her daughter's hair. “Good job! You did amazing! This is your first hunt right?”

The little girl nodded, and Belbet grinned, crouching down. “Then you’re our guest of honor tonight! I’ll make something really tasty with this birdy, okay? Why don’t you go pluck and prepare it. If you need help, ask your cousin, okay?”

As Dahnei went off to do that, Belbet watched her leave, shaking her head. “Where did she get the spear?”

“She was making it earlier.” Deenat replied. “She said she’d seen some of the hunters use them before, and wanted to try. I didn’t think she’d catch anything.”

“...Yeah. It’s hard to catch things with a spear.” Eefim nodded, “Even I have trouble aiming.”

“Hm… I’d think it’d be more of a problem of the spear not going through hard enough.” Belbet mumbled, rubbing at her jaw in thought. “Maybe I could make her an Atlatl.”

Of course, the mother-and-son had no idea what Belbet was talking about. At their confused looks, Belbet waved idly, unsure how to explain a complicated device like that easily. “Something to help throw spears really hard. I’m gonna go see if I can’t build us a smoker.”

Again, they didn’t question her weird words, even as she took a moment to go and sweep plants and rocks out of the area she wanted to set aside for the smoker. Her little shadow followed her, and when she asked him to go get her some “big” (she mimed the size of her forearm) sticks, he happily did so. Sticking these sticks into the ground, she began to use them as a sort of skeletal structure for what she was making. She built walls about a hand-span tall, around the edges of the sticks. Then, on one of their flatter rocks, she made a frame of sticks.

In this frame of sticks, she settled clay, poking holes in it, so that it would let through the smoke from the fire. This, she left to dry for a bit.

She spent some time gathering up leaves and pine needles and such, laying them on the floor of the hut around the areas they all sleep. She made an extra effort to mark out a circle area around the fireplace, designating it a “nothing burnable goes here” zone. Then, her little Mohniit helped her gather up the furs and spread them out on the sleeping piles. This would definitely improve their sleeping, at least until she could figure out how to sew mattresses.

They were quite lucky that Eefim had been finding plenty of game, and she’d been leaving the tanning of the furs to him, mostly. It had become something of a bonding exercise between him and Deenat, which was nice. She’d already helped the two of them make a fur-drying rack, which was mostly just four long branches tied in an A-formation, with long sticks in-between as poles to hang the furs on.

She spent a few moments now, making another drying rack, although this one was for herbs. Taking the herbs that were drying on the eaves of the house, she tied them to the drying rack she’d made, and checked to see how they were doing. No signs of mold or damage by insects, which was good. She turned, and with giddy steps, went back to the clay grate she’d made.

When she poked it, however, her finger still made a dent far too quickly. “Hm… too much water?” She wondered, frowning. She’d never played with clay, much less made it, so she worried a little that she might have messed up. However, instead of panicking or starting over, she decided to give it some more time. She wanted to construct something new anyway, to distract her wandering mind before she ended up ruining her results with impatience.