Word Count :: 500+ All welcome! This is for the dock & boat building portion of the scouting party project. Liliya is on her way to earning the Pescador co-rank!
Had it really been so many weeks since the day the Dark Lady found her and her mother and brought the two to Salsoa? Liliya sat down on the wood pile and rested for a moment while she counted the weeks on her fingers and thought. She hunched forward, elbows propped on her knees with her eyes trained on her hands as she breathed heavily, panting to cool herself down. She had just returned to Salsoa dragging a load of wood that she salvaged from the shores past the borders, the place that she knew the remains of her modest boat had been brought ashore and stored. The chore had taken her all morning and well into the afternoon, and now the unfiltered sun glared down on her from above. Even though the furious summer had given way to the more temperate weather of fall, this afternoon was still quite sultry. Still, there was a project to be done for her pack, and she had just the right amount of willpower and determination to do it.
But did she have the tools and the resources? Her eyes scanned the woodpile beneath and all around her. Planks and staves were the extent of what she had gathered, and as her eyes moved to the shore she sighed. “Is no good. Is no good at all,” she groaned mournfully. All this work and there was still no wood formidable enough to hold up the structure that the pack needed. That would require some real, thick, sturdy poles, and she didn’t know where she could find anything like that.
“Bah,” she untied the red bandana that held her hair back, running her fingers through her tresses. The poles didn’t have to go too deep; after all, this was a bay and the waves were gentle here, the tide not as strong, but even so, even if she could find them, it would take a lot of manpower to get the poles grounded. She retied the bandana as she stood up, pacing back and forth as she contemplated the project.
“Vould be best to have horse pull poles here. In fact,” she looked at the wood pile. “Vhould be nice to have horse pull cart for wood, but is no cart. Vhat good is horse with no cart! Is garbage! Is coat! That is vhat horse good for. Warm clothink.” She muttered to herself in irritation as she paced, thinking about the tanned animal in the stables. She had learned that Trader was a docile, sturdy gelding trained to haul but she could not find a cart anywhere in Salsoa.
“Might as well use boat wood to build cart to build dock to build boat for. Is stupid!” She kicked the pile and a stack of mossy two-by-fours toppled over. Pain shot up her foot at the shock and she bent over, grabbing her foot and befouling the air with a string of Russian curses. If anyone was nearby they might think that a proper sailor was right around the corner.
Image courtesy of mnshots@Flickr; table by the Mentors!
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