Last edited by 97cweb at 2025-11-27 19:34:00.441234
It’s strange how quiet everything became after the generator was able to trickle charge my phone. After the celebration and the realization of how slow this charge process would be, Eldrin, Thallion and I went to the carpenters and asked for a waterwheel. They seemed bored at first, but quickly got to work as they had something to do as the dregs of winter slowly melted away.
“A week or two” they told me. Not bad for an undershot waterwheel. They must have made them before, as they quickly pushed us all out of their shop as they started pulling planks down from the shelves.
And with that, my life went still.
Sure, Silvra has to clean up the copper disks, and Thallion had to go teach, but for me, nothing. I cannot get more data out of my phone without having to do about 5 minutes of charging for 1 minute of use. Even when the sun sets, Thallion is still busy writing down everything, sorting it, crossreferencing it, as his now steady hands continue to write immaculate script.
But for me, stillness. The village around me has a comforting rhythm, slower, paced with the melting snow. A slow intimate dance with nature, as the air warms. And I am not used to it. I keep turning on my phone to check the battery charge. I draw several new versions of the DC generator, which Eldrin looks at, and starts building, but without needing me, as his blacksmith mind adds more details than I could possibly imagine from the basic wikipedia article.
As of right now, I am still the outsider, the one with a glowing rectangle, and possibly still hunted by the red guard.
Shaking my head, I push myself away from the table, trying to clear the lack of action from my mind. I head outside behind the school and see Lena there, hunched over the ground, with her red hair tied back, and staring at the ground, surrounded by various jars.
As my shadow passes over her, she looks up, and smiles warmly at me, then looks serious.
“You seem quiet, is your mind eating you again?”
“Yes. Can we talk?”
“Anything for you, just let me close this lid,” She says, as she snaps shut one of the many bottles she has around her.
We head inside, and I sit on my still broken overstuffed chair/bed, while she grabs a dining chair from by the table and spins it towards me.
“So, what is on your mind?”
“Just…lost. I am so used to doing stuff all the time, while everyone around here knows how to…be? Be. That is the best word for it. I am so used to performing actions to achieve something immediately, but that is not how stuff works here. The waterwheel will take at least another week, and I am just sitting here. I could teach, but I don’t know the language, and cannot use that much power. Everything I want to do depends on more power for my phone!”
She sits quietly, reclining on the worn chair with one arm resting on the table.
“How about you help me get ready for spring?”
“Ok, what do you need?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that. I am a forager. Not much to forage in the winter, but come spring, the forest bursts with life again, and I pick things as they ripen. I also have a small garden that grows some of the more farmable crops. That is what I was doing just now, sorting seeds and organizing the garden.”
“Ok, but how can I help with that? That is years of work to learn where stuff even grows, and then recognizing it.”
“That part I can still do, but the plants, they do not grow alone, they like to grow near other plants. Maybe you can help find a good arrangement to improve their growth?”
“Like corn, beans and squash?” I comment, based on what little I remember from indigenous farming back in grade 3.
“Um, sure? Don’t know what those are, but if they depend on each other to improve their growth, yes.”
I nod, and take a sheet of paper from the pile. “So, let’s start with just a table. What grows tall, what grows wide, and what climbs?”
She lights up, and we spend until the sun sets discussing ways to sort plants so they can support each other, and keep unwanted plants to a minimum. A little village of plants working together. Some weaker, some more nourishing, some helping the soil, all needed.