4.2

August moved into the small shade cast by the [A-Frame Hut], watching as Rittan strode towards the lake with the [Bamboo Spear] in hand. He placed both the branch and the sheet of bark that he had painstakingly collected earlier in the day on the ground beside him. The aftertaste of the Sadapple lingered in his mouth, and despite Rittan claiming to be able to tolerate the fruits, August couldn’t have believed him if he’d wanted to.

He took the long branch and wrapped both of his legs around it, so just the top was poking out above his knee, and then removed the [Flint Chisel] from his inventory. At least in his mind, the shape of a Bow had always been represented by a long tube, tapered at both ends—but he also knew that it was more than that.

The ends were tapered for a reason, and there was usually some kind of grip in the middle—or at least a thinner section of wood when the user’s hand would hold it. Thin in the middle and at the tops, thick everywhere else—but it also needed to be strong enough to avoid snapping when the vine was added.

He hesitated for a moment longer before placing the chisel against the end of the branch and hitting it with one of the better-shaped rocks like the absolute caveman he was. It split off a big piece, and then he began shaving off more in earnest. He kept at it until the end looked like a rectangle and then moved further down the branch. He took off less and less material as he reached the middle, scared to thin it out too much—that was a rule he’d learnt from his previous efforts; if you take off too little, you can always remove a bit more, but if you took off too much material in the beginning, you were fucked.

Past the middle section, he had to flip the branch around and start on the untouched end. He whittled it down, and once he’d returned to the middle once more, he looked at the far too large bow at his feet in with a critical eye.

He’d definitely made it too big; he could tell without picking it up that it was a far better fit for someone Rittan’s size—which was fine; he’d end up making more than one eventually. August checked on Rittan for a moment, seeing the unusual amount of arms breaking the surface before digging back into the water as he swam in earnest.

He was obviously not attempting to fish, as he had said was his goal, but August couldn’t blame him. However long the guy had been in Limbo, unable to move and unable to do anything—swimming probably felt amazing.

Rittan surfaced for a moment, pushing his hair back with his hands as the water ran down his body.

“Do you think you’re in a shampoo commercial?” August said to himself with a snort. “Relax, dude.”

He turned his attention back to his task and put aside the bow itself for the moment; the hard part was out of the way—whether or not it bore a Sadapple or an actual fruit was a whole other question. August reached over and pulled the sheet of bark towards him before taking out his [Flint Knife]. He used it to carve a groove into the top of the bark before using the knife’s edge to begin cutting a vertical slice off about a foot wide.

With the smaller and more easily manageable piece in his hand, he set about using the [Flint Knife] and [Flint Chisel] to begin splitting off some small filaments at the edge of the bark. Once they were separated, he very carefully began peeling it away. August thought that he was perhaps being too careful, but dealing with broken or shorter filaments would just make the task longer in the end.

Once he had a small pile of filaments, he separated the longer ones into a single stack to one side. He continued the task, whittling away the bark into what felt like a million strands of green. A sharper knife or a thinner edge would have made this process about a hundred times faster, and eventually, he grew sick of it and tossed the piece of bark onto the larger piece.

August picked up the longest filament and tried to put the knowledge of the blueprints into practice—twisting and braiding stuck out to him the most, so he began there. August bent the filament in half until the two ends lay next to each other and then pinched the kink between his fingers. He added a third piece which left him with three strands to work with.

He had Alice to thank for this particular braid; the number of times she’d crawled into his lap and convinced him to play with her hair—while she played with him. Well, it had led to at least a basic knowledge of a three-strand braid, even if the act of braiding anything at all now came with a deluge of memories that made him cross his legs and make sure that Rittan was out of view.

The filaments didn’t really work the same way as hair did, and it was a finer task to work with single lines. It did, however, leave him with a foot-long piece of braided fibre.

Cordage Blueprint Unlocked

August stared down at the useless piece of twisted fibre in his hand and sighed. He unwound it quickly, and then once he’d retrieved all three pieces, he put one of them away. The first was halved again, and then he began twisting one of the strands until it had coiled upon itself tightly. Then he pulled the second strand in and twisted both of them over each other. He repeated the process of twisting the first strand before rotating them both together, leaving a much tighter, neater and stronger cord.

It ended up being only half the length of the first try—due to the nature of twisting it so much, it had shorted the length in return for much greater tensile strength. Once he ran out of room, he retrieved his discarded piece and halved it once more, placing the bed between the two strands and splicing it into the next rotation.