Unusually, Rick wanders by in the morning and asks how I’m doing. I let him know that I’m not doing so well. There’s no musicians in town, and I’m feeling stuck. So I just don’t know what’s up next.

“Are you thinking of doing a walkabout, like Chaim?”

“I've been thinking about it.”

“It’d be a shame if you left. You’re helping everyone. But it's your life. If that's what you need, do what you think is best,” Rick smiles in his normal I-feel-superior fashion, and goes about his day.

The next day, everyone but me goes out hunting. In the evening, I notice that my coins-for-tunes hat has increased its take quite a bit. It’s taking in about double what it used to. Instead of five-ish oranges a day, I got nine. The day after, I got ten, and I end up asking Chaim if anything is up. He says they all thought I wasn’t being compensated fairly, and decided as a group to increase my share.

“Also, Snake, were you still looking for a band?”

“Dude! Absolutely. Are you interested?”

“Not me. I am musically impaired. But some others were asking.”

A couple more days of increased take, and Gemma and Cadence drop by and ask if they can join in. Gemma apparently used to play the piano, and wants to learn the guitar. Cadence can sing pretty well already. I whip out the guitar that Tom made, we start in, and practice. Gemma isn’t great, but she's not hopeless either. It takes a couple hours but she manages to learn the E-minor and C chords. While she’s working on that, I write out the words to Eleanor Rigby with one of those charcoal/wood pencils that Tanya and Zeke had helped with. After they both have their parts, we play the Beatles song. It’s at least not horrid.

I let Gemma take the guitar home, and give Cad the bark with the words. We agree to do more in a couple days.

The next day, Yulia invites me on her hunt with Mary and Victor, and I've never been so good at saying no to ladies like Yulia. We take down a few mean bison and pick up a handful of oranges each. Well, it'd be a handful if the Thaums weren't so weird. After the hunt, we’re heading for home, and then Mary reminds Victor that they said they'd work on aim and coordination. Yulia and I walk back towards camp together.

“Oh, I must’ve gotten lost,” Yulia laughs, when we come to a wooded clearing with a river feeding into a picturesque pool. “When’s the last time you went swimming?”

“Last time I was swimming, piranhas almost got me. I’m a bit nervous of jungle water.”

“Come on. It’ll be fine.” She takes a few steps into the clearning.

“I don’t want to swim alone,” she says, as she strips down to her underclothes, and starts dipping her toe in the water.

Yulia has the face of an angel, the body of a model, and the curves of a centerfold. And as we've seen before, I don’t always do well when surprised by incredibly beautiful women. My brain has been known to go on vacation during those episodes.

She wades in up to her knees, and notices that I'm not reacting, much at all. I'm all deer in the headlights. She smiles, walks back out, and grabs my hand, pulling me towards the pond. My brain kicks in enough to strip down to my boxers, and then we go in together.

It’s not that cold, but it’s cold enough that we just hop in and get clean. She laughs a lot, and starts a splash fight.

When we get out, we’re both there in our wet white underwear, and it’s cold.

“Do you have a towel? I didn’t bring one.”

I still have the supply for my shower, so I pull one out of my pocket, and hand it to her. I get one out for myself as well, and dry off.

When I’m mostly done, she smiles again and says, “Hey, Snake, couldn’t dry off my back. Could you?”

I do. She's soft. Then have a lot of trouble not watching as she dresses slowly.

“That was fun,” she says, as she bounces over to me, and gives me a soft, lingering hug. “Come on, let’s get back to camp.”

The night passes uneventfully, except for my somewhat impaired ability to concentrate. I've been drumming for 25 years--wait, 24--I can handle drumming even when a beautiful woman is paying attention to me. I play Olivia Newton-John and Pat Benetar. I can’t sing the parts; they’re often too high. But I can play the instrumentals, and definitely the drum parts. Hmm. I wonder if playing the other instruments will help with my thaumic field. Layers are helping. Do multiple types of instruments help? I don't really have the time or space or concentration to do those experiments, but I'll have to remember to later.

The band meets again the next night. Cadderly knows his part well, and Gemma can still manage the chords for Eleanor Rigby. We play something almost passable.The second song we attempt, because Gemma is still learning to play the guitar, is another easy to strum one: Tush by ZZ Top. It's a pretty easy chord setup. Add D and G to the C chord she knows from Eleanor Rigby, and we're good. Again, it takes a little work to get Gemma to be able to do the chords. Also it’s so weird that Cad looks seventy, but isn’t. From how he looks, he should know ZZ Top. I don’t think I know anyone born before 1990 who didn’t know them. But he’s not. He’s only thirty. And so I have to teach him the words. It’s really nice having the charcoal pencils. Maybe I can get the crew to make me a few more. It’s kinda weird to be writing on bark, but I guess the New World has some differences.

The next dawn finds me in a better mood.