Near the cave I find a useful item. Bear poop! Spreading this along the south perimeter might help deter animal from crossing into the bear territory. Still I need something to hold off those pesky rats. Considering how tightly the trees are growing here it should be possible to use the trees as the posts for a fence. Further down the lake I find some tall, slim and bendy looking trees. They are growing in the shallows like reeds. Mr. Analyze tells me that they are called reed trees. How predictable! They seem to be good building materials for both my fence end eventually my house.

With the length of the reed trees I am able to weave them into the forest using three close growing trees as posts. They form a basic barrier. A beast bear would likely tear through it if motivated, but all I want is to deter animals from approaching my future house from all but one direction. My gate and true defense the dryad tree. Since animals won't come close to the tree, it will guard my front door. As a final layer of defense I add an outer layer of carefully cut dried torn bushes along the fence. These should deter the rats, but I will have to monitor their effect.

For the location of my house I could use the cave as a starting point, but there is something I want to try. I once watched a video of a man building a clay tiled house with under floor heating. He used no tools and his only building materials were clay, wood and stones. Picking a spot half way between the cave and the tree, I start preparing the ground. All my fancy stone tools are now coming into full play. I make some temporary wooden shelters using branches and logs, nothing I haven't done before in boy scouts. Next I start working on a kiln made of clay.

The kiln is for baking clay tiles for the roof. I figured it would be a time consuming process so I started it first. It proved a lot harder than expected. While baking batches of tiles I start working on the wooden frame making the pillars and roof of the house. It takes longer than expected, but with continuous amendments I end up with a framework suitable for tiles. Next I start working on the outdoor fireplace attached to the wall of the house. This is another hard part.

The idea is that the smoke from the fireplace will feed into tunnels under the floor of the house and come out on the other side. Digging into the ground I create two parallel tunnels covering the whole middle floor of the house. Stones and clay are used to fortify the tunnels and eventual flat stones are added to create the roof. I test that no smoke comes through the floor, and add more clay for safety. Currently the fireplace is just a hole in the side of the foundations of my soon to be house.

Using more stones and clay I make it into a more useful fireplace. It is situated slightly lower than the house. The front of the house will likely turn into a moat if it rains a lot. Hopefully it won't. I needed the top of the fireplace to be almost level with the tunnel to funnel the draft and the heat. Instead of a wide fireplace, it is deep. I finish tiling the roof and only the easy part is left. The walls are made of large rocks encased by clay, gradually built up to let the lower clay dry.

My new home is dark and dusty. As soon as the sun sets I go for a walk around my safe zone. It is my first wander in the dark. I guess I got used to hiding in treetops in the dark for fear of what might be lurking out at night. At night the forest looks and sounds eerily different. Not as scare as I might have thought, but that might just be my fear resistance. With the thick layers of leaves above one would expect the forest to be very dark at night, but the plant life is teeming with different volumes of light. Luminescent flora appears to be common in this world.

My house feels a lot more like a home with my new plant based light sources and a great bear fur carpet. Could do with a blanket and pillows though. Lots of pillows. The lighting is only dim, so detail work is still impossible at night. Daylight is precious. There is no room for sleeping in till noon.