Chapter 27 How to Build a Tent
How to Build a Tent
Lawrie
The last week in February, Ernest took me to Chile.
Just like that. We negotiated eight days off with Mr. Sullivan who, knowing he had no choice, agreed to let me go.
He grumbled about incompetent stand-ins but other than that, he seemed resigned.
Including the weekends, that gave us twelve days in total.
The first night, we slept at a tiny hotel in a town called Puerto Natales.
The staff didn’t speak a word of English, but Ernest, unsurprisingly, knew enough Spanish to order a delicious breakfast and hire a boat.
The local guy was willing to get us to the other side of what I learned wasn’t a lake but a fjord.
The scenery was breathtaking with high peaks and steep inclines falling into the water, and next to nobody lived there.
To the west of the town lay only winding fjords and an endless number of uninhabited islands.
It was summer in the Southern Hemisphere, but the temperatures here in western Patagonia rarely reached into the sixties—not exactly sunbathing weather.
I was equipped for flying with winter biker gear so I wouldn’t freeze in higher altitudes.
Ernest guffawed the first time I called the sleek black suit a onesie, so I’ve been calling it that ever since.
It was, after all, a onesie, just an extra pretentious one.
The man who brought us to the western shore was reluctant to leave us there alone, eyeing our equipment, probably thinking we were on a suicide mission.
Ernest paid him a nice sum and assured him we weren’t climbers, which seemed to bother him the most, and that somebody else would be picking us up—he didn’t specify where.
Appeased, the man started his motorboat and sped away, circling back toward the port.
Ernest’s backpack was enormous, and to my humiliation, I was barely able to lift it, let alone carry it.
I’d stuffed mine full as well, mostly out of pride, but I hardly had room in it for anything else but my flying gear and underwear.
Cleverly, I’d packed five pairs of thick socks.
Ernest carried the tent, sleeping bags, a double inflatable mattress, and most of the dry food.
He said drinking water wouldn’t be a problem in these areas, but we had a filtering straw with us just in case.
We went farther into the forest, found a clearing, and prepared a pack of dry food above a camping gas stove. As soon as the sun neared the horizon, Ernest shifted. I packed his clothes, fastened our bags to his harness, and we were off.
The sunset in western Patagonia was the most beautiful view I had ever seen in my life. Ernest flew slowly, low above the mountains and fjords, and I blinked away tears. If my dad could only see me now. Although maybe he was watching me from higher above. Who knew?
“See that peak with the snow cap right ahead?” Ernest asked. “That’s Monte Burney. We’ll stay there for the night.”
“Ernest,” I said warily. “The mountain looks like a volcano.”
“Don’t worry. It hasn’t been active since 1910.”
“It’s a million years old. It has only taken a nap.”
Ernest laughed, which in dragon form meant there might be records about seismic activity around Monte Burney today.
“The only thing we have to worry about is that cloud over there,” he said.
A dark-blue chunk of fluff appeared from behind the volcano, seemingly out of nowhere.
The first drops had already fallen when we landed at the foot of the mountain—which, as Ernest informed me, wasn’t all that high compared to the tall peaks of the Andes. It only looked huge because it rose directly from the sea.
“Ernest, sorry to interrupt, everything you’re saying is super interesting, but we need to get the tent up right now or everything will be wet.”
“The backpacks are waterproof.” He shrugged into his hiking pants and sat on a rock to pull on his boots.
“Well, I am not.”
I opened the zipper on the round bag with the tent while Ernest searched for his shirt.
“It’s one of those you can just shake, and it will unfold by itself,” he supplied with his head hidden in fabric.
The picture on the cover showed I should find a corner marked with an arrow, hold it with one hand, unclip a red buckle, and give it all a shake.
I rooted in the mess of polyester while the drops landing on my back got significantly larger.
I could put on my biker onesie, which was rainproof, but it was folded at the bottom of my backpack and took a considerable time to squeeze into.
Building a pop-up tent should be quicker. Emphasis on “should.”
Ernest’s hands joined mine inside the tent bag.
“Hey, I had a system going.”
“Sorry.” He quickly removed his hands.
Now the rain felt more like a proper shower, only cold as fuck.
“Okay,” I gestured at the bag helplessly. “I have no idea what I’m doing. It says to find an arrow, and I see no arrow.”
“Let’s pull it all out.”
We unwrapped the bag and held the round thing between us. Still no arrow, but we found what might have been the beginning of a zipped door.
“See, it’s just big loops folded into smaller loops,” Ernest said. “If we release the buckle, it will unfold.”
“We should hold it by the arrow.”
“There’s no arrow.”
“I have Patagonian rainwater in my eyes. I see nothing.”
“Lawrie, you’re soaked.”
“What’s worse, so is the tent.”
“Fuck it.”
Ernest unclipped the buckle, and the thing popped open between us, making me jump back. It didn’t look like a tent, though. More like a gift-wrapped Mobius strip.
I stared at it in horror while the entire sky seemed to fall onto our heads.
“Can you fix that?” I asked.
Ernest gave me a helpless look.
“You’re the engineer!” I cried.
“I have never built a tent in my life, Lawrie. I sleep in dragon form when I go places like this.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Shift!”
He blinked. “Shift?”
“Yes! Cover me with your wings, and please, breathe on me, so I won’t freeze while I figure this out.”
“On it.”
He squeezed out of his drenched clothes while I tried to save myself from hypothermia by jumping up and down. My boots squelched.
My dragon rose above me and folded his wings, creating a solid roof. Raindrops battered his stretched skin. Then his huge head peeked through a gap and smiled toothily down at me.
“You’re clever,” Ernest said, his hot breath fanning my face.
“Does the rain bother you?”
“Not at all.”
“Good. Keep breathing on me.”
My clothes were stuck to my skin, everything soaked through, but the warmth coming from Ernest’s muzzle made it bearable.
I turned the lump of fabric and wires in my arms until I found a place where the polyester seemed to be scrunched up around two crossing wires.
When I pulled them apart, flipping one loop of wires around, the tent finally unfolded.
“Eureka.”
“You’re brilliant.”
“Stay like this for a minute.”
I placed the tent onto reasonably level ground and pushed the stakes through the loops in all the right places.
Ernest acted as an oversized umbrella throughout the process.
Then I dragged our things inside. Our sleeping bags and the inflatable mattress were at the bottom of Ernest’s humungous backpack.
Luckily, it opened from both sides, so I didn’t have to unpack everything.
“You okay?”
I jumped at Ernest’s booming voice coming from right behind me. His head hung in the unzipped opening, his thorns grazing the polyester, his exhalations quickly warming the inside of the tent.
“Yes. Getting our bed ready.”
“Can I help?”
“Just keep breathing and don’t move. I don’t want you to make holes into our roof with those thingies.” I pointed at the spikes sticking out from his temples.
He sighed. “I’ve been reduced to a blow drier.”
Grinning, I gave him a small kiss on his nose. “You’re excellent at it.”
I dug out the lantern and turned it on. The rain calmed down into a drizzle, and the night fell quickly.
After inflating the mattress, I zipped our sleeping bags together into one large pouch—Ernest had bought us one left and one right-sided so we could sleep together.
Then I changed into pajamas. Ernest nuzzled my naked back while I was at it, making me giggle.
The tip of a hot tongue grazed my neck, and the beast rumbled.
“Shoo. Naughty dragon.”
“Can’t help it,” he said, and the tent fluttered from his voice.
“Let me sort out the damp clothes, and you can come in.”
There was nowhere to hang stuff, so I spread out our pants and shirts over our backpacks. Then I shuffled onto the mattress.
“And done,” I announced to the dragon head peeking through the tent opening. He carefully backed out.
The now familiar whoosh of wind outside announced Ernest stretching his wings before shifting. A few seconds later, he slipped through the doorway and zipped it up.
“It’s roomy,” he said, looking around. “All our things fit. That’s cool.”
“You’re naked.”
He turned his head to me. “I’m aware.”
“Come here. I need some more warming up.”
He rolled on top of me and carded his hand through my hair.
“It’s still damp.”
“It’ll dry before you’re done fucking me.”
His chuckle died down when I deepened our kiss, sucking on his tongue. He rucked up my long-sleeved top and dragged my pajama pants off. Eagerly, I opened my legs for him. The next moment, his cock slid inside me.
“Ernest,” I moaned, tilting my hips up. “The sleeping bags. Ernest, we need something…under us.”
“Uh-huh.”
He reached into his backpack, but the movement made him sink inside me deeper, and I arched under him.
Wiggling, he rooted in the bag until he pulled out a camping towel.
Then he knelt, lifting my hips with one arm so we stayed joined.
He obviously did it so he could shove the towel under my ass, but the position pressed his cockhead into an interesting place inside me, and I cried out.
“Fuck! Right there.”
“Yeah?”
“Hold me like this.”