Chapter Twenty-One #4
My anger flared, but I realized that wouldn’t help me right now. I’d spent a long time doing nothing but being pissed off, and that wouldn’t spark this flame, or solve my problem.
Patience. I had to embody some feminine energy right now and keep working at this until I got it right. I moved the stick across the log in a different way, and to my amazement, the scent of smoke touched my nose.
“That’s it, Charlie!” Ava exclaimed. “You’re almost there. Keep going!”
If I was actually rubbing one out, her encouragement would’ve made me come right then and there. My frustration was quickly replaced with a feeling of elation, and I let out a gleeful sound. The smell of smoke grew, and the smallest bit of heat radiated upward.
“You’ve got it, Charlie!” Ava cried. “Quickly, add more kindling.”
I placed dry leaves atop the ember, a little at a time to keep the fire breathing.
Flames ignited, and a huge smile broke across my face as I tossed more fuel on the fire.
It started out small, until I added the tiny dry twigs that served as kindling.
With every bit I added, the fire grew, until I was able to add full logs without fear of them smothering the fire.
I leapt to my feet as heat billowed off the flames. “I did it! I am a master of the elements! Bow down to your fire king!”
“Ah, yes,” Ava said flatly. “All hail the almighty King of Fire. Now make it bigger.”
I eagerly ran off to gather more dry logs and placed them on the fire. Finally, I’d done something right for once. Ava rubbed her hands together to warm up, then gave a contented sigh. “That’s much better.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance, though I could still feel the sun on my face. “What’s the sky looking like?”
“Cloudy. There’s a storm rolling in,” Ava said. “We need to find shelter before it reaches us.”
“I’ll build it,” I offered. I was still riding the high of having successfully built a fire. Shelter seemed like nothing now.
“I want to help,” Ava offered. “You shouldn’t have to do all the work yourself. I’ll find us something to eat while you get to work on the shelter.”
“Sure. I’ll meet you back here.”
We were getting along surprisingly well right now. I worried how long it could last.
Ava wheeled her all-terrain chair down the beach, while I went for the tree line to see what I could find to build a shelter.
If I had control of my magic, I’d command tree roots and branches to form into a small hut, but I didn’t, nor did I have any tools to cut up wood to use at my leisure.
I was going to have to use whatever raw materials I could find.
I walked into the forest, following the shoreline as I explored. I could still feel the rocks and branches around me with the little magic Oberi had provided me, but I worried about my resourcefulness to do anything with it all. I’d do better with a cardboard box.
That thought halted me in my tracks. What was I thinking?
I had years of experience being resourceful in environments that otherwise wanted me dead.
There’d been so many nights I had to form a makeshift shelter out of whatever I found in the dumpster, or make a bed out of a park bench.
This wasn’t the urban environment I was used to, but I’d done more with far less.
I wasn’t able to give Ava a five-star resort, but I was going to make her the best damn shelter with whatever I could find out here.
I hiked the entire shoreline of the tiny island to assess what we had to work with.
As I was circling back to the beach we’d started at, I came upon a fallen tree that had landed upon a tall boulder.
There was a space underneath the trunk that could work to house us, and it was situated at the base of a hill that was nearly steep enough to act as a wall.
All I had to do was wedge some sticks into the dirt and lay them over the log to make a ceiling, and we’d have ourselves a decent lean-to.
I pressed my hands against the log and pushed on it to test its stability, but it didn’t budge. It was perfect.
“Did you find something?” Ava called from the beach.
I stepped away from the log and walked over to her. “Yeah. There’s a good spot to build a shelter up there. What’d you find?”
“There are tons of fruit trees all over the island, and I found a patch of wild strawberries that I gathered. You want one?”
“Sure.” I held out my hand, and Ava placed a berry in my palm. I popped it in my mouth, and sweet juice burst across my tongue.
“Excellent,” Ava said. “I’ll put what I’ve gathered here.”
“You don’t need to do anything else. I’ll handle the rest,” I told her.
I could hear the uncertainty in her voice. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it. Just relax. I… I want to do this for you.”
A long moment passed, before Ava hushed, “Okay.”
I knew it was hard for her to rely completely on my help, but I wanted to show her I could handle this. She didn’t need to keep doing everything all by herself. Not when she had me.
I returned to the forest to find fallen branches to use to build the shelter.
I gathered as many sticks as I could find and got to work laying a roof over the fallen log.
The sticks didn’t fit together as nicely as I wanted them to, so I went searching for long, broad leaves I could use to fill in the gaps.
I managed to find low-hanging olive branches that I broke off the trees, along with a patch of ferns I gathered, and I piled them over the sticks to waterproof the ceiling.
Then I went back to the fern patch and used the fresh bundles to line the floor of the shelter to create a soft bedding for us to lay on, leaving a space dug out in the dirt for a fire pit.
When I was finished, my shelter was made of a dirt back wall, a leafy overhang supported by a tree trunk on one end and a boulder on the other.
The crawlspace was just large enough for us to sit in.
It was deep, like the opening of a cave.
Being half-Nivita, it nearly felt like home to me, being within the earth.
I was proud of what I’d done. I’d never made something like this before, but it was nearly more miraculous than magic.
Ava came over just as the first of the raindrops began to fall. “Help me in?”
“Absolutely.” I lifted Ava from her chair and set her on the ground inside the shelter, curling her legs away from the opening. The opening was tall enough that her chair fit in right under the overhang.
Ava shivered next to me, and I asked, “You cold again?”
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t caving, but I could practically hear her teeth chattering. “You don’t have to be strong for me. Let me help you.”
“Okay, yes, I’m cold,” she admitted. “The rain isn’t making this any warmer.”
I was already getting up. “Wait here. I’ll get the fire inside.”
I ran to the beach and gathered what was left of the tinder and dry sticks I’d left there, then quickly got them under the shelter before the rain could get them too wet.
The storm had picked up, and I could hear the fire I’d built earlier sizzling.
I moved as quickly as I could, using a stick to gather embers onto a flat log.
I sheltered it with my body and nearly tripped over a rock as I ran back to the lean-to.
I ducked inside, praying my embers had survived.
I was soaked, but thankfully, there was still heat coming off the embers I saved.
I quickly relit the fire, until flames were crackling inside our new little home. Outside, the storm turned into a downpour. I was relieved to see that hardly any raindrops made it into our private little corner of the island.
I breathed a sigh of relief. We’d made it out of the rain just in time. Thank the ancestors Ava hadn’t gotten caught out in that rain. She could’ve gotten sick.
There wasn’t a lot of room in here, especially with the fire and Ava’s chair taking up a whole corner. Ava and I were closer— closer than we’d been in months, really.
“How are you doing?” Ava asked apprehensively, like she wasn’t sure where to start. “That looked like a lot of physical labor.”
I wiped the water from my brow, which was a mix of sweat and rain. “The physical labor doesn’t bother me. To be honest, it felt… really good.”
Neither of us said anything for several minutes, but I could feel something shifting between us, almost as if a piece of our bond was knitting itself back together.
Not our magical bond, because there was no hope of ever restoring that, but our emotional connection seemed to hold less caution than before.
We’d set down roots when we decided to try working things out, but being here in her presence was like a seed we’d planted that had finally broken through the soil. We were growing into a tiny sapling witnessing its first beams of sunlight.
“What are you thinking?” Ava asked, breaking the silence.
“I’m thinking how nice this is,” I admitted. “Out here, away from palace duties and war threats, there are no distractions. We finally get to be alone together without all the bullshit holding us back. I’m not sure I ever want to leave this island.”
Ava snorted. “You’d better get me off this island, because I’m not living without indoor plumbing. I’m holding my pee all night, and if I get a kidney infection, it’s your fault.”
I smirked. “I’ll build you a toilet.”
“If you build me an outhouse, I’m swimming back to shore,” Ava threatened playfully. “I hate camping.”
“Come on, it’s not that bad. I could live off the land!”
“You say that because you’re a man.”
“I like being manly,” I told her. “Making fire and building this shelter was great. It feels like when I’m providing for you, I’m fulfilling my purpose.”
I heard the frown in her tone. “I never wanted to be your purpose. You know that.”