3 - Base Camp

"We're not on earth. At least not the one you grew up on. That reality was destroyed by the greed of a man combined with the powers of a demigoddess." I explained.

"Demigoddess? Like the Greek heroes?"

"No. They're more comparable to the Greek gods themselves. I met two... Justys, Demigod of Order, and Infinia, Demigoddess of Chaos. In our world, Infinia had tempted an unsuccessful business man with the ability to reshape reality as he saw fit. In the man's blind greed, he shaped the very laws of reality themselves. Until he bent one unbreakable rule: 'actions have concequences'.

I had been chosen by the brother demigod Justys to warn and stop the business man, but he would not listen. And before I could take the Andernite, or power of Chaos, from him by force, he wished the impossible.

Our reality was broken into two pieces, and only the souls of men were preserved in a form of stasis. Two people carried the fragments of our reality: the greedy man, and myself.

I walked between realities timelessly, visiting the occasional whole reality for sanity or under Justys's request. Finally I found this reality, an uninhabited world to restore our lives to."

Quiet contemplation permeated our circle, except for the occasional pop from the once-again dying fire. Silence gave me a cup. I nodded my thanks and took a sip.

"So my farm's gone?" Thomas asked.

"Yeah."

"My husband?" Juliana asked.

"It's impossible to say whether he is on this world, or in the other Shard."

She looked as though I told her that he was dead.

Katie broke her contemplation, "Well, as the saying goes, if we don't care for today, we won't have tomorrow. Let's try to get back to the pillar before nightfall."

We each rose to our feet.

"So," I asked, looking at the monster corpse, "how are we going to carry this?"

What took twenty minutes to walk took us about two hours to drag back. We decided to use the skin we had peeled from the part we ate to smother the fire, which worked well. It took all five of us to bring the main body back, so we left the tail piece behind.

With a shell the size of a viking shield and pincers the size of fat old laptops, it wasn't light either. At the very least, we were going to get some solid tools from that shell and those pincers.

When we got back, I surrendered the sword to Thomas, who claimed to have some experience with cleaning and pelting animals.

"I ain't never skinned a snake before," he admitted before starting.

The rest of us gathered wood, creating a reserve.

After an hour of work, Thomas sat back on his heels. His hands and forearms were dyed red. The snake had been disassembled, resulting in the pincers split into two pieces, the two shells the size of my torso, on which the skinned meat sat. The scaly skin, probably about 12 feet long, lay flat with a thin layer of meat on it.

"Hey, Silence," he called out, "where's the nearest water? I want to soak this snakeskin."

She thought for a moment, then pointed south-southwest. About the direction we had gone to get the snake.

Thomas groaned. "There has to be something closer."

Silence shrugged.

"You've marked the way, right?" I asked

She nodded.

I looked for the sun. The trees blocked my clear view of it, so I climbed, or rather walked, up the pillar. The sun was about halfway between the noonday height and the horizon.

"I'd guess we have two and a half more hours of good light. What kind of water source is it? A spring? Lake?"

She shook her head at both options.

"A river?"

Silence nodded.

"We could take the skin down to the river, weigh it down with rocks so it doesn't flow downstream, and maybe bring some water back to camp with one of those pink plants."

"That could work," Juliana said, entering the clearing with another bundle of wood, "but who would watch over this stuff? The meat might attract more beasts, but that skin would have the same smell. Silence can't be in both places at once."

"We probably also want to wash the shell and claws." Thomas added.

"Something else to think about," Katie said, coming in right behind Juliana, "is where we are going to sleep. We haven't made beds yet."

Silence nodded in agreement.

"My thought with calling this pillar our base," I explained, "was that it was a landmark and provided a good base for shelter. It wouldn't be hard to lean leather or trees against this pillar to make a tent of sorts."

"That could be a good reason to stay here. Water will be mighty important, though. Committing an hour or two for water every day will definitely slow down our ability to settle."

"Maybe we reroute the river? We could use one of the claws as a shovel to make a route that passes by us, or a reservoir."

Thomas laughed, "Who would'a thought? Turnin' a river from its course. Who thinks of that?"

"Marcus, apparently. But I wouldn't call him crazy for it. We made reservoirs in our last world, why not again now?" Juliana said.

"That doesn't solve our bedding situation." Katie reminded us.

Silence re-entered the clearing, carrying a bundle of leaves. When had she left?

"I think Silence figured something out." I noted, dropping from the pillar to get a closer look.

Two torso-sized leaves were stuffed to overflowing with normal-sized leaves.

"How?" Juliana asked, dumbfounded.

Silence just shrugged.

"Is there more,or will we have to look somewhere else?" I asked.

Silence pointed back the way she came, then at me and Katie.

"Before all y'all go, can y'all have Silence start us a fire? I'd like to start cookin' supper."

"Right. It is about that time." I handed Silence my sword, hilt first.

She took it, and with Thomas's help for setup, started the fire. I would never be able to express enough glad I was that Xin didn't hear the sound of his sword smashing into claw for sparks. He probably would have strangled me.