Unexpected surprise...

I couldn't expect to guess it correctly...I even now hope I was wrong in my guess...

Blankly staring at the Floating steps we made after all that effort only to find nothing but Saltwater below...

Now I was 50% sure if not even more sure that we were above the sea...

After staring at the floating steps for some time, I couldn't help but lower my head dejectedly...

I was now sighing, when my sight landed on the Water bottle that was left with the saltwater we brought from below...

It looked mixed up with a lot of dirt and other things mixed in it...

After seeing it I had the urge to pick it up and throw it as far as I could so that I could at least reduce my feelings for the sad and depressing findings earlier...

As I picked up the bottle, squeezing it a bit hard made the bottle break even before I could throw it...

Never would I expect that to happen...

All the contents of the bottle fell along with the broken pieces...

I stared at it blankly not sure what to do, or how to react...

As I continued to stare, I saw there was not much or not even trace of water in the bottle...

All I saw was dirt, small stones, and some green weed-like stuff...

It looked more like an irregular green patch...

I backed away as it looked weird...

After some time, seeing it not moving I went forward and stamped with a bit of strength...

And then Water started to come out of it...

I was shocked and then thought that it was some sponge-like weed that grows in the water...

The water came out was looking pure and cleaner than the one before...

I finally picked it up to find no more movement from it...

It was truly a sponge-like weed...

Soft to touch and a bit slippery...

It slipped out of my fingers and fell...

My throat was feeling dry after all that work and failed attempt...

I had a bit of dust on my lips and tried to wipe it off with my hand...

When my fingers rubbed against my lips leaving a bit of moisture from earlier sponge...

And thus I found out that water was pure and drinkable...

The water was salty and dirty previously, now was drinkable..,

I understood that all this is because of the sponge...

I went forward and picked up another sponge, squeezed out a bit of water from it, and tasted to confirm my findings...

Yes, it was clear.

Now we had a way to purify saltwater.

I share my findings with others around and we started to find more containers to get water from below and purify it with the sponges.

Maybe we can find more such sponges...

When one problem is solved but the other comes up...

Thus our water problem was solved.

We now were absolutely happy to be able to fill our empty stomachs with water...

We could live somehow without food for some time but not without water...

Now common sense is that since we are above a water body and we can find these sponges, we might be able to find something like fishes...

We were hoping we could find fishes in this water body...

we gathered thin ropes or wires and more a net... thought it was small we had no one good at using something like a fishing pole...Neither we had a Fishing pole nor a bait to put on the hook...

Finally, the crude and rough net was made and taken down...

And we found things which were mostly debris and small stones...

Some more cleaner sponges...

Some pieces of metal remain...

And finally some fish...

Yes, after a few tries we found fishes and some shrimps, etc.

Finally, our food problem is going to be cleared.

But we had to face the reality.

We had very little means to cook fish properly.

Wood was scarce as most of the trees and plants fell off the mountain along with the landslides, floods, and earthquakes...

No one thought of bringing gas or other fuel here.

Unexpected discovery...

We discovered that the 'cleaner sponges' can't stay out of water for a long time...

Normally when in a large water body they would be like a piece of weed, without much water inside it...

They are like a plant that can survive on water(mostly near the water surface) and absorb small amounts of light and Carbon dioxide from the air as well as the water it absorbs into its body...

And the water they release has oxygen and no other impurities were found in the squeezed out water from its body...

When placed in a large water body, they will absorb small amounts of water which is required for their survival...

But when placed in a small water body. they will absorb as much amount of water they can store in their body...

This is because they have a very basic instinct that, when the water quantity around them is scarce, their instinct makes them fill themselves with water so that it might survive in any unexpected situation...

This is the Survival instinct of the 'cleaner Sponges'.

We also found that when the sponges purify water the left-out residue consists of dirt, very small stones, and SALT!!!

Yes, as long as we could separate the dirt and small stones before placing the sponges in them, we will get both purified and oxidized water and salt...

Salt is very important for any living being, as it is a part of the basic survival requirement for any living being.

Now separation of dirt and small stones was a bit easy...

We only had to use a clean cloth to filter the water before using the sponges...

Though the fuel problem remained, we now had food, water, and salt.

These sponges have been very useful and so we couldn't just let them die for the lack of water...

But between the discovery of their purification ability and their survival habits, some of the sponges have dried out and are no longer able to absorb water after their death...

We separated these dried sponges from the rest and placed them aside on a boulder...

As we were hungry and we have caught enough fishes, we started the fire after making a circle of stones and mud, we placed the dry wood and started to cook or more like fry them on the fire...

The fishes were already cleaned and were hollow so we found few iron wires and pass these wires through the fishes...

Someone even brought few 'Y' shaped iron pieces to place these iron wires on the bonfire...

Thus our first proper in our camp was made...

Salt was used during the process but only a little bit to avoid any trouble that might be caused by any impurities in the salt.

We still had the fuel problem that was yet to be solved...

Instead of wood, we could use other fuel like petrol, diesel, kerosene, etc. but that would make the food not good to eat, as the food would have a taste of the fuel used so we couldn't use any other fuel except for wood...

We found out some seeds of leftovers like Tomato seeds inside the tomato used during the bonfire.

There other seeds like Lemon, apple, etc.

Most of the top layer soil of the mountain was made infertile during flash floods, acid rains, landslides during earthquakes, etc...

We had to set the soil to a better condition before thinking of planting anything.

The landslides during the last few earthquakes took away most of the topsoil that was spoiled due to acid rains.

A little bit of effort was needed to get the soil to the right shape...

We reconstructed the Floating steps by replacing all the single person holding boulders with the ones that hold at least two or more...

This ensured that people could go down and come up without facing any problems of being repelled due to lack of enough gravity.

Lack of gravity or the changes in gravity still puzzles us...

I made a few assumptions like...

The mountain got detached from the bottomland during the earthquakes...

There was a change in gravity during the apocalypse...

This lead to it Float independently like a satellite in the space around the earth...

But we could move around on the mountain like we did Post Apocalypse(PA).

Though it felt lighter which means that the gravity on the mountain is lower than before but it seems to not much different than earlier or Post Apocalypse(PA).

So all this means that the Floating mountain itself had gravity, like an independent mass of land floating at a height above the saltwater, which might be the seawater...

Due to the limited visibility, it is unknown to us whether this saltwater is connected to the Sea or not and the distance the present Floating steps could reach is limited...