When the misty light of morning fell upon the forest, the clearing in front of our shelter was unrecognizable. Barun hadn't just been breaking stones through the night; he had combined his mining instincts with his raw strength to turn our camp into a literal construction site.
The first thing we noticed was that the steaming hot water pool, which had been open to the elements just yesterday, was now a fully enclosed structure. Barun had skillfully stacked the stones, sealing them with Essence's (Green Slime) sticky secretion and roofing it with heavy logs. We now had a real, indoor sauna where the wind couldn't reach and the steam remained trapped! But the most surprising part was the dozens of trees he had felled, sharpening their ends into spear-like points and lining them up side-by-side. This massive pile of timber was stacked both as a defensive line and a winter wood supply.
"Barun... you're a monster," I said in awe.
After thanking him, Eliz and I curiously stepped inside the newly constructed main building. The interior was spacious with a high ceiling, but our eyes locked onto one corner, and we both froze. In the center of the room stood a single, massive, carefully prepared bed, adorned with soft leaves and scraps of leather.
Eliz's eyebrows shot up, her face flushing with a mix of anger and embarrassment, though her voice came out in a strangely comedic tone. "Barun!" she roared toward the outside. "Why did you only make one bed? What is the meaning of this?"
Outside, as he set the final log into place, Barun called back with genuine confusion: "Well, aren't you two married? Why would I make two? It's a waste of material, a waste of labor! You were sleeping in the same shelter anyway, so sleep in the same bed now. Why are you yelling at me so early in the morning, girl?"
Eliz's jaw dropped. She turned to me and whispered, "We... we aren't married!" but Barun was already preparing to snore. "I'm exhausted, I'm going to sleep," Barun said with a yawn. "There's a bit of stew left in the bucket, you two finish it. See ya."
As Barun retreated to his stone hut and passed out within seconds, Eliz and I sat over the massive bucket, finishing the stew in silence. I needed to break the "one bed" tension, so I pointed to the sharpened logs Barun had prepared. "Those are ideal for making a fence. We can enclose an area next to the shelter and keep animals inside. We'll be safer if we raise our own livestock instead of hunting constantly."
Eliz agreed. We spent hours pounding the logs into the earth, creating a sturdy pen. Now, the only thing missing was something to put inside it.
We tracked deep into the forest, toward the quieter parts of the stream bed. Luck was on our side; hidden in the brush, we found a beautiful female deer that had recently given birth, along with two tiny, hopping fawns.
"Let's take them both at the same time—if we grab the fawns, the mother will follow us!" I whispered.
We approached silently. On my signal, I scooped up one fawn and Eliz grabbed the other. The moment we touched them, the little deer let out such a bleat that it shook the trees. The mother deer, losing all her noble and calm demeanor, burst from the bushes snorting like a bull.
"RUN, ELIZ, RUN!" I screamed.
I had one struggling fawn in my arms, Eliz had the other... and behind us was a crazed mother deer with her head lowered and antlers pointed at our backs! We began a sprint toward the shelter that felt like a scene from a comedy film. Eliz was trying to hold onto her fawn while laughing and yelling, "Why did we take both of them?!" As the mother deer was about to poke our backsides with her antlers, we entered a breathless race toward the safety of our new fence.
ESSENCE HAVEN
KINGDOM POPULATION: 3 (+3?)