Athos
The time we spent building our new house passed blissfully. It took a lot of effort, but it was the happiest time of my life.
We started by just building one large room. That ensured a necessary shelter. Later, I could add on to make it bigger and better, but I wanted to put a roof over Claire’s head as soon as possible.
We had plenty of wood available. With a hatchet, I cut out logs. Then I notched and hewed the ends, placing them together securely in an overlapping fashion. I picked the wood carefully, knowing that I had to avoid logs that seemed likely to warp. Since we didn’t have time to dry the wood thoroughly before building, I was rather selective about what made the cut.
That was, perhaps, the longest part of the process. It would’ve been faster if I had thrown everything together indiscriminately, but I wanted to do the job right. This was our home, after all, and I wanted the best for Claire.
While the home was under construction, we slept out under the stars. It was still warm enough that Claire’s sleeping bag and my blanket were adequate. Some nights, after a hard day’s work, the slight chill in the air felt refreshing.
I would read aloud to Claire from the books that she’d brought, until we both tired for bed. Sometimes, she would sing to entertain us, or we took turns telling each other stories from our lives.
When the sky was clear, we would gaze up at the stars. From our isolated position on the mountain, there were no nearby lights to obstruct our view. As long as the cloud cover was sparse, the stars were bright and visible.
We shared the stories that we had grown up with. She taught me about the zodiac, even though she couldn’t remember all the signs. She showed me how the Big Dipper pointed to the North Star.
The night sky looked very different than on Yakeron, but I had been on Earth long enough to recognize some of the key features. I showed her Arturion the Archer and told her the story of Odzius the Relentless.
Claire went into town for anything that we needed. I would give her a ride as far as we dared, stopping just before the tree coverage began to open. Neither of us wanted to risk exposure. Then, she would walk the rest of the way into the nearby mountain town.
It was a tiny place, but it had the bare necessities. We could get anything we needed there. And this time, I didn’t have to scrounge around, sneaking about and stealing things that I hoped wouldn’t be missed. Claire had money, and the ability to simply buy things.
It was fortunate that her old job had paid as well as it did. Working as an alien monster hunter, she had been rewarded handsomely. Of course, the job had had many challenges that came with it, explaining the paycheck.
Because she didn’t have a family to share it with, she had managed to save much of her income. She had thought that it would come in handy if she ever was injured and had to retire early. In a way, she had retired early – but not at all the way she’d once worried about.
Having spending money and the ability to go in and out of stores made setting up our homestead much easier than it had been the first time I’d done it all by myself. Of course, having Claire to help was another bonus.
It gave me a strange sense of pride, knowing that the home we were building was inarguably ours. My last hut had been cobbled together the best that I could, but it had required the “borrowing” of certain items. This time, I knew I was building this cabin with my own two hands and didn’t owe anyone anything.
While I built the house, Claire spent her spare time preparing the garden. I cut down some extra timber to fashion a raised bed. We made it several feet high, trying to deter wild animals as best as we could. Then we filled it with soft, loamy soil from around the spring, and lots of fallen leaves for compost. Claire spent weeks turning the soil and working it until the dirt was rich, black, and fertile.
In the meantime, I hunted to provide us with food. There were also plenty of edible plants that we could scavenge in the wild. Elderberries grew near the spring, and daffodil greens were plentiful. We made simple stews with wild sorrel, garlic, and onions, added to whatever meat I could find. In the fall, wild persimmons came out, and we both delighted in their silky, slippery texture and sweet, honey-like taste.
Over time, Claire became a true naturalist. She learned to make medicine from the wild willow, and weaved baskets from honeysuckle. She even taught herself how to take cuttings from desirable edible plants elsewhere on the mountain, so that we could move them closer to our home.
Once the main room of the hut was finished, I intended on moving on to some additional rooms. Now we could sleep inside, while I built the rest of the house. But that was delayed when she came home from town one day with a small box that held a flock of baby chicks.
They were adorable little fuzzy lumps. I tried to be stern, but it was hard to be upset when I gazed at such tiny little creatures. I couldn’t resist them anymore than she could, but it meant that my next task was building a coop for them.
In the end, her judgment was right, as it often was. In a few months, the bounty they provided made them a worthwhile investment. Waking up each morning to fresh eggs was a delightful convenience.
They could take most of their nutrition the same way that we did, wandering the valley and foraging for food. We supplemented as necessary, but they preferred picking bugs from the earth.
This also helped keep our garden healthy and free from invaders. I found that I lost fewer vegetables to bugs and worms than in the past. It was a fair enough trade, even though I eventually had to build the raised walls higher to deter the chickens from stealing our food. And their scratching and pecking helped to turn over new soil, making it easier for us to expand our ever-increasing garden.
We dug a root cellar into the sloping hillside, which helped keep everything cooler and less likely to spoil. This was a nice touch, which would maximize how long I could keep vegetables over the coming winter. I was excited to see how much better we could eat, even when the snow started. I had always missed having an abundance of greens in the off-season.
It took a long time for our home to be finally complete. All those little projects added up. Each one seemed necessary, increasing our comfort and making life a bit easier. But the days stretched on, as we jumped from one thing to another.
But then one day, it was finished. It looked exactly like what we’d dreamed of, fantasized about, and talked about late into the night under the starry sky. In fact, maybe it was even better.
There were two large bedrooms, a library, and a “great room” that was the kitchen, dining room and living room in one. Everything was designed with multiple heights in mind, so that Claire could move around the house as easily as I could.
And as we stared at our finished product in shocked wonder, it suddenly felt like it hadn’t been a long time at all. How had we done it so quickly? Where had the time gone? Didn’t we just arrive here the other day?
We looked at each other silently, as though we didn’t want to jinx it. Was I going to wake up tomorrow and realize this had been a dream? That we had only laid our first log yesterday, the way that it seemed in my head?