My progress on building a wall around the settlement has been slow, as I’ve needed to use the repaired equipment Tuzin left behind to roughly plane boards from nearby trees and then fix the planks into place with salvaged nails from disassembled buildings, all while trying to maintain the buildings against natural decay. It’s been exhausting work, but once I have a defensible perimeter I’ll be better able to strike out and search for other survivors from a secure home base.

The whole time I have been here I’ve been surviving on rations left behind by Tusin’s people when they abandoned the settlement, or died. The hardtack is not exactly tasty but it’s kept me alive, but my supplies are starting to run low. I’ve identified a few places where Tuzin’s colonists were growing food, but they are overgrown and wild, and will require a serious investment of energy to get working again–energy that is, at present, going into wall building. So I’ve been trying to supplement my food with fish from the local water bodies. I don’t know if they are invasive tuna introduced by Tuzin or not–I’ve certainly seen enough feral farm animals skulking about to know that they came loaded for bear. If it’s a native species, it is at least convergently evolved and edible.

In the process, though, I managed to attract that cat I had seen earlier. It approached me warily, but soon warmed up when I gave it some of my fish, and it was soon tamely lolling about near the dwelling I’ve been using as my home base. Clearly, a pet that was abandoned along with everything else; but it will make a good companion, for now. I must think of a name for it.

The one troublesome area in building the wall has been water–I want to be able to build a boat and sail out, but I also don’t want to leave a vulnerable opening and I’m not confident in my ability to build a water gate. My solution thus far has been to build up a sandbar and cut off the inlet on which the settlement rests from the wider body of water. The bloated, dead things have continued to bubble up, in ones and twos, as I’ve tried to tackle the problem, and today one was able to seriously wound me. It appeared to be using a weapon–a spear of some kind–but I passed out from pain and blood loss before I could get a good look. I’m not sure why the thing didn’t finish me, but I was apparently able to drag myself back to my home base and awoke in my bed.

Once again, the healing properties of this place are quite remarkable. I’m already able to do chores and continue my work on the wall despite the wounds.

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