I spent the evening turning my fragments of metal into tools. I placed one thin, sharp shard at the tip of my stick, turning it into something which I could defend myself.
My spear, although crooked, was deemed acceptable after I did some practice thrusts in the air. Maybe I could use it to go hunting later.
But the big lizard should do for at least another day, unless it started to rot in the humid heat. Now that would be shitty.
I came to remember that smoked meat has a longer time in which it is edible, so maybe I should try to make my own smoking hut? Well, didn’t matter much now. It was getting dark outside, and I wouldn’t be going out there without being able to see what fiendish creatures lurk in the shadows.
Instead I continued to construct another tool.
I took a longer, duller shard with some width and attached a piece of wood as a handle, around which I wrapped strips of the hide of the lizard.
Sure, it wasn’t going to smell pleasantly, but I didn’t have much else to work with.
I didn’t know how to tan hides or any of that stuff.
I’d have to experiment with that later.
Right now I was just happy I had such a fascination with the medieval age growing up. It gave me an idea of what I needed to make these basic tools.
I spent the last few hours sharpening the makeshift machete towards a rock.
Crusoe seemed to dislike the sound, and made his way outside the cave, where he sat himself down. Once the machete had gained an edge, I put it down and prepared for sleep.
I could already tell that my overalls were getting rather foul smelling from my perspiration.
Well, not like I had any other clothes to work with right now.
Crusoe rejoined me in the cave, and I went to sleep.
I was very worried about some alien predator, or even a native of the planet sneaking into my cave at night, so I spent the next few days chopping down a small piece of the jungle in front of my cave. I then used the wood I acquired in this fashion to form a barrier in front of the cave opening. I also took to erecting the skull of the slain lizard outside of it to deter any attackers.
The lizard had seemed ferocious, so it seemed like a logical thing to do, especially at the time. A paranoid mind works in mysterious ways.
When I initially blocked off the entrance, I noticed that the smoke of my campfire (which had been turned into a most respectable gathering of rocks, upon which I was now also capable of frying food, and not only grilling it) was gathering up and filling my new home.
I couldn’t have that, so I opened up a hatch in my blockade to allow the smoke to escape.
I tied the whole thing together tightly with some of the local vegetation which was much like vines which Tarzan used to swing from in those old movies.
Now they were my rope. I made a gap which I could block off with a sizable rock from within, and that became mine and Crusoe’s passage to the outside.
I must admit, without Crusoe I would probably have starved back then. I wasn’t exactly in the best of shape, and I had yet to figure out how to work a proper trap.
But to Crusoe chasing down the smaller wildlife of the planet was child’s, or rather in his case, pup’s play.
We lived off small, odd-looking mammals, lizards and other similar things. And then I learned how to make a snare.
And we feasted.
Apparently most local creatures had never encountered such tools before, and our hunts became truly bountiful. The large creatures that had previously run too fast for me to keep up were easily caught, and I found out that they tasted oddly like chicken.
Sadly, I never found any good seasoning.
And we were both getting faster, tougher, and more endurable.
When we first arrived on the planet, we had been penned up in restricted spaces of very long. But we were getting into shape, and that fast.
I was rapidly growing adept at throwing my spear as an alternative means of the hunt, a week later we were endurable enough to outlast our prey.
They were fast enough to get away from me, but they couldn’t keep themselves away.
In the end, we caught up.
And when we did, we got what we came for.
By now I had constructed a smoker out of large, flat rocks, and I was starting to figure my way around curing leather.
Soon, as my overalls started to rip and tear, I was repairing it with patches of leather.
And as time went by, my facial hair started growing more and more, and soon I started to look like a savage myself.
Well, at least I assume that I did, but since there’s a significant lack of mirrors, I had only seen my reflection in the waters I had collected in the large, waxy leaves.
And that supply of water had run out days ago. It took me a day of intense thirst to brave the flowing water of the nearby brook, but Crusoe had no such reservation. I had no real choice but to follow his example.
I found the brook’s water remarkably clean, and even on following days I felt no effects of any parasites or anything else, so I soon took to filling my now-leather water skins in the river.
For almost a month, nothing really happened, and I had soon created a shaded hammock on top of the hill, next to the beacon.
I took to spending most of my day there, whenever I didn’t hunt, build or sleep, I lay there.
Maybe it was the vain hope that I’d spot a spaceship dropping out of orbit to bring me home, or maybe it was just because the view was bloody amazing up there.
Crusoe took to napping in the pleasant shade beneath me, and I just let my hand drop down and rest on his head.
You know, if I only had a cold margarita, this place wouldn’t be bad at all.
I must have dozed off, because when I awoke the sun was already descending across the sky. I don’t really know why I decided to take a walk, but I did.
I strolled through my hunting grounds, spear in hand and Crusoe by my side.
It was then that Crusoe ran off into the vegetation.
“God damn it boy, what is it now?”
I followed him, keeping a high pace.
“Crusoe! Heel!”
We had already gathered enough food for a few days to come, so I was damn hopeful he wasn’t chasing some prey right now. We had no space in the cave for more meat.
As I exited into a natural clearing I saw what Crusoe had been chasing.
Humanoids, more than not resembling Humans, were in the clearing.
Mother.
Effing.
Natives.
Though from the shocked, even terrified look in their eyes they looked no less horrified about this meeting than I was.
They were gray-blue in color (much akin to the blue clay found on Earth), and their clothes were fairly crude and made out of leather.
They were gathered around one of the fleet-footed prey-animals that I too had hunted in the region.
They also had baskets filled with different fruits that I hadn’t trusted enough to try yet.
At the sight of me they fled, but I believe the tallest among them was quite a bit shorter than I, even though I was fairly short for a bloke.
Crusoe pursued for a bit, but I yelled for him to return.
After a while, he did as I wanted.
We made haste back for the cave, and I shut the door tightly that night.
For the next two days, we didn’t leave the cave beyond performing our needs, and I believe Crusoe picked up on my unease, and his normally sunny disposition grew cloudy.
On the third day, we ran out of water.
We had to brave the outdoors once more.