Day 4: Not a Girl Scout

Day 4:

Spent the whole day polishing diorite and using it to build stronger walls in the cave. My hands are so dry from handling all the stone that I’m soaking them hourly (or what passes for hourly since I don’t have a clock) in the spring in the cave to keep the skin from cracking further. Would do anything for a drop-shipment of hand lotion.

The spring’s going to become a problem soon. Right now I have it contained in a little grass hollow, but if I’m going to protect the cave correctly, I’m going to have to dig underneath the hollow to reinforce it. Not sure how I’m going to do that yet without flooding out the cave. And I’d really really enjoy a day of sleeping on something that wasn’t soaking wet the whole night.

If that were the only thing I saw today, I’d consider it the most successfully calm day that I’d had since arriving (assuming you excuse the panicked activity trying to reinforce the cave with polished stone to keep the monsters from blowing up as “calm”).

But throughout the day I kept hearing a whispered hissing noise, like someone was really really bad at calling their cat and wanted the whole process to be a really loud secret.

Around dinner time, I took a glance out my door (I was smart enough to put a small window in it with my meager glass supplies) and saw a spider.

I know what you’re thinking: whoopee.

I neglected to mention that the spider was the size of a pony. Or maybe a cow. It was roughly the size of the cows I’d seen earlier this week, who by the way are strangely missing.

And it was standing outside my door.

In case you were wondering, it was not here to sell cookies.

I don’t know whether it was frustrated because I hadn’t answered the door all day or what, but as I watched the sun dip below the horizon behind the spider, the beast turned nasty, and charged the door.

I am safe inside my cave. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. I’ve still only carved out about a 10 meter by 10 meter space and roughly half that is lined with solid stone. The rest is still dirt (or worse, glass). I pray that the horrible green explody things don’t come in the night. I pray the spider doesn’t know how to dig. I pray my torches last until morning.

It’s still hissing. I doubt I’ll be sleeping tonight.

the view from my door of the pony spider, which did not bring cookies
the view from my door of the pony spider, which did not bring cookies