Day 678: Deep holes in the water

Day 678:

I do really wish I had a physicist with me.

Today, while mining aforementioned river for sand–

I should name the river. I’d name it “Sand River” but by the time I’m done with it, there won’t be any sand. I’d name it Zombie River but who wants to be reminded of that? I’d name it after me but that just feels creepy when you live next to things you’re named after. For now it’s the East-West River as it’s the only thing running that direction.

–while mining the East-West River, I discovered a massive hole at the bottom. I mean a chasm. I mean from the surface of the river I can see a giant waterfall going down a significant distance. The kind of thing you definitely don’t want to get sucked into.  The kind of thing that would make the Company Surveyor call the mission off for the day while he rewrote all the plans and tried to come up with new and ingenious ways to not get us all killed.

Me, I tied a rope to a tree and then around my waist and hoped it was enough to keep me from getting sucked in.

One nice part about giant chasms surrounded by sand is that you know the sand is being supported by something solid, because otherwise it would’ve been sucked into the chasm. That’s true of giant chasms on land or water, by the way.

But the part that’s breaking my already-damaged brain is how the whole frogging river isn’t getting sucked in. That hole’s big enough to take a shuttle into. The river’s barely wider than it is. How is any water getting across?

Like said, need physicist. And possibly stronger rope.

Day 677: found the zombies!

17Day 677:

I got bored early this morning and started mining again, even though I knew that the zombies were still around and it was still too dark to go aboveground.

I found that under the granite was a vein of diorite, and under that was a vein of andesite, and under that was a vein of coal…

… and under that was a large cavern filled with zombies.

Fortunately (?) an exploding giraffe-zombie took most of them out in attempt to kill me. The rest I dumped a large load of granite onto, and hopefully they’re buried forever.

(Doubtful. It was a very big chamber. And they are, theoretically, already dead. So they have time to dig out.)

Anyway not long after that I prioritized getting back to the surface because I was out of food, most of my tools had broken mining or killing zombies, and I was really tired.

Back home for a long nap and a good dinner, and now I’m going back to bed.

Day 676: Under the river

Day 676:

I’m currently writing this from under a river.

I was mining the river for sand when I came across a vein of granite. So of course if you’ve been paying any attention you know I’m going after that granite vein.

One of the things I’m decent at is setting  up a makeshift roof under a body of water — usually the sea, in my case, but a river will do. (Rivers and seas have their own challenges , as do any mining operations involving water.)

Anyway, I created a little cavern under the riverbed and above the vein of ore… and started mining it… and lost track of time…

So here I am under the river and my makeshift watch says it’s well past dark, so leaving isn’t really an option. I have food, and some fresh water (and a river above me I can carefully get some from if I need it) and a few torches and my notebook, but this wasn’t exactly the way I was planning to spend the night.

As an added bonus, I can hear zombies. I don’t know why I can hear zombies, but I can hear them. Which means no sleep tonight.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon)

This book, y’all. This book.

The setting is somewhere between Saladin Ahmed’s Dhamsawaat (but much wetter) and Terry Pratchett’s Ank Morpork (but slightly less Ank Morpork) and any one of the adults could easily have been Commander Vimes or Doctor Adoulla…. but they were not.

For the matter, they were exactly the kind of fallible adults that anyone fourteen and up is embarrassed to find out adults are.

But A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking  isn’t about the adults, not directly. This book is about a fourteen year old girl named Mona who is good with baking.

REALLY good with baking.

I mean I’ve done my fair share of baking (around Mona’s age) and I never saved a single cookie by asking it not to burn. I never had a gingerbread man get up and dance off the cookie sheet (which was probably good), nor did I have a pet sourdough starter.

Maybe I should say a sourdough starter familiar because Bob’s a bit more than your average Covid-19 “the stores are out of yeast” bakery pet.

It would be difficult to say that Mona would’ve had a boring life, she was already an orphan when the book opened, and all the folks living in the area already knew she was one of the many minor wizards in the city. Still, one presumes that her life would’ve been a big quieter if Mona hadn’t found a dead girl named Tibbie on the floor of the bakery one morning, then been charged with the crime, then been found innocent, then been threatened by a high official then discovered the real murderer was trying to kill her.

Frequently in this book, Mona loses her lunch and I think it’s a very reasonable reaction to what’s going around her. Like many T Kingfisher protagonists, Mona is pragmatic, but in this case she’s only as pragmatic as a fourteen year old can manage, and let’s face it, that’s not very far.

But Mona’s got a sourdough familiar, a gingerbread cookie familiar, dough tricks up her sleeves she doesn’t even know she has, and allies in a ten-year-old thief, a crazy dead-horse witch, a Duchess, and an Aunt I want to grow up to be some day.

And if you’re going to save a whole city, it turns out those are good allies to have.

Day 675: weeds weeds weeds

Day 675:

I’m marking off large areas and cleaning them up so I know what I’m up against. Found a cave, cleaned it out of what little ore it had, then filled it up with fill so I wouldn’t need to deal with it. Found a steep cliff, cut it down to a more climbable surface (you never know when you need to run around here) and used it as part of the fill. You know, general stuff.

I’m starting to collect the sand now, and get it somewhere that I can haul it back to my forges to smelt.

I have a terrible headache and I don’t know why. I come home tired every day, which is good, but my eyes are aching. I wonder if I need to invent sunglasses somehow. Maybe with the glass.