word mining central
Day 535:
I got the giant sinkhole cave in the river area closed off so there’s no more sea cave to see there.
There was a zombie to see, and I almost didn’t, and that’s how he set my shirt on fire.
So I’ll be making a new ducken skin tunic this evening, while soaking sore muscles in a hot bath. It’s not exactly glamorous, but nobody let me sew in the tub at The Company, so that’s a thing.
I have been in an absolute funk today. Sometimes the brain weasels come and they don’t stop chewing, you know?
Rebecca Roanhorse’s latest book, Storm of Locusts, has been helping me out of the funk. The protagonist is Maggie Hoskins, a monsterslayer with Clan powers who lives in a post-apocalyptic United States in Dinétah, the Navajo nation that survived the Big Water. Having recently “killed” two gods, she has enough trouble to deal with in her life… but then she ends up unwitting caretaker of a teenager with Clan powers, half-friends half-enemies with a once ally, and crossing the Wall into the remains of Arizona to find the man she fell in love with in Trail of Lightning.
No matter how much I hate doing laundry and no matter how stressed I am about my job, nobody’s asking me to figure out how a lightning god’s sword works, or attacking me with locusts.
Oh, yeah, by the way? Total fuckton of locusts in this book. Me? I have no problem with creepy crawlies in books because my brain just kind of slides over them like “oh yeah horrible thing happens here, we’re not going to dwell on that…” but if(when) they make this series into a movie this is going to be nightmare city for some people.
Including me. Because my brain can’t slide past creepy crawlies in movies.
Anyway, just like in the first book of the series, this one is chock full of Navajo gods, Navajo culture, kick-ass women kicking ass with swords, guns, knives, etc., one seriously fucking creepy bad guy, and magic.
Plus bugs. We are not screwing around about the bugs here, people.
Definite must read, looking forward to the next one, hoping it’s slightly more bug-free.
Day 534:
While cleaning out a sand deposit, I discovered (or maybe the right word is “created” another sea cave. (It was just a cave until I caved in its roof.)
So now I have to come up with a sea cave strategy and quick, or I risk getting sucked into a very deep sea cave every time I come to this particular area.
Admittedly, that’s not very often, but I don’t want to waste good fish to it either, especially since I don’t know of an outside entrance.
Plus, I like my bones in their current configuration.
Day 533:
Before trying to figure out my cave problem I decided I’d tackle my running-out-of-glass problem by digging all day in a river.
It was wet, smelled like fish, and some of the local squid got all up in my face.
(Turns out squid do not like a poke in the snout with a shovel any more than anyone else does… but these squid were nice enough to swim away, while a similar size squid on Old Earth probably would have taken the shovel and hit me with it.)
Anyway I stink of gross but I have a lot of sand to melt down into glass, so the cave is nice and warm and stinks of hot gross.
Day 532:
Just a ways down from me, to the west, with the sheep, there’s a giant hole in the ground where the sea is seeping in.
It has some very valuable ore in it.
And the sea.
The sea is the inconvenient part of course.
And I’m torn between risking ruining whatever ecosystem is in there and walling off the cave, harvesting all the mussels or whatever, and having myself a right good feast with bonus ore.
Either way, it will happen tomorrow, because today was sand gathering so I can make some more glass.