Arn raised a short stick over his shoulders and brought the stone fastened to its head beating down. It took five hits, nearly six, to pulverize the base of the straight mathhar sapling enough for Arn to rip it forth. He tapped the ax against the thin branches, splintering each finger-wide sprout off of the main trunk, until he was left with an arm-thick pole. He tossed it in the pile with the others.
He’d felled trees to make the main portions of his raft, months ago, but these rods were for a different purpose. He paced a few steps uphill to another sapling and deposited his tool at its base. Arn was not as skilled at these tasks as he was at hunting. As skilled as I once was… he thought, and sighed. He found a good handhold on the prickly bark and pulled it down to one side until the sapling remained bent when he let go of it. He used his foot to push it further down, reclaimed his ax, and went to work again.
A voice startled him, and he spun away from his work, readying the wood hatchet for whatever approached. It was Thalla he spotted through the prancing leaves of the half-slain sapling. “I asked what you were doing,” she said, smiling.
Arn relaxed a little, and returned to his hunched position over the saplings sprout from the dirt. He clacked his tool down again, one, two three, and then paused to answer. “Making rollers,” he mumbled. “You?” Four, five hits, and the pulp of the sapling dripped through the errant twigs and moss on the forest floor.
“Looking for you. Thought you’d be at your work shack,” Thalla replied.
“Wasting my time, right?” Arn replied. He tried a few different grips for tearing the sapling free, while a pale white light made it through the grey-green forest canopy. There were only a few places with trees this dense on all of Razaad.
Thalla scoffed, and came over to sit in front of him. She was wearing a long tunic woven from reeds, lined with leather portions at the neck and arm holes for comfort. Her twice-broken nose added a unique look to her face that Arn appreciated; she looked like the warrior and huntress she was. “I never said that.”
With a grunt, Arn tore the last few strands of sapling sinew free and quickly hacked off the branches without saying much. He looked at her as he worked, then led the way back to his pile of poles. “Haven’t seen you in weeks,” he said, as he collected them. There close to twenty there, together as thick as two trees. He heaved a few up over his shoulder.
“Want me to carry some too?” his friend asked.
Arn shrugged. “If you want.”
“What are they for?” she asked, twisting against the muddy ground to reclaim her feet with a few over her shoulder too. “I saw inside your shack. The boat looks good.”
“I have a few more things to do, but these are not for the boat itself,” Arn explained. “Got to get it down the slope without wrecking it.”
“Rollers,” she said, nodding. They left the remainder of the poles where they were—it would take a few trips—and set out down the slope. “Will the fishers not give you any? They don’t exactly use them often.”
Arn scoffed. “Didn’t ask them,” he replied.
She didn’t say anything, and followed him out of the mathhar forest. It was a misty day, as humidity rose off the swamp in droves. They were both sweating, though Arn’s sweat had drenched him far earlier that morning. Soon enough, they were hiking back for a second load.
“I need the strength, too,” Arn explained. “Still recovering.”
“Is there anything else I can help with?” Thalla asked.
Arn paused abruptly, so she did too. They were standing closer than they ever had, but Arn was just looking at his eyes. “You’ve stood by me through everything, even when everyone else calls me a fool.”
“You’ve stood by me,” she said, starting to shrug.
“You mentioned being closer before.” Arn smiled, despite his usual, gruff exterior. “Is that still something you want?”
Thalla’s bright skin started to turn red, just a bit. Not from embarrassment, Arn knew. The huntress pursed her lips for a moment, and then looked past Arn. When she looked back at him, she was more distant than before. “It is, but not yet. Your raft is nearly ready to be salted. If you drown, I don’t want that to be half a week after we shared something so opposite of drowning.”
“I see,” Arn said, stepping back. He looked at her a moment longer, and then nodded. “Let’s continue.”
Before Arn could bend down to grapple with his next armful of poles, she spoke again. “Does it anger you that I doubt you?” She faced him with crossed arms.
Arn shrugged. “I doubt myself,” he said. “The last time anyone crossed the Deep to Scoa, they were never seen or heard of again. Think I want that?”
“No,” Thalla said. She had heard him speak of hunting other lands in the Deep before, so she didn’t ask for more of his speech, and he didn’t offer it. They walked back to his work shack again, in silence.
Arn wiped sweat from his forehead through his tangled black hair, and stopped to catch his breath. A few days earlier, he had hauled a full sized tree back to the shack, dragged it and shoving it through the dirt. From it, he had carved a long pole, to guide his raft across the Deep. This first version of the boat was a trial to see what the problems would be. The size of waves had always been an issue at the mouth of the tribe’s lagoon, so Arn had built his raft larger than the others, but he really had no idea what would await him, trying to disembark here, a mile from their still waters.
“If there’s no hunt on the day you set the raft in the saltwater,” Thalla said, “I’ll be here to help how I can. From the land.”
Arn nodded, but he wouldn’t call on her when the time came. There was nothing she could do to change the outcome of that day. She touched his shoulder as he set to work, sawing the saplings into shorter poles. She perceived her encouraging smile to be reciprocated in the friendly gesture of Arn’s bared teeth. The sun reached its zenith a few hours later, to boil the humidity and smite Arn’s toiled efforts.
A few days more, Arn thought. And I will challenge the Deep.