"How many is that now 3 or 4?" I had failed spectacularly at constructing a raft (I'd downgraded from boat to just raft at this point, something with wood and floating was apparently beyond me). Xanthi was surprisingly understanding at my failure to make a boat float, a lot more than I would be were I in her position (I can admit this because it makes me a bigger person...)
"I swear to gods idiots can create boats, I'm not an idiot." It had been several days of being on the docks, the spiders had not attacked, to the extent I almost forgot this was an island full of giant spiders.
"Well give it a rest, I'll swim down and get the wood and you can try again." Xanthi was very much a trooper, my shoulder was healing, but not enough to be able to reliably retrieve my failures. In a way I think because it became a routine she just got used to it. I'd have felt bad about it, but that would require me to be more self aware than I ever am. I believed all these failures were helping me build boats, but I swear that each one seemed to last less time and I wasn't learning anything other than I would probably die on the island. I did know that I probably needed something to secure the wood and bind it, but we didn't seem to have any of whatever I needed there. And something for a sail, but you know getting the raft to float would be a big damned step up. Xanthi had just finished retrieving my latest failure when I just had to ask her a question.
"So you can make a variety of weapons from basically nothing, but you don't know how to build a boat?" It seemed funny, she could create tools of destruction but nothing that could save her from dying on the island.
"My father was the smith of the village, if you think I'm good you should have seen him, I was just coming of age when the rich men created these creatures and loosed them on us, he never did get around teaching me how to build things that don't kill." I was sorry I asked, but at the same time I swore if I got her off the island I'd have to put her to work making weapons for people, because man that is a skill you can make a lot of money off of! What? I'm a merchant at heart, somewhere deep within myself that in a part that I forget I have.
"All the same I wish he was a boatsmaker and you killed things with well crafted canoes." She laughed and it was nice to hear in this horrible place worried about getting eaten by frenzied spiders. Thankfully we would get free of the island, shit tastically it would come only after we were attacked one final time. Because that is my life and that is how things go.
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