The tide is in, and we huddle at the literal top of a mountain, waiting for the waters to recede. Frydai and I did manage to get everything to the top, and then we had to move a few things quickly. This tide is higher than the last four, based on what is written in their chronicle. It encroached on the staging area we were using, which should have been ten meters above the water level. It was five meters below it. Frydai's uncle showed me the Marks on a bolder that they have made for each tide. Frydai got to make this tide's mark this time.
The marking of the boulder was a whole ceremony, with new stories about the first time they retreated to the mountain top, running ahead of the approaching waters. It speaks of those lost to the waters, and how they will remember, that none will ever again be lost. There were three marks higher than the one Frydai made, though they say that there should be one more, well above the top of the boulder. High enough that they huddled at the top, waist deep in water. That was part of the story as well, and is why the huts and buildings they have here at the top are on stilts. I am going to need to calculate the highest possible tide.
Every mark on the bolder is accompanied by writing that matches that in the chronicle. It is a date, since the crash. I went under the water to look at the other marks as well, and record the dates so I can get a feeling for the length of time they have been here. I also want to see if there is a pattern to the tides. Given that everything else here has had a regular, if complex pattern, I don't see why the tides wouldn't as well.
We actually have a lot of room here at the top of this mountain. There are several hundred usable square meters that they have set up the village in. There were already buildings up here, left over from the last time they were here, and the time before that. The first thing they did was check over the buildings and start repairing or tearing down and replacing the ones too damaged to fix.
It isn't a plateau, but there are a number of flat areas. The village is set up on a cluster of them, some a bit higher or lower than others, with what might be called a creek running through it. That creek is just the waters of the tide filling a deep crevasse. They have bridges that go over it in order to cross it safely.
There is an additional thousand square meters of usable space to my eyes, depending on how the space is used. Frydai and I helped fix up and repair things. Once the repairs were done, we started to build a home for us to live in. We found a new flat area on the north side of the village. We're clearing and preparing it. It provides some privacy as there are several rock outcroppings and the trees native to the top of the mountain.
Until we finish building our permanent hut, we have the tents I packed, and we almost lost to the approaching water when it overtook our staging area. I was waist deep, dragging the last of the carts to safety.
The extra space is a small forest of sorts. The trees are not tall, maybe two are three times my height, and they don't cut down very easily. They are exceedingly strong and make for excellent building material. It is this that Frydai and I are using to build the foundation of our hut, and what the village in general is built from. My sharper blades and laser cutters make much quicker work of the material, but it is still slower going than you'd think. This stuff is extremely durable. I've taken samples to study. It does explain why the huts they built are in such great shape, even after having been left here for a century or more.
Only one of the existing huts needed to be torn down and rebuilt, and that was because of new growth of the trees impacted it. Each hut seems to be associated with a given family, the current members of that family living in the hut built by their ancestors. I picked the area we are building in specifically because it will provide more room for Frydai to build up a hut of his own as well. While I don't expect to be here when the next tide hits, I am also not fool enough to think that I won't be. I will certainly live long enough to see several tides, if I am still on this world.
I have set up a dozen monitoring stations around the perimeter of the mountain top, now small island, that we find ourselves on, and launched the aquatic drones. Each monitoring station has a passive and active sonar suite. They listen, painting a rough picture, based on the reflections of ambient sounds in the water, then every so often they will fire off a series of pings. The response from that helping confirm the mapping.
I hadn't seen any of the sea monsters, but it had only been a few days since the tide met us here, at what my friends quite aptly call, Sanctuary village. There are however lots of fish, so I am definitely going to do some fishing. My friends are net fishers, when they fish, and that is how I almost lost Frydai. He was casting his net, it caught on something below the surface, a tree branch as it turns out, he pulled too hard, slipped, and fell into the water. Now getting wet isn't the problem. The issue is that he fell into a crevasse and then slipped out towards a cliff and the abyss. None of them know how to swim, and while I was going to start teaching Frydai, we've had other things going and I hadn't gotten to it. Thankfully I was nearby, saw it happen, and was able to retrieve him.
That I can hold my breath for many hours, thanks to my cyber-lung, as well as a cyber-gill, made it a simpler rescue. I can also swim quite well. I was able to retrieve the net, and a few fish. While I was doing that, I saw it, off in the distance. I had a drone give chase and pinged it with the nearby monitoring stations. It was fast, so I only got an estimate of size. Whatever it was, it was larger than the Vietza Furie. If that is as big as things get, I'm still shocked at the size. I'm worried that they get bigger. Was it one of the sea monsters, or just a really big fish. I don't know. Time will tell.
Talking to Frydai and his uncle, they don't swim because as a group, they are afraid of deep water, and for good reason I suppose. Still, I'm going to insist that Frydai learn to swim. It would have allowed him to save himself, but that is for another time. There isn't an appropriate location here at Sanctuary, and swimming really doesn't come naturally to them, so it'll have to wait. I will just have to be more vigilant.
The view really is amazing. We are now on an island that was created by and is surrounded by a tide. A tide that is thousands of meters deep. To think, it took a day for this tide to come in to this level, thousands of meters deep. The depth of this tide is the same as many oceans, and in places, it is as deep as it gets on any world. Like the canyons that surround this mountain. They create places where this tide is actually deeper than the deepest point of the ocean on my birth world.
I am still in contact with the module, and it is still dry. All but the sensors are powered down, the internal bulkhead doors are sealed, and the buoy's are doing their job. The sensors have not picked up much other than water and fish that don't know any better. At least the module so far remains intact. Hull pressure sensors reflect what I expected, and the positive pressure seems to be doing it's job. No leaks, and I hope it stays that way. Still, it's going to be down there for weeks. So I worry, but I try not to do so too much.
I look out on the waters of this tide, calm at the moment after the storm blew past. I wonder if Edix made it to safety. I really hope he did. I would truly feel terrible if he was hurt or died out there.
The drone flying to the other mountains should be there in another day or two. I can see on the zoom what definitely looks like settlements, but I cannot tell yet if they are like my friends, or something new. I suspect it might be both as there are multiple settlements spread across a number of mountain tops, which looks like an island chain. Time will tell.
Speaking of time, it is time to get back to work. There is a home here that I need to build for Frydai and I, and it is much larger and of a different layout to what they do, so I need to help. Once we are done, maybe another day or two, I think I will pull out one of the boats and try fishing. The few fish I pulled in with Frydai's net were very welcome, so given the schools of them I can see on the monitors, I think some boat based fishing might result in a larger haul.