We get rain up here every other day or so, which is great for the crops, but we have a really major storm bearing down on us. It should hit us in another day or so. Frydai and I are working extra hard to get our house finished. The structure itself is in place, the roof is up and finished, as well as two of the outer walls. It is the other two walls, a door or three, windows, and the internal walls that we need to get done.
The approaching storm looks like a hurricane, and the Drones I sent up over it seem to confirm that. High winds, rain, etc... The elders and the chronicle say such storms are not uncommon during a tide. I'm working to reinforce Frydai and my house while we can. He's putting up the other walls and piling the boards we need for the internal walls and such against one wall of the main room. If we get stuck inside during the storm, It'll give us something to do.
I also took a few hours as a break from working, to look over the huts of the rest of the village and make recommendations to the owners on how to better secure their roofs and such. It seems crazy with the tide itself that we might actually have to contend with a storm surge as well.
There is a small, secondary peak, of the mountain about a kilometer distant. It looks like it's own island. I put the boat in the water and took some equipment over there, building an observation point at the top. There are also a few structures there, much older, so I took some pictures to ask the elders about them. They explained that they had some old ceremonial purpose, but it wasn't something recorded in the chronicle, so they weren't sure.
In fact, I don't think those structures were built by my friends at all. The building techniques were different. There was stone pillars used, much like I have done for the four corners of Frydai and my house. I used a laser to dig a deep hole into the rock and set some columns of stone I cut from a nearby outcropping there. I then laser-ed some holes and notches in them to allow more secure anchoring of the wood to them. While the stone pillars of the structures are not as advanced, clearly not laser cut, the construction concept is the same. The buildings are not intact, but even if they were, they wouldn't have been large enough to fit more than one of my friends.
Those structures warrant more investigation, not that archaeology was something I trained in heavily, but I want to know more, and I seem to be the only person around that has a chance to even try.
My friends are not interested in digging into the past, in learning things not directly related to day to day affairs. That isn't to say that they are not curious, but they have been focused on survival for so long, they don't think beyond that. I do hope that the education efforts I start when we get back to the main village will help change that. I've discussed it with the elders, and with what they have seen with Frydai, they seem to be on-board with the idea.
After the storm passes, I am going to go back over to the second peak and look around some more. Frydai seems to want to come, so I will need to figure out a flotation device for him for the trip over and back. He still doesn't know how to swim.
With the boat in the water, I have also done some fishing, and been reasonably successful. Sure, I am cheating a bit. Using the underwater drones to chase fish towards the nets, but it has really helped. We're going to build a small fishery of sorts, a pen that we can keep some live fish in. The stream through the village actually provides a great opportunity for that. I have anchored a net to one side, and after the storm, we'll chase some fish into it, and then raise the net already secured on the other side, trapping said fish.
We've been here at the top of the mountain, our island safe haven from the tide, for about two weeks now. Everything back at the module still reads as good, everything is dry and no leaks, but the tide shows no signs of letting up either. I wish I had more time to study the orbital mechanics of this system and the conjunction that creates the tides. I'm trying to run some additional simulations with what I I have and the additional observations I have taken here from the top of the mountain and my new observation post on the second peak.
Ended up powering up a computer back on the module to help with the processing. It's a secondary unit, so if it fails or is damaged, I'm not going to lose a lot. I'm worried about this coming storm, as well as the fact that the tide doesn't seem to be fading at all. I've checked with the chronicle, and while we are not at the point of the longest one recorded, that's still a few weeks out, even that one had signs of the tide receding at this point. We do not have those signs yet. That's why I pulled in the extra processing power of the computer. I rather wish I had packed a more powerful portable unit, but it was a trade off. I had to consider space needs, weight, etc... on this first trip. Now that I know of Sanctuary village, I will be printing out a flyer and transport additional equipment up here to make it a better secondary base of operations, and a better place for observations.
With that note. Lunch is over, and there are some additional anchor work to do so I can help Frydai finish up the outer walls, put in the insulation, and then put up the inner walls.
It's funny though. I caught Frydai being distracted by several of the younger females of his species who were working in a nearby field. I do believe Frydai is growing up. Time will tell. It was down right cute how embarrassed he was. Clearly not even sure why he was distracted by them.