Chapter 32: Wolf-Fur Drawstring Bag
“The trees are so pretty now!” Necia exclaimed. Tulland sent a very stern do-not-explode command to the flowers as the female warrior walked up and gently brushed the petals of one of the blooms with her fingertips. “How did you do this?”
“Those flowers grow on those kinds of trees. They’re useful for some of the things I want to do.”
“And that’s the surprise? Because I’ll absolutely take one of these with me.”
“No, that’s probably a bad idea. They don’t… play nice when I’m not there.” Tulland reached into one of his briar bag and pulled out a small, soft object. “I made this. I thought you might find some use for it.”
After returning to the camp, Tulland had put as many of the little parasite flowers as he could on the farmed Swamp Ache, then spent quite a few minutes figuring out how to carefully carve away the fur from the Wolfwood trees without hurting either the tree or destroying the material. After he made his first cut, he found out it was much easier than he thought. The fur had been sitting on top of the bark on some kind of thick, pliable membrane that peeled away in one big, mostly intact sheet.
After that, Tulland had cut some undeveloped briars, stripped them of their needles, and laid the fur carefully over them. With a couple of cleverly tied knots, he found himself with a bag not unlike the coin-purses he had seen back on Ouros, if quite a bit larger. It was made of one long continuous piece of the fur, brought to the top and carefully trimmed to even have a flap that closed by means of one of the trimmed, curved briar thorns poked through a carefully bored hole in the fur.
And best yet, the membrane for the fur seemed to solidify as it dried out in the open air, ending up as something close to thin, flexible leather.
“This is incredible. You made this?” Necia asked.
“I did. I already tested it with some of the water from the hole you showed me how to dig near the swamp. It seems to hold liquids just fine, so long as you don’t get too violent with it. Or whatever. I don’t mind how you use it,” Tulland said.