Chapter 106: The Sticky Problem
A few of the males had been frustrated when digging along certain paths of the second channel.
Some of their hoes kept getting stuck in the soil, and the earth they pulled looked different from the rest. It was darker, denser, and clung to the tool in thick, sticky clumps.
It was clay-rich soil. Not pure clay, but heavy, malleable earth with a plasticity that ordinary dirt didn’t have. When she squeezed it, it held its shape.
Tera’s pulse jumped with excitement.
Clay was so precious, and it was an answer to a number of existing problems she already had. But when she assessed how much was actually there, her excitement dimmed.
The clay-rich patches were scattered and thin, sitting in narrow veins within the deeper layers rather than in accessible deposits. What they had found wouldn’t be enough for both channels and the pot making, but it was an appropriate amount.
Tera had another female help her carefully separate the clay-rich soil from the regular earth as the males continued digging, setting it aside in a growing but modest pile. She instructed the diggers to watch for the same dark, sticky soil in other sections and set it aside whenever it appeared.
Some sections yielded nothing. Others produced small pockets that added to the collection. By the time the second channel was finished and compacted, Tera had a respectable but limited supply of clay sitting near the settlement, carefully stored under a layer of silk leaves to keep it moist.
It would have to be used wisely.
And just like that, the second channel was finished within the first half of the third month.
It had taken this long because digging was only part of the work. Once both channels were dug, Tera had the males go back and thoroughly compact the walls and floor of every section. The soil needed to be packed hard and dense to prevent the walls from softening and collapsing after rain.
The compacting took even more time than the digging had.
The males used flat stones, their own feet, and even their beast forms to press the earth down until it was firm and unyielding. It was monotonous, backbreaking work that tested everyone’s patience, and Tera felt guilty watching them do it while she supervised from the side.
But they weren’t grumpy. That surprised her the most. She had expected complaints, resistance, and the kind of low-level mutiny that came from asking people to do something tedious for days on end.
Instead, the males took their resting periods, went out to hunt during the breaks Tera scheduled, and came back to compact more earth without being asked twice.
Tera had given up hope of finishing the task long before the deadline. It was going to take the time it took, and rushing would only lead to mistakes that cost more time to fix. As long as she finished before the penalty activated, she could live with that.
Now that the channels were prepared, next came another problem.
And it was one Tera had been dreading since the channels were first planned.
Bare earth absorbed water. It was one of the most basic things she knew, and it was the single biggest obstacle standing between her and a functioning water system. If she filled these channels now, the water would seep into the soil and vanish long before it reached the settlement.
She needed something to line the inside of both channels. It had to be waterproof and durable enough to hold up over time.
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This problem bled into the fourth month of the project, and it nearly drove Tera insane.
The clay they had collected during the digging was her most obvious resource, but the supply was not large.
There wasn’t nearly enough to line both channels from end to end, and Tera refused to dump all of it into the trenches. She still wanted to save a small amount for one proper pot, and she was not going to waste it half-heartedly on a project that might require more than clay alone could provide.
Her first thought had been the silk leaf plant.
It was water-resistant, readily available, and she had already used it for practically everything else. But Tera dismissed it almost immediately. The silk leaf was still a leaf, and like all leaves, it gradually died once it was cut from the tree.
The shelters could be adjusted and repaired when the leaves deteriorated, with panels swapped out as needed. But a water channel was different. She couldn’t be pulling up and replacing the lining of a channel every few weeks.
And more importantly, a slowly decaying plant sitting inside a channel that transported drinking water would contaminate it. The idea of her clan drinking water that had been flowing over rotting leaves made her stomach turn.
Tera briefly considered the sun-drying method she had used for the silk leaf clothing she wore. The drying process significantly delayed the leaf’s deterioration, and her clothes had held up well.
But the delay wasn’t a complete preventative measure.
The silk leaves were out.
She needed another approach.
Tera considered a mixture. Clay combined with sand and gravel, possibly with crushed stone added, could create a crude sealing paste that might hold back water. But even as she thought it through, she wasn’t confident it would be enough on its own, and she didn’t have the luxury of time or materials for guesswork.
Trial and error with limited clay and a six-month deadline breathing down her neck was not a gamble, but she needed to test it.
And for any mixture involving sand, she needed fine sand, not the coarse, clumpy soil they had been pulling from the ground.
Sand was available from the excavated earth, but it needed to be sifted.
Tera put a group of males to work creating a makeshift sieve. She had them take thin, flexible bark threads and weave them into a flat frame with gaps tight enough to catch larger particles while letting fine grains fall through.
The males had marvelled at the concept, examining the finished sieve with the fascination of creatures who had just witnessed the invention of something they didn’t know could exist.
They had also absolutely hated making it.
The process required threading and knotting bark fibres with a delicacy that their thick, clawed fingers were not designed for. Several of them had fumbled, cursed, and produced sieves with holes large enough for a cub to crawl through before Tera intervened and guided them through the process a second time.
The final products weren’t pretty, but they worked.
Tera had the sifted fine sand set aside in a careful pile. She didn’t know exactly how she was going to use it yet, but she needed it available.
Stones were the next challenge, and they proved to be the most labour-intensive material to gather.
Note:
Thank you for your patience with the technical side of this arc! The water project will wrap up in the next two Chapters, and then we’ll be moving on to something very exciting. Our next mate fully entering the story.