Crash

18: It's just a little storm

Two days later

Alexandra-

God, how long does it take to get over a dead daughter? If it were me, fifteen minutes. Max. I've tried and tried to convince him that she's dead. Plan a funeral, bury an empty casket, get some damn closure. As soon as he opened up his account to pay for that, I'd slip in and drain it.

But he refuses to think the little brat died. All he does is moan about the house, dragging his feet and not shaving. Seriously, that's so unattractive.

Like, please, get a grip. Richard just loves to remind me that this could take years. I'm not getting any younger here! I'm already thirty two. Okay...thirty nine..but that's beside the point. I need to squeeze every penny I can out of that sad sack.

I've waited for so long already. I'm more impatient than I've ever been. This anxiousness was really wearing down on my nerves. I had to refrain from drinking too much coffee and tea that would just make my certain condition worse. I worried my hair would start falling out, or wore, go grey.

I needed that money soon.

But how?

---------

Lyra-

"Hand me the rope," I said.

Nathan handed up a piece of rope. I lashed another log to the platform. Nate stood like a worried mother below me. We were fourteen feet up, but I was perfectly fine. I grinned as I took in my handiwork. This thing was totally coming together way better than I had originally planned. It would soon be done but I was enjoying myself while building it.

We had the stilts up, the platform on and now we were building up the cache house. It had it's own foundation tied on. Now we could go build that, bring it up here and tie it on. We could take it on and off as we pleased.

Do you know how hard it is to build things without a hammer and nails? Yeah I didn't know it was this hard, until now.

So we fashioned our own nails. Crude, cruddy nails with uneven edges.

Using cotton wood, a pretty hard substance, we chopped four inch long 'nails' and smoothed them out with knives. I pounded them in with the back of my hatchet, which was the closest I could get to a hammer. A pioneers down right basics.

Unfortunately, they would eventually rot. But let's hope we won't be here that long.

I climbed down the crude ladder we'd made. I jumped down the last few feet.

"Now all we need is the roofing and such. Needs to be water proof," I mumbled to myself, dusting my hands off on my jeans.

Picking up the hatchet, I chopped medium sized logs in half. Then in half again. These would act like boards for the roof. Nathan sat down in the moss next to me and started on the frame.

Being the perfectionist I am, I shaved the wood down to make it all even and smooth. These would not end up like the nails. I had my boards done in about thirty minutes and they were all perfect, if I may say so.

Nathan grinned at me when the sharp angled frame was set up. Half lashed in tough twine, half nailed together with our pioneer nails. Together, we started to put the boards up, pausing to fashion more nails, and then eventually having a large dog house sized cache.