I Built This City Chapter 33: Chapter 33

Read chapter 33 of I Built This City by ThePudding on NovelPedia.

Carpenter Ellen Some days , Ellen reflected, everything just comes together. Weeks had gone by without another death, but Ellen wasn’t letting down her guard. Things were just too fragile right now, with how close they were to winter and how much work the whole group had put into the preparations. Merchant Ellen was even here today, leaving Village Ellen to deal with the curious travelers that kept passing through. “Here,” Merchant Ellen called out, hoisting up one of the large slats of wood. Mason Ellen, sitting nearby atop the partially-finished roofing, grasped it and slid it over, fitting it against the framing. Ellen watched as her Mason variant slid a hand over the wood, then nodded. “This should be fine.” She’d rejected two of the slats earlier, feeling out some subtle flaws with Material Sense that Ellen herself couldn’t see, now that she’d switched to a different Perk. It just made sense to cover one another’s gaps like that. A quick assessment with her own Efficiency Perk let Ellen know where to hammer in the precious nails. A few taps was all she needed for each, affixing the next to last sheet to the framing below. That is, presuming that she had more nails to work with. “Hey Apprentice, are the rest of the nails ready?” She called down the question without leaning over the side this time… she’d almost met the same fate as her predecessor when trying to talk to the easily-distracted magical version of herself. “Just rinsing! Let me dry them off!” Just a few moments later, five more nails tumbled onto the roof, tossed there by Apprentice Ellen below. The lengthy process of cleaning the rust off of any usable nails didn’t require a lot of focus, but somehow Apprentice Ellen enjoyed just watching the vinegar eat away at the rust, and didn’t mind scrubbing them clean… mostly because she used her magic to do it, and she liked practicing it in novel ways whenever possible. A vinegar bath, a quick rinse in river water, and then drying off so they weren’t going in wet… and the roof had nails. No need to buy expensive iron hardware when they could salvage an entire village’s worth of stuff. After nearly a century most of it had been reduced to uselessness by exposure to the elements, but some had been shielded by stone walls or partial basements or any number of other things. Half of the roof had already been thatched, so this was a real milestone to have it completely covered. The place still lacked doors and shutters, but Ellen had already put the framing up for those, and her Mason sister-self had filled in the gaps with the mortar she’d made. Home-wise, things were coming together well. Ellen inhaled and wiped her brow. It was cold out, but doing this wrapped in the loose cloak really warmed up the body! She still sniffled, wiping her nose, but the slightly runny nose was just a reaction to the cold. She could still smell the weird mingling of Hunter Ellen in the workshop nearby smoking beaver meat, and of Healer Ellen chopping onions down beneath in the kitchen area. Everyone was doing their part to make the place viable. Ellen still had worries about it, but having a dry spot to sleep that could keep them warm was not one of them. They’d had to suffer through a brief, short frost last week, but five of them huddled up under the increasingly-large pile of blankets had kept everyone warm through the short cold snap. Little work had been done, but she’d accounted for lost days due to rainstorms or other inclement weather when she’d done her estimate. As Mason Ellen wrestled the last sheet of wood, Ellen scooted herself downward, keeping one hand on the rope so she didn’t slide off the steeply-sloped roof she’d built with the other Ellens. After her predecessor’s accident, Mason and herself had bound themselves to roof with cords, so any fall would have them caught and hopefully stopped short before they hit ground. Naturally, they hadn’t fallen once, since they had taken precautions. Every one of the Ellens knew by now