A shelter for winter? by Aprilertuile

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Building the shelter

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They went to walk around to check for immediately available resources. They came back with stones to secure a place for a campfire and with fire wood for that evening. Fire could be a nice deterrent to creatures willing to attack them during the night. They then started to plan for what they wanted to do exactly.

The following morning they set to work, gathering wood to start building.

Elrond worked on preparing the branches and gathering more wood for the actual building while Maglor worked on raising a frame for their winter shelter, using the longest branches they had. The frame fell twice before they managed to find out how to block the frame in place solidly enough despite their lack of handy resources and tools.

The frame and first layer were wood, and then came a layer of mud and dried herbs and then a layer of moss over the mud of the shelter. Not that they hoped that the shelter would last long beyond winter but they really wanted it to last all winter.

They then worked on isolating a sleeping space from the ground using dried leaves, dried grass and the furs they had collected. The floor might become cold when frost came, if it came this year. It would be unwise then to sleep straight on it. Isolating a place to sleep was basic safety. Perhaps exaggerated, the place was clearly far warmer than Himring or the Gap but still.

Maglor may have said he wouldn’t serve as a living blanket and yet he only planned for one single large sleeping space, which made Elrond smile when he noticed.

It took them a good couple of days to finish building the shelter so they were both happy with it. And the first time they lit a fire, the shelter was fast to warm up. With the fire turning to ember, the shelter stayed very warm a good part of the night.

It had been a test on their part and it was successful, much to their relief.

“How is your hand after all the manual labor?"

"It’s fine, don’t worry."

"Show me."

"It’s really fine, you know, you don’t need to…"

"Atto."

"Fine. But you’re aware that you can’t do anything about that burn right?”

Maglor realized just then that he may have made a slight strategic mistake as Elrond got that glimmer of stubbornness in his eyes.

Maglor sighed, but gave him his hand and let the younger elf do whatever he wanted. The bandage was peeled away, and Elrond took the occasion to clean the burn and try to encourage it to heal.

It was hard, as Maglor’s own fëa rebelled against the healing, for some reason that Elrond would call guilt, but Elrond was stubborn, and he had time in abundance. It’s not a small burn that would see him fail!

While Elrond saw to Maglor’s hand, night fell, and when Elrond was done, both looked rather dejectedly at the two and a half apples, handful of berries and 3 figs they had left.

Fruits are all well and good, but both were starting to crave something more filling than those fruits now.

Some root vegetable would be more than welcome. Or even fish or meat. Something. A few days of the same fruits was a bit much after they spent all their waking moments working hard on building a shelter that hadn’t quite cooperated with them at first.

Strangely enough, building a shelter from scratch without tools hadn’t been in their skill set before. Maglor was usually on the management side of it, or had fine tools to use to make the act of building far easier. Elrond had never had anything to do with building that wasn’t setting a camp somewhere, and even then, he had a tent and appropriate tools so it was nothing similar.

Thankfully they had some notions of what they could do and vague ideas of how they could do it. But putting those notions to practice was harder than they had imagined.

Not impossible however, as proven by their success. Both of them hoped that it wouldn’t be a temporary success.

With some luck the shelter wouldn’t fall on them during the night at some point during the winter.

“Tomorrow I’m going to go hunting. Do you think we could manage to prepare meat to keep it for a while if I catch something a bit bigger than the average rabbit?"

"Here and now… We can smoke the meat we won’t immediately eat I guess? It’d keep it for a couple weeks at least, and we can use the river when we prepare the meat for smoking?"

"That’ll do. If I hunt, can you prepare the meat?"

"Of course. I’d offer to do it the other way around but…"

"I’ve seen you go on a hunt, and you know my patience for cooking. No thank you.”

Elrond chuckled.

“I’m not that bad."

"You’re not that bad at finding or attracting animals. You’re terrible at actually convincing yourself to kill them. I want to eat something else than figs, berries or apples sometimes this century. And if I do eat meat, I want to eat it without having the life story of the animal in question."

"Fair enough. Then I offer to go foraging while you go hunting. And when you come back, I can take over preparing the meat while you take care of your hand and start a fire, and then I’ll do the cooking."

"Fine by me."

"And tonight fruits?"

"… I think I hate you.”

Elrond chuckled and gave Maglor an apple, making the other sigh tiredly. Well the meal would be light, but at least they had something. Maglor had seen far more dire times after all. The next day they would get more filling food. Hopefully.

The few fruits they had left were finished that evening, and when morning came, it’s a slightly grumpy Maglor who left to hunt, while Elrond picked up his backpack to go foraging. He spent the morning picking up more fruits, root vegetables, acorns and other nuts.

Of course, the acorns would need to be boiled first, but Elrond quite liked them anyway.

He rinsed everything in the river, and put it to dry in the sun on a wood piece they had set at the entrance of their shelter.

It was the beginning of the afternoon when Maglor came back with a large turkey.

“We’re going to have meat for days with this one." Elrond noted.

"Better food for days than no food at all."

"I’ll grant you that one.”

Maglor picked up a fruit and a couple of nuts to snack on, while Elrond took the bird, each going to their own task.

Even distracted by preparing the bird for cooking, Elrond kept an eye on Maglor as he took care of his hand after hunting.

Maglor wasn’t blind to it, but preferred to not comment on the matter. He knew Elrond was a healer, and he had always been naturally attuned to his family. Granted, he was more used to seeing it happen than of being on the receiving end of it, but still, he knew his adopted child too well to be surprised now.