Away and Afar

by PropsValroa

Chapter 44

Collapse tried to run but immediately got her fly ring caught on the stump of another tree, causing her to trip and fall over. She only had enough time to glance back up at the tree in fear before the entire massive thing crushed her underneath it's weight.

Turns out, she was not a certified lumberjack. Who knew?~~

At the time when she first started on the hardwood tree, it was already midday. This tree however took a lot longer.

The tree had taken a **lot** of effort to cut through, forcing her to unleash slow, powerful chops just to make any reasonable dent in it's wood. This was tiring, and even with Jump Start (who now didn't have much to do except do her own things) bringing in refreshments every now and then.

Turns out coconut shells, curved rocks as a juicer and fruit go together to make a pretty refreshing fruit drink. It even had a couple ice cubes, thanks to Magloria.

By the time that she was finished with the tree, the sun was already getting close to setting. They had counted about 20 regular trees, which would've been quite a decent number for a simple building. All they needed were the tools to properly refine the materials they had.

As Magloria approached, the tree started to fall over, hitting the ground with a massive SLAM that shook the ground for kilometers, causing them both to stumble. "Yeah. Pretty good start. Gonna need a lot more wood than this but... pretty good." she agreed.

Throughout the whole ordeal of cutting the tree Collapse found herself replaying every event that happened up to this point within her mind. The more times she replayed it, the more details she recalled about things she thought she would miss. Just like when one wakes up from a dream, the more one thinks it over the better chance one will have at remembering it.

Despite this, she had lost track of how long they had arrived here. Based on their mission it was likely that none would hear back from them for weeks perhaps months, but what's going to happen back home when the Constance doesn't show up back at the port? How long will it take for her mom to realize? Her other friends, too? She knew that her mom planned to greet her at the dock when they would return. So it was clear that whenever that would happen her mom would be the first to know she and the others were gone.

It would likely take them at least a few months to get the ship built. That's not even considering any testing or other issues that may come up between now and then. So it was likely that they'd be ruled as missing for quite some time until they return. There was no doubt within her mind that they would return, though.

All of those thoughts ended when the tree went SLAM. While it was a big tree, such loud noises one can naturally never really prepare for in full. Despite this, that reminded her when they heard the slam in the mushroom forest when the seaponies were cutting down that giant mushroom.

Looking to Jump Start and Magloria she smiled. "Job well done. I suppose we should head back to the shelter now...take our regular trees with us and we'll put the, there for the morning to build our complete shelter. Unless you two wanted to get started on it before the sun sets." Collapse stated calmly.

Magloria began to head back to the camp, waving her hoof in dismissal at the idea of starting work on their shelter improvements as she did. "Nah, best we'd be able to do would be to do right now would be split a few logs with the axe. I suppose we could, but we're definitely not going to be building anything usable right now." she stated.

Thanks to Jump Start hauling every regular tree back to the camp, there wasn't anything left for Collapse to do during the return. When they got back they saw the earth pony already busy digging a shallow pit and lining it work rocks she found, for any future fires.

A large pile of trees sat on one end of their campsite, still complete with various branches and leaves that would need to be removed and used for other things.

Jump Start waved to them as they approached. "So finally managed to cut down that big tree? I might not be able to move that one on my own, so you'd need to help, or cut it into smaller pieces." she said cheerfully.

Collapse watched Jump Start's actions with an impressed smile. Earth ponies were quite impressive, weren't they? She stepped forward towards Jump Start. "My my, you sure are impressive aren't you? Moving all those logs, and digging the firepit? I was planning on digging the firepit but you got to it before I did." Collapse blushed ever so slightly at that.

"We'll cut that large tree when we come up with a plan for the ship. I don't wanna make any additional cuts to it since I'd rather wait until we have a solid plan. Although we can just get more large trees but I'd rather we get ourselves 4 or 5 large trees as a start for the ship. From there, I don't really know what we'd have to do next. Maybe we'll ask the seaponies for help." Collapse suggested as she was still smiling at Jump Start's work.

Jump Start gave Collapse a quick "Thank you." in response, then began idling around, looking for something she could do to occupy her time. Almost out of boredom she began striking some of the stones with her hooves, breaking off parts of them to form various shapes.

"Well at that point we'd need proper tools to cut the right planks from the trees. Problem is, that's a task best suited to metals and machinery, and we don't have any here." Magloria said as she moved over to the tree stack, and began breaking off some of the branches.

"So we'd either have to get some from the panthins, or the underground seaponies. Both have metals and machines, but both bring along certain risks. I will admit, going to the seaponies would be so much easier if we had the ability to mark locations for a recall teleport, or dig our own path." She placed down the branches into the fire pit, ready for burning.

"You wouldn't happen to be able to manipulate earth to create tunnels, would you?" She asked Jump Start, who sadly shook her head in response.

Collapse looks to Magloria as she suggested going back to the underground seaponies. "We already knew how risky it was in order to even come back up to the surface. We had a few close calls of being discovered. I would rather we go to the Panthin settlement of Carocal and introduce ourselves on the surface. That would prove a lot less suspicious than us getting discovered down in those tunnels." she spoke.

"By the way, perhaps if we go to Carocal we might be able to ask or find out what it is they are doing down below. I am really curious about that, and I am also curious why they'd want to shoot at us. But then again you mentioned creating tunnels..." she leans towards Magloria a little bit.

"You could probably create tunnels near to the ocean, just use your water manipulation and turn it into water jets. Could bore holes in the ground and cut down trees near to the shore with highly pressurized water manipulation. If you are able to do that, that is." she remarked.

Looking down at the fire pit her horn would flash orange and a spark would fling out from her horn and hit the wood, which would begin combusting.

Magloria didn't look as though she liked the idea that Collapse was suggesting. "We are already aware that the Panthins do not approve of us if the way Eliza reacted was any indication, kidnapping aside. If we introduced ourselves directly, hoping to get access to their machinery, it's almost certain that they would react badly and attack us, no matter how much we tried to dissuade them from doing so." she pointed out.

"I'd only recommend sneaking in and taking what we need. Immoral, sure, but necessary." she added, then shook her head when Collapse mentioned high pressure drilling and cutting. "No, I don't have the necessary magic reserves or horn durability to be able to sustain such a rapid and concentrated spell like that. You need *a lot* of pressure to cut through stone. Wood maybe, but the axe is far more efficient."

Magloria saw exactly what Collapse was doing in her attempts to get closer, but it wasn't something worth dealing with at the moment. If the mare got close enough to invade her personal space, then she'd do something.

"Hmm... roasted coconut, or roasted fruit? Maybe both? Could put the fruit in empty coconut shells and sit them above the fire for a bit." Jump Start suggested as she dug around in their food supplies, while the fire bloomed into a suitable source of heat. She muttered under her breath something about making a grill so they didn't need to levitate things all the time.

"Fair point. My concern is if we sneak in while taking what we need - if we are found out it is going to look *much* worse on our part. If that happens, we'll be able to get out most likely, but if they discover where we are located they aren't going to be too happy with us. So we'll have to be very careful in order to not get caught. Felines have great hearing after all." she stated, while not getting closer to Magloria.

In fact, she pulled herself away to get closer to Jump Start as Magloria talked. "Ah I see. Well there goes that idea then. Roasted Coconut and fruit together sounds good." she suggested to Jump Start while watching the fire. "Yeah we do need to make a grill. Portable grill. That's one of the important things for outdoor survival, but I wonder how we'd make one. I don't have any metal grates on me or anything like that." Collapse commented.

As they had the fire going and cooked their food Collapse knew that the smell could potentially attract predators or unwanted attention. She remains aware and alert, probably a bit more than she had to. Honestly she were a little paranoid. Rightfully so, one could say. "We really did end up in not the greatest of environments, but could be worse." she casually remarked.

"The way I see it, they'll come after us regardless of what we do. So why not do what we can as quickly as we can so we can leave this place sooner?" Magloria stated, "The alternative is wandering off into the jungle in search of other sources of things we need. Or making our own, which requires a whole prospecting, mining, refining and forging system before we can even begin."

If they went off into the jungle, they could find some old temple place that could just happen to have a fully working set of equipment that they need! It could cut down time to build the boat massively! Plus they could even find some ancient power source they could attach to their ship's engines and get home in a fraction of the time-

"Nah... that'd never happen." Magloria dismissed her imagination.

Jump Start had no problems with the overly friendly pony approaching her. In fact, it made it easier to hoof over the fruits and coconuts so that they could be levitated over the flames.

"Making a grill would be rather easy. It's sort of like making a table, except with holes in the top. Just a couple sticks on each end in an X shape, tied together with string, with another stick on top for holding up the grill parts... which are more sticks. It's just a load of sticks and string." she stated.

Collapse didn't see anything out among the trees, just the orange light from the sun slowly setting, and a blue glow like light being reflected off the nearby river, as light normally is.

Eventually the food was suitably ~~burnt~~ warmed up, and they could dig in. It's a good thing they still had those cutlery pieces and plates, otherwise it would be quite messy to deal with hot, sticky fruits.

Collapse began to dig in, using her cutlery to slice the fruits up into more manageable pieces. For all things considered they were doing quite well for themselves for being stranded out in the middle of unfamiliar territory. They could obviously doing a lot better but in her mind their state of affairs was acceptable at the moment.

"You drive a fair point. We are going to be found one of these days so it's best that we make all the progress we can before someone comes along and proves an obstacle for it. Tell you what, maybe tomorrow we should sneak into Carocal and search after the various things we need. I can use my unsummoning ability to...*aquire* what we need." Collapse smirks. That smirk was almost a little too wide though, as if she enjoyed the thought of getting away with something.

"What I could do is leave behind a few things here. Hide them somewhere while we are gone so nobody can find them. That way, I could truly make use of my pocket dimension to have a whole load of things. Maps, unique tools that could be used for a ship, anything else we'd really need and whatever else you'd wanna take with us." she added with a giggle.

Thieving was a rather euphoric thing, really. It is not so much taking something that doesn't belong to you - but the thrill of potentially getting caught, running from the authorities and all that was where the true treasure was. Not that Collapse was thief or anything...but hey, who is to say she wasn't one in the past?

Looking to Jump Start she nodded. "We should keep that in mind. Maybe if we have time tomorrow we can build a grill for ourselves. I do have a favorite brand of Grill though...the Weber grills are made by the finest Earth pony craftsmanship, built right out of Detrot. I remember I was able to flip a few of those for a higher price than what they were worth...oh and-" she cut herself off from indulging into her brand favoritism. Besides, that didn't matter at this point any way.

"Well... It's not really going to be like one of those Detrot grill... It's just going to be a bunch of sticks above a fire." Jump Start said, looking away while rubbing a forehoof in an embarrassed manner.

"We best enter Carocol when the sun is starting to set and we have the cover of dark. Not now though, it's too late for that already. We'll have some time tomorrow before then, so we can do some more tasks and sort out whatever we should bring while we wait." Magloria stated. She quickly finished off her food and, as usual, threw the skins into the fire pit. She kept the coconut shells of course. They're great for various things.

"Anyway, lots of stuff to do, so best get as much sleep as you can before then." she said, moving into their shelter and, likely to Collapse's disappointment, separated the petal beds so she could sleep on her own one, due to the heat of the fire.

Collapse looks to Jump Start, taking note of her embarrassment. She decided to not say anything further on that as she tossed her skins into the flame. However she quickly noticed what Magloria was doing with the petal beds and looks down at the ground sadly like a disappointed filly.

"Yeah, sounds good...we'll see what awaits us for tomorrow." she spoke, her tone a bit more somber upon seeing Magloria wanting to sleep alone. Was Magloria alone her whole life? She sure hoped that wasn't the case. Collapse wanted to be there and to make her smile. Make her happy. Clearly something happened to Magloria in the past. After all, not a lot of ponies are like her. Was Magloria okay? Was she happy?

Collapse would slowly walk off and curl up on the remaining pedals. Her eyes are fixed on Jump Start now. If she can't cuddle up with Magloria, she'll have Jump Start to herself tonight. Perhaps this may be an excuse to be a bit more bold with her this time.