A Refreshing Evening

It took Gonyaul an hour and a half of trekking beyond the secure boundaries of Ostiarium's colony to get to his hideaway spot. He found it months ago during one of his many exploratory hikes into the wilderness. It was a picturesque forest scene.

It seemed tranquil; however, to the trained ear and eye it was anything but still. A small babbling stream provided a pleasing never-ending sound of flowing water over rocks and earth. Branches creaked, leaves rustled, and detritus tumbled gently when the wind blew. Animals and insects, unseen, punctuated the ambient noises with chattering, skittering, and humming. This place sounded more like home than the farm and was a great comfort to Gonyaul when he needed to decompress.

Gonyaul had been slowly constructing a hidden campsite in this spot ever since he came across it, in part for his leisure as well as for the practical reason of keeping it undetected. He constructed his firepit to look as if nature had formed it, blending it in with the surrounding bank by manual design. A few carefully moved objects took it from undisturbed wilderness to campsite fire. He built what looked like a rough birdhouse-looking box that could hold a medium-sized dog, with a front door, and installed it up one of the nearby sturdy trees; out of the average person's sight line. In this he kept a small assortment of non-perishable and non-editable supplies for camping. One such item was a very small little net he procured. He would stake and double it over into the bottom of the stream bed in a particular spot in order to catch the occasional fish if they tried swimming through.

His favorite spot was the survival tree-shelter he built up between three large trees, who's proximity made it ideal for a hammock-like setup. Growing up in the jungle, he knew full well how to construct impressive tree structures and the advantages. For starters, it offered better shelter from predators and other human beings; from the ground level you couldn't even tell it was there without knowing where and what to look for. Being suspended meant a significantly higher chance to avoid possible snakes or venomous arthropods. Being off the ground, it also provided a drier situation should it rain or snow. The final touch was the camouflaging. He was proud of his engineering of the shelter, both structurally and aesthetically. Using a small a handmade hatchet with bark-twine, a split stone from the stream bed, and a carved handle from a fallen tree branch, Gonyaul strategically placed notches circling around the trunk of the thickest of the trees to act as a hidden ladder to aid in climbing up and down. From any one viewing angle it was much harder to tell the big picture, that it was a ladder, unless your inspection encircled the entirety of the tree's base.

Upon arrival, Gonyaul bathed in the stream and washed his clothes first. While naked and letting his clothes dry in the breeze, he ate the dinner he brought. All the while, he enjoyed having the time to just think. His clothes were still a little damp by the time he cleaned up the ground floor of his campsite to once again resembled an untouched wilderness, so he did his daily practice of Vauxian martial arts for the second time (it has similarities to a mix between tai chi and brazilian capoeira).

As the sunlight began to fade, Gonyaul enjoyed the feeling of clean and dry clothes after being covered in mud and dried dirt a majority of the day. It was time to sleep, so Gonyaul climbed up into his hidden tree shelter. He began reading an imaginary book in his mind, retelling himself the stories his village elders would constantly be teaching the young people back home.

Gonyaul drifted off to sleep. His intentions were to wake up early, just before the rising sun and make it back to the farm in time to start his morning shift.