milliways_bar | (no subject)

And here comes Voodoo, in a sweater with the SEAL trident on it and jeans. In his pockets are two toothbrushes, two compasses, and two 10-feet lengths of parachute cord. He spots Enzo easily enough and approaches him.

"Hope you don't mind traveling light," he says as he gives Enzo his share of the gear. "But it wouldn't be much of a lesson if we had proper gear."

"No prob." He looks over what he's been given, focusing with particular confusion on the toothbrush. He wouldn't have thought of that as a survival essential.

Voodoo notices this. "If you find a rock, you could file the end down to a point eventually. Makes a great shank. You know, for hunting small game. It's also nice to keep your mouth clean so you don't get an infection if you get a cut on your gums or tongue." Which has never happened to anyone he knows, but hey, first time for everything.

"So, you ready?"

"...sure."

Hunting. Right. That. Matter of survival, he supposes. And he can't really argue the usefulness of a pointy object.

(OOC: Really sorry for the slow tag, but I've been pretty busy for the past couple hours.)

"Okay, let's go." Voodoo sets off into the forest, looking both ways every so often and rolling through the balls of his feet to stay silent. He doesn't want to spook any game, though at this point his priority is really making and securing a suitable shelter.

Enzo just knows that his teacher appears to be focusing on stealth, so he attempts to do the same. He's accustomed to big clompy boots, but he has done a fair bit of sneaking around in his time, so he's pretty quiet, if not absolutely silent.

Voodoo notices a few plants out of the corner of his eye and points them out to Enzo. One is a rather prickly weed, the other a medium-sized plant with big leaves and purplish thistle-like flower heads.

"The weed's amaranth. It's edible, but you gotta watch out for spines on the leaves. They've got oxalic acid in them, too. The leaves, I mean. The big plant's burdock. It's edible, too, but the leaves are pretty bitter. You can boil them twice to get rid of the bitterness, or just eat them raw. Won't kill you either way." He pauses and squints into the distance.

"This way," he says after a while. "There's a clearing up ahead. Good place to set up a shelter."

"Is oxalic acid bad?" Enzo asks as he follows. He's had a chemistry class, enough to know that 'acid' doesn't automatically mean 'oh god my face, the goggles they do nothing,' but he only knows details for his own world.

"Not in small doses," Voodoo replies. "I think you'd need to eat around 25 pure grams of the stuff for it to kill ya. They use it to make some bleaches, though."

They get to the edge of the clearing, and Voodoo rips a particularly curvy branch off of a tree, as well as a slightly stouter one. "We'll need a little more than these to start a fire, but it's a start." He also picks up a rock and starts filing away at the end of his toothbrush. It won't be the best blade for cutting wood, but it'll be something.

"Should I...?" Enzo asks, brandishing his toothbrush.

"Sure, go ahead," says Voodoo, handing the rock to Enzo as soon as he's got a workable edge. It'll take a while, but at least he'll be able to saw a couple branches off some trees while Enzo files his toothbrush down.

Enzo gets a-rubbing.

"Am I, uh... gonna have to actually kill something with this? I mean, as part of the lesson?"

Voodoo shakes his head as he saws off a couple of lengthy low-hanging branches. "Not if you don't want to. We might not even stay out here long enough to get hungry if you feel like heading back early. Besides, there's plenty of plants we could eat. Why do you ask?"

"I just don't like killing anything that's not trying to kill me first. Or someone else. You know."

Granted, he could always practice on the demon rabbits, they're always trying to kill you by default, but by all accounts they taste like their meat was marinated in gasoline.

(OOC: Slowtimed until Tuesday night.)

Voodoo shrugs. "Won't hold it against ya." He finishes cutting off a couple of the longer, thicker branches and looks at what he's got so far. This should be enough for a basic shelter.

"Alright, help me carry these branches into the clearing, will ya? We should have enough to get a foundation for a shelter going."

Enzo nods happily and shoulders the branches. "Like a tent?"

"Kinda like a tent. Not quite. Won't be as warm, not by a long shot. But it should be strong enough protect us from rain or snow."

He gets to the middle of the clearing and sets down all of them except two of the longer branches and one of the stouter ones. He takes the longer two and sets them perpendicular at the top.

"Here, hold these, will ya? I gotta lash that thick one down there to these two to secure 'em."

"Right." He does as instructed.

"Thanks." Voodoo cuts off two two-foot sections of parachute cord, then takes the stouter branch and ties it perpendicular to the two skinnier branches. He walks around the branch pile, looking for the longest branch of the bunch. Eventually he finds it and rests it in the crook between the skinnier branches.

"Well, that's our foundation done. Now we just need to put these other branches up along the sides."

"Huh." Enzo thinks he follows, and can sort of imagine the result. "It's like a wireframe."

"More or less," Voodoo says as he puts the branches up along the side. He doesn't have a clue what a wireframe is, but he figures Enzo knows what he's talking about. He takes one of the smaller branches from earlier and ties some of the parachute cord to it, making a rudimentary bow.

He won't be able to use it for hunting anytime soon, but it'll be useful for firestarting. He tears a piece of bark off a tree - it'll be useful for kindling, but not much else.

"If you see any timber around, we could always use some more. We probably won't start a fire 'til it gets dark, though."

"Okay." He doesn't seem to be actively needed for this part, so he starts gathering sticks, just keeping near enough to watch what Voodoo's doing.

Of course, he has no idea whether there's anything that makes a stick good or bad for a fire, so his selection is entirely random.

"Try to avoid waterlogged lumbah," Voodoo says as he puts up boughs along the sides of the shelter for the finishing touches. "The dryah, the better. Don't bother with branches that've got green on the inside, either. They're too young to burn all that well."

He stands back and looks over the finished shelter. It looks like it'll hold up for a while. Their next priority is finding a water source - other than the lake, that is. That'd work, true, but it'd be a disservice. Plus he's really not willing to take his chances with stagnant water.

He turns to Enzo.

"You're not hungry yet, are ya? I'll teach you how to find a source of watah if you're not, but we could gather up some plants if you are."

(OOC: Yeah, my writing in of Voodoo's Boston accent is a bit sporadic. But it's not all that strong anyways.)

[OOC: My illustration of Enzo's ^{voice breaking} was similarly patchy.]

"Not yet," says Enzo, looking through his sticks and discarding a few damp or greenish ones.

He probably will be soon, though. Teenager, remember.

Voodoo nods. "Right," he says, then looks at the branches. "That looks like a pretty good pile. Should sustain us for a day or two. C'mon, let's find some water."

Voodoo sets off, crossing the clearing and re-entering the forest, pausing to listen for a few seconds, then searching the ground for animal tracks.

"If you're really close, you'll hear it if it's a river or a stream. You don't wanna drink stagnant water, that'll have parasites up the wahzoo. Animal tracks are a good indication, too. They'll usually have a regular watering hole 'round where they live."