Chapter 5: Chapter 5 – Firewood

 

"Make some soup, or fry it up. Soup soup soup. Sizzle sizzle sizzle." Aila grinned as she put the pot of water on the stove, but began to frown slightly.

"I wonder if this is like electric heating. If you leave it all year long, and heat up the elements just before winter, the dust will burn off." Aila opened the iron oven door, and narrowed her eyes.

"It's not clean. A bunch of ashes are at the bottom. That means I should burn it at least once." She looked at the ashes, and thought for a moment. "Can I use a piece of wood to scrape it?" Aila didn't have much time to think as she was quite hungry.

"Better take my ax and cut a tree down. There are plenty near my walls, and I will need to take them down before they do damage." She picked up her ax.

"Time to make some firewood."

 

* * *

 

"Eh?" Aila said with a dazed look in her eyes. "All I did was touch the tree!" She groaned and dusted herself off.

"Damn, this is so painful! How can I cut down a tree if it keeps dissolving?" She groaned. "It happened just like that tree man thing. I touched, the green energy swarmed towards me, and the tree turned to dust!" She patted her shoulders.

"Achoo!" She sneezed a little and took a deep breath.

"This is frustrating! If I touch something, I'll turn it into dust now?" Aila growled and walked over to another tree, frowned heavily, and put her palm on it. Immediately, she felt the same suction on her hand.

"No! Stop!" Her eye twitched. "Wait, did I just shut that off? You mean I can control it?" She felt startled, and looked closely at the tree. "If I can control it, can I be selective about how I use it?" She looked at the tree, and decided not to take a chance.

"I need firewood. Playing with trees is not my current goal. Focus!" She told herself firmly, and lifted her ax. She took a swing, and the ax turned in her hands.

"What the hell. Am I some sort of wimp? Hold the ax firmly!" She told herself angrily, and swung the ax again. This time, the blade bit into the wood, and sank in about two inches.

"That is better. A firm grip. Now, I have a little of the wood cut into, just take another swing, and be careful." She took another swing. This time, the ax went a little higher, and gouged out the wood that was between the two cuts.

"Oh! So that's why I saw wood chips flying on those TV shows! Now it makes sense!" She grew excited and continued to chop down the tree. However, once it started to fall, she looked up at it.

"Eh? What the fuck? It's falling at me?" As she was inexperienced, she didn't check to see which way the tree was leaning before she stood beside it and started to chop.

Aila did a dash to the side, and moved quickly enough that the leaves and debris were stirred up by the wind pressure she generated with her movement. She turned and watched the tree fall, and blushed a bit.

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"This is harder than I thought, but at least I didn't run away from the tree along the trajectory it was falling. I saw people do that in movies, and it's so stupid! It's not dramatic, it's just dumb." She growled a bit, and walked over to the newly fallen tree.

"Now, I think I need to take off the branches. I wish I had learned some skills while reading so much." She said quietly, and walked up and down the tree. Each limb was easy to knock off with the ax, and she soon had a nice bare log.

"Maybe I should take the entire tree inside the walls, and cut it up in there. I have no idea how long to make each piece. I can always clean up the debris later." Aila thought for only a few seconds, and reached down. With her enhanced strength, it was quite easy to pick up the long thick log by lifting one end, and dragging it back inside her area.

Aila just learned a simple skill. She chopped down a tree, chopped off the branches, and took it home. She did this in less than an hour, and would have taken her much longer to learn on Earth. By holding the ax firmly, she also learned to keep the ax parallel to the forest floor, or square to the tree, so the ax bit into the wood, and didn't deflect off the surface.

It was a simple skill, but it would prove to be an invaluable basic skill in the weeks and months to come. She could cut down, and chop her own firewood to stay warm in the winter. She could also learn how the layers of a tree behaved when cut.

Although the skills themselves were limited in their use, it would also allow her to learn other things with confidence.

 

* * *

 

Aila cut the log into five different lengths, all of which were longer then the firebox, attempted to practice with her new skills.

"So, how do I do this?" She thought for a few minutes, and slowly looked at the wood. "What do I really want you to look like?" She thought carefully.

"I need a slab of wood. First, I need to plan out what I need." Aila made a decision and put the piece of wood between her feet.

"Alright, I want you to look like a board." She pointed at the wood. "So I need to slice you into pieces, like I'm using a knife." She traced the surface of the wood with her fingers, and watched the entire piece of wood turn to dust.

"Really?!" She groaned. "This is harder than I thought, but if I can dissolve it, I just need to learn how to control it. Is it the image of what I want, or how I'm doing it?"

Aila took another few minutes to try and think about what was going wrong. She settled her eyes on the next piece, and instead of trying to run her fingers lengthwise, she ran a finger across the end to slice off a slab. When the round end of the wood fell, Aila's eyes narrowed.

"There is more wood dissolved near my finger tip, so it looks like a spray, or suction of an area rather than a line." She took her hand, and ran it along the wood quickly.

"That didn't work. I'm still sucking it all in. This is frustrating!" She looked around, and saw her newly polished knife.

"What if I use a tool to guide the flow?"

 

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