My Own Place

I awoke, as I expected to, to the sound of someone trying to open the door, and being unable to they knocked loudly. I could tell by the amount of light coming in to the room that it was still early. I quickly checked that everything was in place in the room and picked up my tools, making sure to keep them near me at all times and then unlocked and opened the door to see who it was. It was one of the staff that ran this establishment, they had come to inform me that I had visitors already. I told him that I would come out shortly, once I had a chance to get ready. With that I closed and locked the door once more and took my time getting ready for the day. I knew they would be annoyed at having to wait, but I also knew it would be a long day and I wanted to be prepared for it.

When I entered the room to meet my guests I saw there were just a handful of elders. Upon seeing me they quickly approached and handed me a bag full of food for breakfast and then, with only a couple quick words informing me that we needed to move quickly and quietly we made our way out of the town and back towards the place where I had constructed my pavilion. I wasn't sure what this was about but they clearly wanted to make sure no one else knew where we had gone. As we came to the structure the sun was finally breaking through the morning haze. The structure was just as I had left it, but there were quite a few footprints going all around it. With the town at such a distance the elders began talking and informed me that the structure I had made was amazing to their people, they had never seen such fine work completed so quickly and the structure was more sound than most of their own homes. When they found out what it was made of they were surprised that scraps could be put together in such a way using such a small device. They wanted to see it work again, this time on something bigger as I hadn't made anything like the building in front of them. I expressed to them that I actually wanted to make a workshop here but would need more materials than what I had. With that they wasted little time talking and all of us were gathering all the different resources we could find. By the time we were done it was close to noon and the food we had brought was gone. We were quite hungry and two of them left to find something to eat while the rest of them sat to observe the device in action.

Each task in the process produced questions, most of which I could not answer. They were amazed as the device pulled in all like materials from the pile and then just as rapidly created a stack of usable materials. When it was all done there was enough to make a small house, just big enough to be my workshop and still leave me some materials to make some furniture. I waited for the others to return before I moved on to this step. One thing that began to worry me, however, was that the device looked like it was starting to wear out. This would be one of the last things I could do with it before I needed to start taking it apart to understand how it worked, I just hoped I would be able to put it back together after I had seen all the bits and pieces of it. When the others had returned and we had had our lunch of fruits and nuts I got to work creating the house and all that was within it. The structure was very strong and they put it to the test trying to damage it, but it was beyond their means without having some tools. With that they were satisfied with this private demonstration and expressed their interest in having me help rebuild their town, to which I replied that I would be happy to help them once I finished understanding this technology and could reproduce it. I then informed them that now that I had a place of my own I intended to sleep here for the evening and would return to town tomorrow to pick up the rest of my belongings. They hesitated in giving in to this, but I made it clear it wasn't a request and they reluctantly left, but not before they secured a promise that I would be here in the morning when they returned. Once they were gone I picked up a few pieces of wood and got to work creating a crude light source so I could continue my studies here in solitude.