Chapter 38: The Melting Hearth
Kellar stared out the window at the thick blanket of white covering the valley, then slapped his palm right against his forehead.
"What an idiot..." muttered Kellar.
Mila and Maya exchanged a puzzled glance, while Meli looked up from sorting the furs.
"What is wrong with you, boy?" asked Meli.
"I was so focused on finding liquid water down at the river that I forgot the obvious solution right in front of us," said Kellar. "We are surrounded by endless ice."
"You can’t drink frozen snow, Kellar," said Maya. "It drains your body heat and makes you sick."
"Not if we melt it first," said Kellar.
His engineering mind immediately adapted to their crude surroundings. They didn’t have iron pipes or metal cauldrons yet, but they had the fire-baked wooden logs, the carved central stone hearth, and their few clay jars.
Kellar went outside, using his hunting dagger to carve out a large, hollow wooden trough from a thick log. He brought it inside, positioning it directly above the warm ventilation flue of the central hearth, supported by sturdy wooden struts. Next, he fashioned a simple slanted wooden spout at the bottom of the trough, leading directly into their largest clay jar.
"Fill this trough with clean, packed snow from outside," said Kellar.
Mila nodded, quickly grabbing a wooden scoop and rushing outside. She returned seconds later, dumping a mountain of fresh white snow straight into the hollowed trough.
As the heat from the newly lit central hearth rose through the flue, the underside of the wooden trough grew hot. Within minutes, the packed snow began to hiss and shrink. Clear, clean water trickled down the slanted wooden spout, dripping steadily into the clay jar below.
*Plop... plop... plop...*
"It works..." whispered Mila, her eyes wide as she watched the jar slowly fill with steaming, melted water.
"It’s a crude melt-tank," said Kellar, wiping his hands on his tunic. "It gives us clean drinking water right inside the house without having to step foot near the river."
Meli walked over, dipping her fingers into the warm water before bringing them to her lips. She let out a satisfied breath, looking at Kellar with genuine pride.
"You really are something else, Kellar," said Meli.
Kellar smiled, feeling the quiet adoration in the women’s eyes as he scooped up a bit of the warm water and drank it. Back in his old world, drinking melted snow from a crude wooden setup like this would be suicide due to chemical fallout and microplastics. But in this unpolluted, primitive realm, the sky was clear, making the snow perfectly safe to consume once melted.
"I will make a few more clay jars to store extra water," said Kellar. "At least until I figure out how to build a larger basin."
Suddenly, a sharp cramp twisted in his gut. Kellar grimaced, placing a hand over his stomach.
"Shit... I need to take a crap," muttered Kellar.
He realized he hadn’t taken a dump in almost two full days. The bodies of these barbarians were surprisingly efficient, processing nutrients so that he hadn’t even seen any of the three women go to relieve themselves since they arrived. Out here, people just squatted out in the open cold whenever nature called.
Kellar turned toward the wooden door.
"Where are you going...?" asked Mila.
"I have to go take a shit," said Kellar.
Mila and the others didn’t bat an eye unbothered by the raw response. Kellar, however, felt a flush of embarrassment creeping up his neck. What kind of civilized, modern man blurted out ’I’m going to take a shit’ to three attractive women? It was painfully crude, but tribal life had no room for polite euphemisms.
"Shit... I urgently need to build a proper bathroom," thought Kellar.
As he stepped out into the freezing air, a white blur dropped from the roof, and Freyja landed silently back onto his shoulder. She seemed disinterested in staying inside the warm cabin, having spent the previous day wandering freely around the woods while Kellar was building.
He walked over to the edge of the nearby treeline, out of direct sight of the house. Kneeling down in the snow, Kellar pulled out his ceremonial dagger and began digging a hole into the frozen dirt.
"If the shaman or the ancestors knew I was using a sacred blade as a toilet shovel, they would beat the living hell out of me," thought Kellar, tossing another clump of dirt aside.
He finished digging a deep enough hole into the hard, frozen earth, tucked the dagger back into his belt, and pulled down his leather trousers to squat over the snow. The freezing air rushing against his exposed skin made him shudder, but the urgency was so great that he pushed through it.
Freyja, perched on a branch of a nearby pine tree, turned her head away, keeping her guard up while flicking her tail impatiently.
"Don’t look at me, this is pretty humiliating," thought Kellar.
"I am not looking at you, Master," Freyja’s voice echoed directly into his mind. "Though your mating and hunting habits are rather strange."
"This isn’t hunting," thought Kellar through gritted teeth as he relieved the pressure in his gut.
The process was quick, but the real suffering began at the end. Having not a single piece of soft cloth on hand, Kellar had to grab a handful of rough, dried leaves mixed with half-frozen snow. He awkwardly wiped his skin, letting out a muffled groan of pain from the icy, scratchy friction.
"Shit... this is absolute hell," thought Kellar, squeezing his eyes shut as he felt the stinging burn. "I urgently need toilet paper... as soon as I have some free time, I’m going to process wood pulp or boiled pine leaves, but I am never wiping with frozen twigs again."
As soon as he finished covering the hole with frozen dirt and plenty of snow to leave no trace, he secured the leather straps of his trousers.
Freyja raised all the white fur along her back. Her ears flattened against her head, and her pupils narrowed into two razor-thin slits as she glared deep into the woods.
"Master," hiseed Freyja directly in his mind. "The threat... is here."
Kellar froze mid-motion. His hand slid down toward the hilt of his ceremonial dagger as the wind carried a heavy, crunching step over the snow among the trees.