At some point during the night Kyla woke Lily for her shift of keeping up the fire and she laid down with Josiah to get some sleep. She carefully situated herself trying not to bump him or make too much noise. Tired as she was, she barely managed to pull a blanket over herself and bundle up before she fell asleep.

When daylight lit up there camp lily woke Kyla so she could get a little more sleep before her son was up for the day.

“I just restocked on wood,” she told Kyla, before laying her head down on her backpack, her eyes already closed.

“Thanks,” Kyla yawned, crawling out into the warm morning air.

She stared into the fire chewing a piece of jerky and started to nod off. Her head bobbed and startled her awake, she had to get up and do something. She glanced around looking for something to do. Her eyes stopped on their new home. What did she need to do to make it safer so they wouldn’t have to stay up again? After thinking about it for a few minutes an idea came to her.

She stood up to go look for some sticks that were short but wide. She had an ax in her pack but that was a lot more work and time that she didn’t think was necessary. It took roughly two hours to find all the wood she needed. She was dropping the last arm load onto her pile in front of the den when Lily came crawling out with Josiah close behind her.

“Good morning,” Kyla said, cheerfully.

“Morning. What’s with the big pile of wood?”

“I’m fixing our little house, I’m gonna close up the front with these logs so no one has to stay up with the fire.”

“Awesome. Let me go pee and I’ll be back to help you,” she said rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“There’s some jerky in my bag if you want it, or some other stuff,” Kyla said, sitting down to take a short break.

Lily came back a short while later to help, “You ready to do this?”

“Yep, can you watch me do a few first to make sure my idea works?”

“Yeah, no problem. It’ll help me get a better idea of what you mean anyway. Before we start let me go grab Josiah a couple toys from my bag, ” she said, crawling into the den.

She came back out and handed Josiah four cars and a monster truck to play in the dirt with. Kyla positioned herself where she needed to be to reach everything she needed without having to get up and down a bunch of time. Then reached out and grabbed the nearest log and started on the left side she began closing in the front of the den. The top part of the log she pushed into the dirt above her and the bottom she pulled on until it was nice and wedged into the ground. She also got several bowls of dirt and packed them around the bottom of each makeshift post just to be sure. Lily watched her do three then came to sit beside her and followed her direction. After working side by side for about an hour they had the entire front part closed in except what they left open to be able to go in and out. They looked at each other’s dirt smeared faces and busted out laughing.

“We could really use a bath,” Lily said.

“No kidding. Looks like it might be a good time to go find our water source then, and hope it’s not too far away so this wasn’t for nothing,” Kyla responded, gesturing to the work they’d just done.

“Any suggestion on how to find it?” 

“Not really other than the horses came from that direction,” she said, pointing over Lily’s shoulder.

“That way it is then. Come on Josiah, we're gonna go look for a place to take a bath.”

Finding water turned out to be much easier than they thought it’d be. When they left the campsite the horses followed them and ended up leading them right to the water. It wasn’t very far and they probably would’ve found it on their own eventually, but they might not have found the deer trail that led them through the overgrowth so they didn’t have to fight off the briers. 

Kyla was pretty happy with the decent sized stream that for the most part looked to be clean. She was even happier with the idea of taking a bath. She sat her clean close down on the bank and started into the cool water.

“Do you want to go first, or one of us go this and the other one go that way?” Lily asked, looking a bit shy.

“I’ll go this way,” Kyla said, pointing down stream. “If you need anything just holler otherwise I’ll meet you back here.”
“What about our clothes?”

“We should probably wash what we have on, then I guess wear them back to the bank and change into our dry one,” she answered with a shrug.

“Okay,” Lily said, leading Josiah down to the water.

Lily was sitting on the bank watching Josiah play in the mud when Kyla came splashing up river. She had her shirt pulled up over her belly and appeared to be using it like a basket. When she made her way onto the bank Lily was able to see her shirt was full of roots.

“What are those for?”

“Dinner,” Kyla said proudly.

“Really, roots?” she asked, skeptically. 

“Yep cattail root.”

“If you say so,” Lily shrugged.

“Y’all ready to go? I’m curious to see how these will turn out.”

“Oh god, me too,” Lily said, chuckling.

The sun was starting to set when they made it back home and the fire had gone out. Neither of them had considered trying to bank it when they left in their eagerness to get clean. 

“Do you want to restart it and I’ll get some more wood?” Kyla asked.

“Sure, there might be some coals I can stir back to life,” she said, crouching down next to it and digging around in it with a stick.

Kyla returned with an arm load of wood and placed it near the small burning fire. Josiah came up beside her with an arm load of twigs.

“Here mama, Auntie Kyla said you might need these,” he said, smiling at his mom innocently.

Kyla froze in her tracks. Lily looked to her with raised eyebrows.

“I did not ask him to call me that I promise,” Kyla said, wide eyed.

“It’s okay, I guess he can call you whatever he likes. Just don’t ever hurt him, I think he really likes  you,” Lily said, staring into the flames deep in her thoughts.
“I won’t, I’ll try my best to live up to his expectations,” she said, before leaving Lily to her thoughts.

Kyla got a pot and pocket knife from her bag and returned to the fire to prepare her roots for cooking. She’d washed the roots at the creek but now she needed to cut off the outside layer, the same way you’d peel a potato. When she was done she put the roots into the pot and retrieved two bottles of water and what was left of the beef jerky from her backpack. She poured water into the pot with her cattail roots and sat the pot close to their fire when it started to boil she added in the beef jerky. 

When the jerky had broken down enough to make a broth she got her bowl and spoon. She used one of her shirts to remove the pot from the fire and pour some of the stew into the bowl.

“I only have one bowl and one spoon, but we can take turns. Y’all go first, I know Josiah is starving.”

“You’re sure these are edible?” Lily said, taking the warm bowl from Kyla’s outstretched hand.

“Yep, my grandmother knew a lot about all kinds of plants. She preferred medicinal herbs over modern day medicine. Something about plants being natural and God made them for us for that purpose whereas men made pills so who knows what's in them or what they really do,” Kyla said chuckling.

“She’s not wrong I guess, but if I get sick later I’m not gonna be very happy with you,” Lily said, shooting her a playful glare.

After they ate Kyla laid the pot and bowl next to the small fire that was barely still burning. Then she carefully used her hands to push old ashes around and atop the red hot coals making a little nest that would keep them safe for the night.  

The full moon’s glow shined down on their little sanctuary helping to see now that the fire wasn’t burning. Lily was still sitting on the ground with Josiah lightly snoring in her lap.

“You coming?” Kyla asked.

“Yeah, I just didn’t wanna wake him,” she said, looking down at him sadly.

“I’m sure he’ll go right back to sleep if he stirs at all.”

“You're probably right,” she said, shifting him into an easier carrying position.

“Want some help?” Kyla asked, holding out her hand.

Lily grasped it and pulled herself up. They walked slowly towards their snug little den, trying not to trip over anything. Only being their second day they weren’t familiar enough with the area to be confident about it in the dark.

“I’ll climb in first, then you can hand him to me and climb in yourself”

“Okay,” Lily whispered back.

Kyla laid him down on the blanket next to Lily then went back to the mouth of their hole. She reached out and grabbed one of their leftover logs, one by one she sealed up the gap they’d left earlier so nothing would be able to crawl it’s way in with them. A wolf howled in the distants sending a cold chill shooting down her spine and goosebumps racing across her body. Please let this keep them safe for the night.

Several hours later Kyla lay awake quietly listening for what had woken, but everything was silent. Where was the chirping of the crickets? The sound of the metal pot banging roughly against her bowl startled her. Something started sniffing around looking for food, it was coming closer to their sleeping space. She thought about waking Lily but didn’t want to frighten her, maybe it would realise it couldn’t get in and go away. She froze when she heard it scratch at the wood logs, her blood ran cold. She hoped with all her might the logs would hold, but she had no idea how big the creature out there was and it just kept scratching.

Suddenly Kyla had an idea. She reached under the blanket and shook the tarp they were laying on as hard as she could, hoping to scare the creature off. It worked, she could hear it go running off through the woods. Thank God, she sighed in relief. It was probably about midnight so she tried to calm her racing heart and go back to sleep.