Her eyes to see what is inaccessible to humans. Something that no one has ever seen before…
Shelter of the first people
The Great Volcano – a mighty mountain, towering above the universe, proudly propped up the sky. A considerable part of it sometimes hid among the clouds passing by, and from below, at the pedestal, it seemed that the edges of the peaks did not exist at all. From the north, the volcano was surrounded by ridges covered with coniferous vegetation. They pierced the cloudy sky with their ends, but their greatness did not look as irresistible as that of the creation under heaven. An immense grove of araucaria stretched in a dense cover from the southeast to the foot of the mountain. She then rose to the heights, then fell deep into the ravines, creating an amazing variety of terrain. In the distance, the grove bordered only on the horizon, and closer to the Great Volcano it grew to its first cliffs, and only huge boulders, tens of thousands of moons lying at the base, in places interrupted the green cover of the creator. From all the western slopes of the mountain there was a plain. Covered with bennettitic plants, ginkgo trees, and steppe palms, it gradually grew into a liana forest in the southwest, and into a forest in the west. The north-west of the lowlands ended in a valley of wooded ridges and small jungle – the former path of a nomadic tribe.
The village of the first people stood at the southern foot of the mountain, on the lower cliffs of which underground cavities were once formed – caves, and the first people gladly arranged and settled them. Elderly relatives settled in the caves, since it was impossible to be in the camp during the day: there was a rumble of running children everywhere, militant cries of teenagers from the arena of the weapons mansion, motives of drumming, noise and other fuss were constantly heard. And the elders favored peace and quiet. But in times of heavy rains in the grottoes of the old people, it still became livelier: the buildings of the settlement could not withstand the raging elements, and the tribe more than once escaped from the tiring moisture in the dwellings of the ancestors.
From a rocky crevice under one of the high ledges, as a great favor of the creator, a small stream was beating. In some places, his fellow tribesmen directed his modest channel into makeshift canals. The channels filled leather-covered vats, wells built on the slopes. Filled wells from an excess of water through the same channels returned priceless life-giving moisture back to the stream. The channel went just below the settlement into a gorge under the slope, and here, among the vast cliffs and araucaria, the main part of the village was located.
On araucaria, the first people erected huts for juveniles. Small buildings – below a tall fellow tribesman – were given, like most buildings in the settlement, rounded shapes. For very young children, the structures were usually installed on short dense growths sticking out of tree trunks. The branches were crushed and tied with liana twine. So it turned out a stable flooring – a lead on which the frame of the hut was placed. There could be several such tales along the entire length of the trunk. The leafy cover of the flooring did not make it possible to detect buildings from the ground, and the arrangement of the floorings one above the other created shelter on the lower branches from the scorching rays of the sun and annoying rainwater.
For slightly older children, buildings were erected at the ends of large branches, where araucaria shoots gathered in dense clusters. The core of the branches was crushed, and the edges were left as is. The prepared floors for these dwellings resembled the nests of Pterosaurs. The installed frame in the center of the flooring was covered with leather soaked in fat. A layer of fat protected the dwellings from the rains, but, unfortunately, did not save them from powerful downpours. The finished hut from all sides, except for the side of the entrance to it, was enveloped by untouched ramifications of araucaria. To the huts, the hunters raised deep lime vats: in them, women made fires for cooking or heating. Huts, set in places of dense growth, could accommodate no more than four kids, and at the edges of the branches – no more than four teenagers. The children slept on soft, hay-stuffed leather bedding.
Young descendants, by the way, constantly hung their homes with all sorts of decorations and trinkets. They found, caught, begged from adults or exchanged various nonsense among themselves: butterflies, eyes and wings of dragonflies, fangs, claws of reptiles and other nonsense. After meals, they collected the gnawed bones of lizards, dried them, washed them in a stream and dragged them to their huts. Everyone decorated their halabuda with everything that came to hand.
Between the branches of araucaria hunters pulled suspension bridges. Liana twine was fixed everywhere and lowered to the ground so that it was possible to climb onto the branches not only along the trunk. It was the huts that, in the event of a sudden penetration or attack of predators on the settlement, became the most reliable shelter for juveniles. True, Chameleons – the only terrestrial carnivores – could climb trees. But from them, just in case, stretch marks from ropes with bone rattles were always installed around the trunks – ribs, ridges, fangs of small cold-blooded and other remains. The rattles warned of climbers. Fortunately, Chameleons were extremely rarely found in coniferous forests, and they climbed so slowly that it was not difficult to distinguish them from people without looking, by the sound of tinkling streamers: a constant ringing of bones – a relative climbs, a rare – Chameleon. And if the Chameleon managed to rise at least a little, then a hail of stones could always stop him, because there were plenty of cobblestones on the araucaria. But so far, neither the Chameleons nor the attacks of other lizards near the Great Volcano have yet happened.
The foot of the mountain was as if created for a permanent camp. Most of the barriers that reliably protected the settlement from reptiles turned out to be the same boulders sticking out for eternity. And between them, the tribesmen erected high fences from fallen trees on the outskirts of the grove. Horns were attached to the fences. So the hunters secured themselves from land-based predators. Winged predators – Pterosaurs and Sharp-winged birds – never appeared in these places, since the first lived on the crowns of liana forests (the closest one was far in the southwest), and the second settled in the jungle, and the path to the jungle in the north lay in the moon of walking. The small flying Pawwings, which often roamed among the coniferous forest, did not pose a threat. Therefore, Roshan, the elders and other shamans believed that this place was the most reliable in the last thousand moons of nomadism.
The village had two loopholes. One in the southeast, the other in the southwest. Both first people were locked with small barriers. The loopholes were guarded by sentinels on watchtowers, standing two hundred paces apart, between which were the huts of the hunting parties. The relatives called this place the House of Hunters.
These dwellings were rounded structures made of branches, tree trunks and dense skin. Trunks – piles – were sharpened and driven into the ground. Then, with the help of ropes and branches, the piles were tied together in a circle from above and below. The finished structure was covered with a leather cloth and soaked with fat, like huts. The roof of each hut had a hole – a chimney, so it was possible to make a fire in the hut and cook food. Around the buildings, covering a small area, the tribesmen fixed the horns. Thus, each hunter’s house was a kind of defensive outpost. Outside, the walls of the houses were painted with symbols of hunting and tribal life, and from the inside they were plastered with limestone so that the huts would not ignite from random sparks of a fire.
Hunters hung dwellings with the bones of defeated herbivores or predators who attacked during the persecution. Some leaders of the Great Hunt decorated their buildings with the skulls of slain lizards. The largest bone hung over the entrance to the chief’s hut. The head of the Gigantosaurus – a huge and ancient herbivore that the first people saw – proudly adorned the leader’s tent. And the tent itself was located on a ledge, directly above the hunting dwellings, where the base of the cliff turned into a constructed observation platform.
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