Treegiraffe2's Arc

Chapter 4 of 10

The next morning Treegiraffe2 stood over the full chest with a sinking stomach. The machine had run again at dawn. Wheat bundles spilled over the lid and rolled into the dirt. Some already lay flat and browning in the grass. "It's rotting," she said. "One chest can't hold what these machines make." She had built farms that fed themselves. Now they were drowning her. Skibble crouched by the fallen bundles and turned one over in his hands. He was her first friend here, the one who had dug her shelter and never asked for a role in return. He still didn't have one. "So we need more chests," he said. "A lot more. And somewhere to put them." "Not just chests," Treegiraffe2 said. She looked at the barn, the wheat rows, the empty field beyond. "A whole building. Rows of storage, all in one place, so nothing ever overflows again." She pulled a stick and drew a wide box in the dirt. "Shelves. Chests stacked three high. Lanterns so we can see the loot at night." Skibble grinned. "Finally. A job." He said it lightly, but she caught the meaning under it. He wanted to build something that mattered. She handed him the plan. They worked through the day. Treegiraffe2 chose pink wood for the walls because the town square would be pretty, and storage could be pretty too. Skibble raised the frame and set a red roof over it. They lined the inside with wooden chests, three neat rows deep, and hung lanterns from the ceiling beams. The light turned the pink walls warm. "Move the wheat before dark," Treegiraffe2 said. She and Skibble hauled bundle after bundle from the spilling chest into the storehouse. Each chest they filled, they left room in the next. When they emptied the machine's chest at last, it thumped shut clean and light. She stood in the doorway and looked at the rows. Full chests, but no overflow. Space for ten more harvests. Space for a whole town's worth. "We did it," Skibble said. He wiped dirt on his black shirt and looked pleased with himself. Treegiraffe2 planted a patch of wild flowers by the door, red and blue and yellow, to mark the new building. Then she saw the problem she had not solved. The storehouse held everything now. All the wheat, the tools, the ores they'd dug. One roof over the town's whole supply. She looked at the rotted barn fence, patched but weak. She thought of the zombies that came at night. "Skibble," she said slowly. "If monsters ever break in here, we don't lose one chest. We lose all of it." The storehouse solved the overflow. It also gathered every valuable thing they owned into a single target.