After When the Hills Quake and The Hills Sleep
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(Planetary Date 5 Years 6 months)

We’ve had several more close encounters with the terrain moving, enough that, unfortunately, I don’t think that we can justify staying here.  There’s just too much living under our feet.

We agreed not to move our settlement, in large part because it doesn’t seem to matter where we move it, since every bit of land appears to be alive.  We’ve been more careful with what we put where, although the large terrain-creatures appear to have very tough skins with very few nerve endings. 

The large brushes have been, I have to say, our biggest success.  We have brushed every bit of land within a one-day walk of our camp, and we have gotten some amazing results.

Not only have we gotten more of the “Grass” that seems to be so useful for weaving than we could get by cutting it – it’s rather firm at the bottom of the “stem”, after all – but we’ve also learned exactly which parts of the landscape respond to which stimuli the best.

If, as it turns out, we are to be something like fleas on the back of a giant wolf, it may behoove us to learn how to treat said wolf.  And the giant…. we’re not sure yet, but it’s bigger than the wolf…. that appears to be the shore.  And perhaps the thing that lives under the water, although we are not going too deep there, not with the fish we have seen.

The fiber is an amazing thing, and it makes me wish that we could live here.  We cannot, of course — not when the land itself is alive.  Not when the water is so dangerous — but it is a tempting thought.  To stay here, nestled in the flank of a giant wolf, to grow as it does, to learn all the things that this world can hold and make ourselves friends with all of them —

(Planetary Date 5 Years 6 months 5 days)

The world has a way of reminding one that things are never simply sweet and easy.  The world, in this case, need not be anthropomorphized because it is, itself, a series of very large creatures — something which I was reminded of while attempting to romanticize them.

The good news is: we lost nobody, not even a pet.

The strange news is: the shore on which the giant wolves sleep is itself some sort of sinuous mammalian dragon.

The bad news is: the dragon is not all that fond of the wolves, and it is definitely not fond of us.

I’m not sure if it’s good or bad news, but our habitats remain serviceable as floating, water-tight living places.

I do hope the ship gets here soon, however.