The partition between the cave and what would become my living room was almost finished. The quartz-coated planks fitted together with a precision that would have put a professional mason to shame, and yet I hadn't used any mortar. Ether acted as an invisible glue, sealing every joint at the atomic level. I ran my fingers over the smooth surface, feeling the faint vibration of the reinforced bonds beneath my skin.
It's as if the atoms had shaken hands, I thought, amused despite myself.
The door, however, presented another challenge. Without metal or a forge, the hinges would have to be made of stone: two carved and densified granite pivots, seated in sockets cut into the floor and the lintel, like those in old shepherds' huts. They would last for decades, and I wasn't going to open this door very often anyway.
I straightened up and turned toward what would, if all went well, become my living room. Three exterior walls made of a stone base topped with poorly fitted planks, full of holes like a block of Swiss cheese forgotten at the back of a fridge. For the past few days, drafts had been pouring through them like thieves, and the wind whistled through the gaps with the persistence of a flock of mocking crows.
Insulation, then.
Without it, winter here would be an experiment in involuntary cryogenics. I had a few planks stored near the cave entrance, but they wouldn't be enough. I needed something more… intelligent.
My fingers brushed the stone base. Beneath the rough surface, Ether flowed faintly. Some areas were more active, almost warm to the touch, where cracks let the flow pass unhindered; others seemed inert. If I could redirect Ether toward the structural weaknesses, perhaps the stone would fuse back together on its own, or at least the holes would close enough to keep out the wind.
I took my quartz out of my pocket, ready to get to work.
I started with the north wall, the most exposed. I pressed my left hand flat against the stone, where a wide crack ran its entire height, and with my other hand slowly traced a line with the quartz, following the course of the fracture. The Ether reacted before I had even finished the motion. The crack didn't disappear, but it narrowed, its edges gradually drawing closer together. I stepped back. The wall was still rough, imperfect, but the air no longer rushed through it with quite the same arrogance.
The other walls could wait. For now, I needed to deal with the smoke before I ended up suffocating.
The hearth I'd been using for weeks was nothing more than a hole in the ground surrounded by stones, filling the room with more smoke than heat. A chimney was more than a simple hole in a wall. It needed a flue, a structure to guide the smoke upward and outside. Old houses placed their hearths against stone walls to reduce the risk of fire, and I had neither fired clay nor mortar: only rock, my quartz, and a still-hazy understanding of Ether.
Let's improvise.
I chose the eastern corner, where the stone base was thickest, since it was the only side of the house directly against the cliff. Kneeling, I used the tip of the stylus to trace a circle about fifty centimeters in diameter on the stone slab at its base, then focused my intention not on destruction but on redistribution. The Ether stirred, hesitated. I pushed a little harder, visualizing the rock folding in on itself, and it gradually formed a shallow basin. All that remained was to clear away the debris: I had a hearth base, crude but functional.
The flue took longer. Above the hearth, Ether circulated lazily through the thickness of the wall, in slow loops between the natural cracks. I needed to give it a direction. With the quartz, I traced a vertical line upward from the base. The rock resisted, then yielded in fits and starts. A groove formed, ten centimeters wide and fifteen deep, which I then closed over at the front by drawing its edges together until I had a stone tube enclosed within the wall. Where the stone ended and the planks began, I extended the flue with flat stones that I fused together one by one, then pierced the roof of branches and dried earth, leaving a stone collar all around the opening so that sparks would have nothing there to ignite.
Evening was falling when I finally glimpsed a patch of gray sky at the far end of the flue. I smoothed the inside as much as I could, then sealed the last gaps between the stone and the wood.
Primitive, but effective. And above all, durable.
All that remained was to test it. I carried a few embers from the old hearth on a shovel, placed them on a bed of dry twigs, and blew gently until the flame caught. The smoke rose in a spiral, entered the flue… and vanished, drawn upward without filling the room.
Works like a charm.
I crouched beside the fire, holding my hands out toward the flames. For the first time since I'd moved in, the heat stayed in the room without making my eyes sting. I should have done this sooner.
“Tomorrow,” I told myself, looking at the walls, still cold and damp, “I'll tackle the insulation.”
The sun hadn't risen yet when I woke with a start, my body stiff from sleeping on the hard floor.
An icy draft brushed the back of my neck, and I realized two things at once: I'd forgotten to seal the gaps between the stones near the floor, and winter here didn't do things by halves.
I sat up with a groan, my joints protesting, and adjusted my necklace by reflex. The outlines of the room wavered for a second before settling, and I could finally see the problem with the part of my brain that perceived the flows. The cold air wasn't merely getting in: it poured in thick sheets through the low cracks in the north wall, slid along the walls, and pooled in the center of the room, right where I slept, methodically dissolving the little microclimate my body heat was trying to maintain.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered, rubbing my arms.
Looks like I've built a fridge instead of a house.
I crouched in front of the north wall. Cold air, being denser, would always enter low down; rather than fight it head-on, I needed to divert it. The principle of a baffle: force it to take a detour.
Using my knife and stylus, I cut two parallel channels on either side of the main crack, sloping gently toward a small opening I made near the ceiling, then fixed pieces of flat wood in front of them. The cold air would enter at the bottom, travel along the wall behind the planks, and exit at the top, carrying some of the moisture with it.
As for the damp, the Romans had their lime plaster. I didn't have lime, but I did have ash and clay. Mixing them with a little water gave me a thick paste, which I spread in a thin layer over the dampest areas. The clay would absorb excess water, and the slightly alkaline ash would slow the growth of mold.
I stepped back, my hands black with soot and earth, to survey my work. The Ether filaments were already following the new channels in slow spirals, and a discreet notification appeared in a corner of my mind:
[Thermal Flow Optimization: +30% Efficiency.]
“It's not central heating, but it's a start.”
The cold was already losing ground in the living room.
I put another log in the new fireplace, calculating how much wood I'd need to last the entire winter.