[center][h1][color=crimson]Eliza Marie Lee[/color][/h1]

[h3][i]Year - 1

Day - 185

Location - ??? Village (Approximately near modern Okayama)[/i][/h3][/center]

To say that she had to test everything she remembered about smelteries, a thing that had just been a matter of curious reading and learning to her before all of this, was an understatement. First she needed things like charcoal and bricks, for one thing, which had been its own journey just to create for the sake of maybe, potentially smelting some kind of iron. Maybe. A mere 'maybe' in all of this! And yet it was at least something, something to work toward, something....something to do with herself in this day and age at the very least. Something to do as she worked on two simple doors for her new home and tried to use what help the frustrated and groowing Narasu was willing to provide. Sometimes his father might pitch in outside of woodworking lessons and if he'd not as much to do for the day, perhaps, though Kunne had visited a couple of times to make sure she was 'doing well' if nothing else. Sometimes Eliza had found herself even invited over to eat with Iramande and his family, and a few times had eaten with them and another family who seemed to be Kunne's brother and his wife and kids. She likewise still went to help the village women each day, sometimes even watch the younger children for them, to boot. 

In short, it had been a lot of work, a lot of effort, and a fair amount of things going on! Yet it hadn't all just been herself, in the end, despite things elsewhere taking from her efforts to get a smithy up and running. She'd even begun to get to know a local girl named Ayai more as of late, a younger woman closer to her age and....in all honesty she had barely begun to reflect on how much she was thankful for that in hindsight as of late. Someone who had similar thoughts about life, despite the cultural divide, but was a few years younger and was looking for a husband among the growing and younger men of the village. Someone who knew what it was like to have brothers and no sisters, and who had a penchant for burnt food thus far to boot! Not quite her best friend, and yet a familiar enough thing to have around as they'd hung out sometimes while Eliza had tried to help her learn to cook a bit at her place or simply wished to talk about things in what little free time each of them had.

Meanwhile, baked clay bricks, as well as supporting stones to prevent fires underneath, sat before her in a tube-shaped structure with a baked clay 'pipe' of sorts sticking out of the side for air intake. The fourth smeltery design sitting before her, and the sixth one she'd made overall since Narasu brought back possible ores to her. To the side of these, but separated from them distinctively, a tightly-made clay brick box filled with the latest batch of charcoal. Albeit most of her existing charcoal was stacked inside of her house atop stones to keep them out of the weather for the time being, or had been placed inside of the current and other possible smeltery designs to try to get them to work. Beyond that, though, a humble clay-dome-covered fire pit for firing clay bricks sat there as it was, with a pile of clay bricks that sat next to it. All the while, Eliza herself was currently busy putting what she felt were the finishing touches on the latest attempt at creating a smeltery of some sort. 

And that wasn't mentioning how long even getting to this point had taken! She'd been here well over a year and a half now, and despite being seemingly a still-foreign oddity to a number of the villagers by now, albeit few had even come to watch her from afar now and then from what she had seen over the passing of the months, things had been going....well. Well enough that she'd managed to discern that some of the 'rocks' Narasu had brought prior were actually metals of some kind. Iron, maybe copper to boot, and he'd continued to bring her such rocks as they'd tried to refine 'what' to look for....then again the attempted smelting hadn't quite gone entirely according to what she hoped-

"Eriza! Are you working out back again?"

"Hmm?"

Ayai's voice rang clear as crystal, calling from her front door as the embers of the dying brick-making fire fizzled atop a bed of what by now was merely ashes. It snapped the redheaded woman out of her train of thought, hands on her hips and still midly-black-dust-stained fingers turned away from her clothing, a mild sigh coming from her mouth as the edges of her mouth turned up somewhat. The smell of smoke and burning wood clung to her, and yet she would turn about and lightly jog over to her home once more. Popping her head into the door, then, the face of the smiling, hair-bun-secured-with-a-bone-comb-wearing, friendly younger woman greeted her with-....eh?

"Tch. Good to see your showed up, Eriza."

"Kunne?"

"Yes! She wished to come along while you help me learn to cook today! Remember? And you're teaching me how to clean a fish!"

If Eliza could have smacked her forehead into the door frame for a moment, just to knock some memory back into herself, then she'd have done it. Ayai had told her a few days ago that Kunne wanted to come see the next session of her lessons! Er, not that Eliza had been doing anything but learning from Kunne and watching the other women work away at cooking otherwise by now. But where she'd been picking things up, it seemed, Ayai had, well...

"Ayai's mother tells me she's been somewhat improving, and so I came to see how you've been teaching her somewhat. The men have returned with fish and deer by now, and so we managed to get some to bring here."

She...Ayai's mother...eh?! It was time to spend together, at least, but...was the younger woman improvving enough for it to be noticed? And by Kunne of all people? 

"O-Oh! Yes, we can get to preparing these right away. Ah, just let me clean my hands first-"

The surprise still fading, but not completely gone, Eliza would hurry to her 'washing hands' water vessel (kept distinct from drinking water) and would quickly move to get the black of charcoal soot off of her hands. As the vessel sat near her home fire in the center of the structure, and near a pile of bricks she hoped to make into a proper oven for wood in some fashion sooner than later, Ayai followed her example somewhat thereafter as Eliza took the one fish from the girl as Kunne held the chunk of deer meat that was to be cooked. The older woman never raised somewhat of an eyebrow at the practice, though Eliza's boiling of even fresh water before its use had raised her eyebrows in the past, but she did glance as Eliza moved to grab a stone knife she kept for cooking purposes. Well, cooking and cleaning purposes at least. 

"We can head to the river, if you'd like, though I got another fresh pot of water sitting near the front door we can use to clean the fish."

Some of the women seemed to prefer going to the running river or the shoreline to wash some of the catch of the day. Well, the fish at least. Mostly they seemed to enjoy oysters for the most part, it seemed, especially in the spring and summer. Fish was still there as well, though it seemed more a winter things alongside smoked and dried shellfish kept for the winters. Not a common a thing, though the place where they dumped their many empty oyster shells and broken tools and such that had no use a bit outside of the village was something clearly visible even from afar during the day. 

But on a day like this? A good fish was a treat it would seem. No wonder Kunne had come along to see this in particular. 

"Hmm, if you've the good water to spare, then that is fine."

...It was a peculiar use of water, yes, that was for certain. Well, not too peculiar but...er...she had a pot for drinking, a pot for washing hands, and a pot for cleaning food to be prepared to eat. It was not exactly all 'normal' to everyone there in the village, she gathered, but it was something of a familiar comfort from home at least. Not that it didn't mean hauling a few jugs of water from the river rather early in the morning, though, so she could get other things done for the day. [s]Water really was a heavy thing when it came down to it. Ugh.[/s]

Nodding, Eliza would wuickly go to retrive the pot nearby to Kunne, bringing it closer to the fire but keeping it away from her drinking water that had already been set aside next to the fire pit's opposite side. Then, as Ayai moved closer to her to watch, Kunne would work on getting the deer meat on the basic spit that Eliza had above her firepit. Not an uncommon thing for women in the village to make use of, a spit that is, as Eliza had come to learn over the past year somewhat. Not that she knew everything about the locals, really....but she was also splitting her time up with her own efforts as well. 

"So take the blade, and place it about....here on the bottom of the fish. You see?"

Ayai nodded in return, before Eliza carefully moved to cut an opening on the bottom of the fish which she could then put the knife into. She then began to move it up the bottom of the fish.

"You want to not be too hasty, or else you might break the knife. But you also don't want to push the knife in too deep so you don't damage its guts. Those could make the meat bad."

"Eh? But won't it all wash out in the water?"

"Well, no, some things can taint good meat. It's the same with preparing a deer the hunters caught. Let's let you finish cutting this open, so if you'd put your hands over here with mine..."

Kunne watched silently as she now moved to put wood on the fire, seeing the hands of Eliza take those of Ayai's as she held the knife. Guiding her hands to cut the fish, how deep to hold it, and how to move the blade. It was...something, something the girl hadn't had a chance to learn from her own mother as far as the readhead knew. And that was rather strange to boot. Yet Ayai's mother had often been sickly and weak much of the time after the birth of her youngest child (Ayai), it seemed, from what Kunne had once told the redheaded foreigner in private. From there, Ayai's older sisters had done things, but not really shown her anything much in their scramble to get things done and help their mother over the following years since. 

In that sense...well, someone willing to teach her was certainly a valuable asset to have around perhaps. Or a friend who was willing to teach things she hadn't the chance to learn. 

"So like-, ah!"

"Careful! Careful. Whew. You nearly cut yourself there."

Ayai was a beautiful younger woman, and she'd eventually confided in Eliza that she felt 'behind' the other village women...younger and older alike. Not in every way, her mother and sisters had taught her some things, but time was finite and life contionued in its eternal march onward. She knew how to sew clothes well enough, somewhat on making clay pots and firing them, and she'd been among the few to talk to Eliza rather than gawk from afar. As far as Eliza was concerned after these past many months, Ayai was a friend who was trying her best. At the same time, the girl seeemed...almost a bit desperate to 'get up to par' to boot. 

"This is how you remove this organ, slicing at these spots here...and here. That way you can get the stoamch with ease."

"Oh! What about the scales, though?"

"Only after we get the inside cleaned out first. That'll make it easier to remove them, and without the risk of cutting into the body and the guts in the process I think."

"But wouldn't doing that first be easier?"

"Eriza is right about that much, Ayai."

"Eh?!"

Well...progress was progress, at least, right?

[hr]

[b][Summary - Eliza has been doing a lot of work for almost the past year, mostly amounting to building her way up to hopefully some kind of smithing operation yet still in the future. She needed charcoal, and clay bricks, and that has taken months of work to get up and operational. She's prepared some experimental designs, based on her hobby and looking into things like smelteries when she was back home originally, and been able to do enough to figure out what 'rocks' Narasu has been bringing her are actually metal or not. Most of that metal in kind has turned out to be iron. Villagers don't all talk to her still, some still see her as a foreigner, but others have been looking at her work from afar with curiosity and Kunne's brother and his fmaily have met her properly by now too. Further, she's somewhat befriended a local village woman a few years younger than her named Ayai who has become a friend of sorts while tryhing to learn a few things from Eliza in an 'attempt to catch up to the other village women' in ways so she can find a husband. 

Yet during an afternoon of finishing her latest attempted smeltery, and Narasu likely out hunting with his maternal uncle, Ayai showed up suddenly with a fish and...Kunne in tow?! Kunne carrying some deer meat to cook over Eliza's firepit and its spit at least, while mainly there to observe the two younger women go through a cooking lesson on how to clean and prepare a fish. Or is there perhaps more to Kunne's intent to observe than meets the eye? 

In any case, Eliza continued to work at her personal goal as well as work with and learn from the Jomon villagers whom she lives amongst. She hasn't seen another tribe in all of this time either, though....so perhaps this tribe is a bit more isolated than some of the others, by choice or simply by coincidence or otherwise. Yet something in that vein might be on the horizon as well? Who knows for sure? Only time will tell!][/b]