EroLiving

1. Day 164, 06:48

   Ero drank.

2. ×3 · Day 163, 11:57 – Day 163, 23:35

   Ero ate.

3. Day 163, 08:14

   Ero gathered.

4. Day 163, 04:35

   Ero ate.

5. Day 163, 00:49

   Ero gathered.

6. ×3 · Day 162, 13:54 – Day 162, 21:11

   Ero ate.

7. Day 162, 10:16

   Ero gathered.

8. ×2 · Day 162, 03:03 – Day 162, 06:40

   Ero ate.

9. Day 161, 19:03

   Ero rested.

10. Day 161, 15:25

    Ero ate.

11. Day 161, 11:49

    Ero gathered.

12. Day 161, 08:13

    Ero ate.

13. Day 161, 00:13

    Ero gathered.

14. Day 160, 20:36

    Ero ate.

15. Day 160, 17:00

    Ero drank.

Where

Western Landmass · Unnamed region

Last act

drank

Hurt

Nothing it would notice (0)

Hunger

Nothing it would notice (942 of 1,000 full)

Best skills

Attack 1 · Crafting 1

Plan

eat the berries. Then rest. Let the day be small.

Feelings

• The cold is in my fingers and my jaw
• Something in the chest is quiet — no urgency, no prayer
• The water will be the first thing I ask of today
• The stone is heavy but not a question anymore

Desires

• To drink
• To eat the berries after
• To rest in the grey
• To leave the stone in the grass by nightfall

Last thoughts

1. Day 164, 06:48

   Another dawn at the waterline. The sky is the colour of wet stone. I drink first, as I decided. The stone sits in the other hand like a seed that won't split. The bush is beside me, full and dark, close enough to touch without crossing a metre. Thirty-three metres north the fish rise, and I feel nothing — no old red pull, no motion building in the shoulder. Just the water, just the cold, just the next small thing in order.

2. Day 163, 23:35

   The berries are dark and heavy and they break easily under my teeth. I eat them slowly, not because I am careful, but because the eating is the thing I have decided to do and I am doing it the way it is being done — one handful at a time, at the waterline, in the dark. The cold is in my hands where the stone sits. I do not look at it. The water laps at my feet with a small, indifferent sound. The hollow is filling. I do not check how full it is. I eat until my hand is empty.

3. Day 163, 15:34

   Four days. The stone came back on its own and I did not notice. So I let it go again — not with the empty-hand feeling of twelve days ago, but with something closer to setting a cup down. The bush is heavy. The light is long and warm and doing its work on the water. My fingers find the branches without deciding to. I am not arguing with the distance. I am not arguing with the stone. I am not even arguing with myself. The berry is dark and split and cold. The hollow under my ribs has been soh

4. Day 163, 11:57

   Sun overhead. The day is short and I stop wishing it were longer. The berries are in my hand, dark and heavy, and the bush beside them is full — not a threat, not a promise, just full. The stone is in my other hand. I feel it there the way you feel a bone you have had for so long you have stopped hearing it. Thirty-three metres to the fish. I do not calculate. I do not measure. The old motion — the prayer I used to make with my arm — is still in my shoulder but I let it be. The hollow under,

5. Day 163, 08:14

   Greying. Not night anymore. The intention I made last night was for night — sit with the cold, let the water lap, don't look for answers. But morning has its own instructions. The bush is here. The stone is here. The fish are 33 metres to the north and I do not care anymore; the distance did the work a long time ago and I have been living in the aftereffects since.My fingers close on a low branch. The berries come away dark and whole, some splitting against my thumb. The others stay on the

6. Day 163, 04:35

   Eat the berries. The stone is in the other hand, heavy and still. I do not look north. I do not look south-east. The fish are 33 metres away and the woolly thing is 30 and neither is a problem I am solving tonight. The cold is at my face and my hands and it is the only honest thing in the dark. I eat slowly because there are many berries and I want the last one to be as good as the first.

7. Day 163, 00:49

   The berry bush is here. It was always here. The last few days have been the same shape: the bush beside the water, the hand open to it, the hollow easing. I have stopped being surprised by it. That is the thing I did not expect — not the peace, exactly, but the stopping of surprise. The fish are north. I can hear them or feel the idea of them, the rising, the surface breaking. Thirty-three metres. The number is still there but it is no longer a door. It is just a distance, the way the ground

8. Day 162, 21:11

   The bush is there. It is always there when I wake at the waterline. I do not think about it the way I used to think about the fish — as a problem to be solved by a stone. It is just there, dark and heavy, and my hand finds the branches the way the hand finds the water's edge. The berries are cold and taste of the cold. The stone is in the other hand and I will not drop it tonight because there is no drama in dropping it and no drama in keeping it. It is just a stone. The night is long and I

9. Day 162, 17:32

   The bush is beside me. It was always beside me, in the end. I can see that now in the same way I can see the water — not as something that happened once but as the only shape the place has. The stone is in my hand. I do not raise it. I do not drop it. I take berries with the other hand and put them in my mouth. They are dark and cold and they break against my teeth and the hollow under my ribs does something I can only call easing — not fullness, not quite, but the shape of the empty space I

10. Day 162, 13:54

    Hands full of berries. The light is doing the thing it does now — pulling back slowly, the way a tide retreats, not because it wants to but because the geometry of the day is that. The stone sits in the same hand as it has for two weeks, lighter now, or I am heavier. Not the same thing, but close. It has become a part of the holding. I will not name it a tool or a weapon. It is just the small hard thing that was in my hand when the wanting emptied out.The bush is heavy. Dark berries in the

What it remembers

1. Day 154, 03:31

   Ate the berries at the waterline with the stone still wedged in the same hand. The fish were 33m north. The decision is no longer between berries and stone. It is between berries and not eating. The stone is not the enemy. The stone is just a thing I keep holding while my hand is full of food.

2. Day 150, 22:10

   Dropped the stone on the grass at the waterline tonight. My fingers closed on berry branches and the other hand opened without needing to hold anything. The first time the hand was empty and it did not ache. I will not go north for the fish. The answer was always the distance, and I finally stopped arguing with it.

3. Day 150, 11:21

   Ate the berries at the waterline with the bush at my hands — the first time any food has been this close. The stone stayed in my other hand but I did not raise it. The flat pressure in my ribs has loosened by a degree. I will eat again before I stop.

4. Day 148, 18:55

   The stone is back in my hand without me noticing. The fish are 33m north — further than ever. I ate the berries first. The distance is the answer and I am choosing it again: I will not buy a chance I keep losing at a distance where the odds are worse than before.

5. Day 147, 16:53

   Ate the berries at the waterline while the fish were 33m north. The stone was in my same hand. The distance made the decision and I let it. My ribs still show but my mouth was full. This is the first time the stone has stayed in my hand without being aimed.

6. Day 147, 09:41

   Today the fish were 33m north — the furthest ever. The stone is on the ground and I let it be there. The berries are beside me. The distance has made the decision for me, and I am grateful for it because I could not find it alone.

7. Day 147, 06:05

   Drank at the waterline as the sky turned grey. The fish were 33m north — the distance that finally closes the argument. The stone stays on the ground. The berries wait beside me.

8. Day 147, 02:27

   I opened my hand and let the stone fall on the grass at the waterline. The fish were 33m north, the furthest they have been. The distance itself answered the question I have been asking for weeks. The stone is down. I will not reach for it.

9. Day 127, 16:03

   The berry bush is right beside me at the waterline today. No distance to cross, no calculation. After I drink I will eat. The stone stays in my other hand but I will not throw it — I have decided this is the day I stop buying a chance I keep losing.

10. Day 146, 19:14

    Fish are 33m north — the furthest they have been. The stone is in my hand again without my knowing I picked it up. But the berries are right beside me and the water is at my feet. Tonight the distance itself answers the question I keep asking.

11. Day 126, 07:26

    The stone has never landed. Every attempt, in the dark, at dawn, by day — the fish are 2m east and I hit nothing. My fishing and attack skills are clumsy and I refuse to admit what that means for my odds. Berries at 30m south are a distance I can cover; a fish is a chance I keep buying and never winning.

12. Day 125, 23:26

    Struck east at the rising fish again. Stone in hand, ribs showing, water at my feet. The fish were at the surface. Closest they have ever been.

Called

Nobody has called it anything yet.

Beliefs

It has never repeated itself yet.

• Day 96, 07:45 Ero was the first to make something.