Chapter 117: Making A Raincoat
The beastmen should all have some ability to observe weather changes.
Just like old farmers in the countryside who observe the weather, Gray said it would rain in the evening, and it really started raining at midnight.
Su Ran was startled awake by a thunderclap at midnight.
Because the weather that evening was really sultry, Su Ran hadn’t closed the window before going to bed.
As a result, at midnight, a thunderclap boomed, and Su Ran, who was sleeping soundly wrapped in a blanket with Gray, suddenly woke up from her dream!
She panicked, propped herself up, turned her head to look outside the window, and saw a quick flash of bright light outside, followed two seconds later by another thunderclap!
While she was watching the window where the sound of rain had already started pattering with her heart pounding, slowly calming her mood, a large hand suddenly wrapped around her lower back, and a scorching hot chest pressed against her from the side.
“Ran Ran, don’t be afraid, it’s raining.”
It gently rubbed its nose bridge against Su Ran’s nose tip and softly comforted her.
“Mm, I’m fine.”
Su Ran also hugged Gray back, then lay back down in the blanket.
A few minutes later, she got up again to put on her shoes, and amid Gray’s puzzled “Ran Ran?”, she walked to the window side and closed the propped-up window.
The rain outside carried a chill, so this time when Su Ran closed the window, she didn’t even leave a small gap.
The torrential rain poured down over this boundless forest all at once, almost instantly washing away the sultriness of the past few days.
By the next day morning when they got up, the fine rain sound coming through the thick window board showed that this rain, which had fallen for most of the night, still hadn’t lessened much.
Even the air inside the house was a few degrees cooler than usual.
When Su Ran woke up in the morning, Gray had already woken up too.
It didn’t know how much earlier it had woken up than Su Ran, but now seeing her open her eyes, it lowered its head to nuzzle and cuddle with her.
The hot-blooded youth had tasted the marrow.
After finishing once in the morning, Gray somehow got water.
Su Ran guessed… no, she was sure!
This silly wolf must have braved the rain to go to the riverside to fetch water by itself.
Because when it brought the boiled water in for Su Ran to bathe, its animal hide pants were still wet!
It made Su Ran so angry yet touched, and a bit wanting to hit it!
There was clearly water stored in the water vat inside the house, yet it stupidly braved the rain to run to the riverside.
But this also reminded her that she should make an umbrella or a raincoat.
The materials for making an umbrella or raincoat were easy to find; animal hide could be used directly.
Now Su Ran didn’t have much of other things, but she had plenty of animal hide.
Excluding what had already been used, the processed but unused animal hide in her hands had already filled nearly one-third of the space in the cupboard behind the heated brick bed.
In the morning, Su Ran cooked the two wild chickens from yesterday.
The way she cooked these two wild chickens was a method she hadn’t tried before.
Deep-frying!
She cleaned the two wild chickens, marinated them with seasonings for a while, coated them with green soap fruit powder and egg liquid, and directly deep-fried them in the pot.
While frying the chickens, she also had Gray chop half a rack of ribs from the four-eared ox. She marinated them with seasonings too, and after finishing the wild chickens, she would make these ribs into fried ribs.
The first wild chicken was a bit overcooked because she forgot about the fire under the stove, so its color looked a bit dark.
By the time of the second one, it was fried just right.
After frying the remaining ribs as well, Su Ran boiled some white bean fruit.
Then, draping an animal hide over herself, she ran to the vegetable garden behind and pulled up a housheng vegetable, stir-fried it with finger onion and green-skinned egg, and that made a plate of vegetables.
Today’s breakfast was a bit late because of the “accident” when they got up early.
By the time everything was cooked, it was already past nine in the morning.
By the time they finished breakfast, it was almost ten o’clock.
At this time, the rain outside the house showed no sign of letting up at all.
Because of the rain, the air today was much colder. When Su Ran got up in the morning, she had already changed into her stormsuit, but she had removed the inner lining of the stormsuit.
Otherwise, it would be a bit too thick!
And when cooking this morning, she had lit the fire at the stove in the eastern bedroom.
So although it was rainy and humid outside, sitting on the heated brick bed, she didn’t feel cold inside the house.
After finishing the meal, she and Gray cleared the tableware from the table.
Gray washed the dishes in the outside kitchen, while she took out animal hide and bone needle, preparing to sew two animal hide raincoats first.
The raincoat was in a regular style, but with looser sleeves and smaller cuffs, easy to make and wear.
For the raincoat, Su Ran used red-skinned pig hide and four-eared ox hide from two kinds of animals.
Red-skinned pig hide was soft, large in size, and lightweight, very suitable for making raincoats that wouldn’t hinder movement.
Four-eared ox hide was thicker and a bit harder.
Su Ran planned to cut it properly, sew it into two layers, and use it for the brim above the raincoat hood and the cuffs on the sleeves.
When sewing, Su Ran used the smallest bone needle she had made herself.
Because she was afraid the seams of the raincoat would leak, she folded over a section of the animal hide edge before starting to sew.
Su Ran made a total of two raincoats, one large and one small, using up five pieces of red-skinned pig hide in total.
The buttons on the front of the raincoats were made from small conches picked up from the seaside that she had planned to use for wind chimes; they were small and cute on the dark red animal hide.
After finishing, Su Ran called Gray over to try it on.
Gray’s raincoat used a total of three and a half pieces of red-skinned pig animal hide.
Of course, they used the most intact middle parts of the hides, and the remaining scraps were directly discarded by Su Ran.
She had plenty of animal hide on hand now, so she didn’t feel bad about it.
After Gray put on its raincoat, what had dragged almost to the floor when Su Ran stood holding it up only reached its calves.
Su Ran looked down at the section of Gray’s calf exposed under the raincoat and thought for a good while.
The main thing was seeing half of its tail sticking out from under the raincoat hem, considering whether she should make a rain cover for its big tail too.
Otherwise, if its body got wet, it was easy to dry, but a wet tail was hard to deal with.
But that could wait; now, first test if the raincoat leaked when worn.
She put on her own small raincoat too, then put on the hoods for both Gray and herself, and pulled Gray outside the house.
Large raindrops hit the hood making pitter-patter sounds, and soon the outside of the raincoats were all splashed with water.
Gray stood in front of the house, spun in place a few times, then looked at Su Ran with a face full of novelty:
“No… rain water!”
“Gray can go hunting in the rain!”
Its eyes sparkled as it looked at Su Ran.
Actually, before meeting Su Ran, rain couldn’t stop the beastmen from hunting.
After all, the beastmen needed to eat.
But after meeting Su Ran, she wouldn’t let Gray go out when it was raining.
Although beastmen bodies were strong, what if something happened?
Moreover, getting the body all wet and soggy wasn’t easy to dry.
Not to mention now living inside the house, Su Ran didn’t want to get the animal hides on the heated brick bed wet and soggy.
Mainly, Gray itself didn’t like the feeling of being wet all over.
So making this raincoat was very necessary!
