I left a couple hundred dollars with Sam to offer Trevor to install the shed's light fixtures. We're actually going to get the damn thing done. I guess even if we wind up leaving what Tsu'na likes to call our "starting area" we will have left a mark on the community.

To convince Leon we weren't going to have another explosion, we forced open a door at the end of the building shell to ensure "adequate ventilation". Of course, the explosion hadn't been from fumes, but rather a particularly bad botch, but we couldn't tell Leon that and we had to tell him something. I considered toting in a battery-powered fan, but decided we had enough coincidental magic.

Corn oil was a refreshingly simple recipe to write. It was a Culinarian recipe rather than an Alchemy recipe, so it used fire shards rather than water. When Leon checked on us in the morning he could see us working with non-exploding corn-scented liquid, and that reassured him for the rest of the day.

But gasoline still wasn't coming. There's only so many permutations of ingredients and aspected shards, and it seemed like we tried them all. We didn't have any violent botches, but it's hard to tell the difference between a skill failure and a recipe failure. The only stable results we got were variations on the corn oil sludge we'd made the first day. Fortunately we were able to uncover where the bathrooms had been, so we had a drain to pour the sludge down. Really hoping it's biodegradable.

"Maybe we need better ink...?"

"Our journals are all written in the same ink, Husband. If the page accepts copper ink, why should it care if we use something else?"

"Just running out of ideas. What's the next higher ink? Enchanted iron?"

"That requires viscous secretions. Does this world have slugs?"

"Yeah, but the biggest I've ever seen is three inches long."

"That is a lot of slugs. What about them is a secretion?"

I started googling on my phone. "Slug slime is a form of mucus."

"So viscous secretions that we have worked with are..."

"Slug snot. Yes."

Tsu'na wrinkled her nose. "What is a word for the disgust I now feel?"

"I think 'yuck' covers it."

She nodded. "Yuck. The next higher is silver ink, which takes acidic secretions."

"Corrosive slug snot. I am not aware of corrosive slugs in this world."

"Mythril ink, perhaps? Can we get scalekin blood?"

"We actually might be able to. You might find gator hunting fun."

"What is a gator?"

"Like a croc, but smaller and less demonic. Also no death fart."

"I will not miss the death fart."

"But mythril ink takes mythril. I don't think there's any place in the state with the right terrain for mining it."

"Does that mean we cannot go gator hunting?"

"Of course we can. We can find them in...let's see..." I did a quick search on my phone. "...McCurtain County, southeast corner of the state."

So we kept trying. And we tried some more. And the day wore on, until finally it occurred to us that if the fumes were the important part we should maybe be adding wind shards.

So we did. And we got something new.

It had an appropriate, perhaps cancer-causing smell.

It sloshed in a very liquidy fashion.

I stuck a finger in it. It felt right as I rubbed it between my fingers.

We poured it into a paint tray. I tossed in a lit match. Very satisfactory yellow flames.

We stood there, an arm around each other, watching it burn. Then Tsu'na moved in front of me and wrapped both arms around my neck. "It has been a month, Husband."

"I believe you're right, my love."

I think I heard Leon come in while we were kissing. If so, he left without saying anything.

As much as we wanted to, the building shell on a sunny afternoon wasn't a great venue. Besides, we weren't done. We had made flammable liquid from corn, but we needed to see if it was flammable liquid that worked in an engine.

I'd stuck the Hartmans' lawnmower in my inventory when we left. I brought it out, we poured some of our new corn gas into it, and I tried to start it up. It really tried to start, it coughed and sputtered, but it just wouldn't quite catch. That probably meant we'd made cornosene instead of cornoline and had some refining to do.

Leon came (back?) in at the sound of the lawnmower.

"Making progress," I assured him. "Not there yet. Gonna go down to the gas station and get some STP. Want anything, my love?"

"What did you call those puffy things we had before?"

"Pork rinds?"

"Yes, please." She hesitated, contemplated her hands, and said, "I will go with you. I would like my hands clean."

Since our hands were equally dirty from fuel production, we had no problem walking hand in hand to the gas station. Leon had offered a ride, but we said we needed to stretch our legs. And maybe we were coming off as coupleish. One of those stealth tensions had taken its leave, and we were feeling its absence.

We washed up, we got drinks and pork rinds, and I bought a five-gallon gas can. Tsu'na cheerfully pointed out that at $35 it cost much more than five gallons of gas. Now that we were seeing actual progress with hydrocarbons we might be able to make our own gas cans soon. But in the meantime we still had Leon's truck to fill.

The afternoon turned into a new cycle of: adjust the recipe, put newly made liquid into mower, try to start it, add STP until it did start, run it until it was empty, lather rinse repeat. But it was a cycle of demonstrable progress as it took a little less gas treatment each time. I moved the mower out of the building shell so Leon could see my attempts to start it, and so that he wouldn't go in and see Tsu'na performing Alchemy. ("I mean, there shouldn't be another explosion, but let's just stay out here anyway, okay?")

At last there came a point where the mower ran with no additives at all. I ran it dry, put in more of the latest batch and ran it again, to be sure. Nary a sputter.

Then it got tricky.

"...I mean, don'cha got a car of your own to try it out on?"

I pointed to the two recently-purchased bicycles leaning against the building. Tsu'na's still learning how to ride hers, but they were good as props.

"But I saw what that stuff did to the mower! What if it gunks up my truck?"

"We said we were making gas. We promised you gas. What gas did you think we meant?"

"Can you just...like...buy me some gas?"

"If we had hundreds of dollars lying around, we wouldn't be trying to make gas."

Leon still wasn't buying in. Since we didn't exactly have a written contract he'd probably have gotten to the point where he'd say "fuck it" on the deal, count the ciders we'd shared with him as payment, and be happy with us never seeing each other again. But I did want to test the gas in his truck.

"Look, I don't want to fill it up, okay? Let's just put in a gallon and see how it runs. If it's okay with that we can try another gallon tomorrow and so on. Here, I've still got three bottles of STP...Why don't you take them with you and use them if the truck acts up?"

He looked at the bottles, then at me. "Just a gallon?"

"Just a gallon. You've still got my number, right? Call me if anything goes wrong and I'll come meet you with real gas."

We produced a gallon of cornoline and poured it into his tank. It probably wouldn't cause a problem right away. If it didn't mix with normal gasoline (something we probably should have tried first), it wouldn't cause a problem at all until there was nothing but cornoline left in the tank.

Just as a good-faith gesture, I got him to give me a ride into Tulsa, with a stop at the gas station on the way to fill up the five-gallon can. Before leaving I asked Tsu'na to tell Sam we wouldn't be in this week.

"Where will we be instead, Husband?"

"Off together, near gators."

"You assure me it will be fun?"

"Being together or hunting gators?"

"Both."

I smiled and pulled her in for an assurance kiss.

She met my eyes when we were done. "If you say so, Husband."