Nina finished reading the book, and sighed. Building a shelter without tools involved a lot of heavy lifting and holding in place and whacking at things with rocks. “Well, I guess I can just forget about keeping my nails.”

But given that the alternative was probably to get drenched in the next storm, she didn’t see that she had any choice. Cursing Alan’s ancestry for ten generations, she got to work, chipping flints to make axes and knives. The unicorns watched her with the attitude of anthropologists observing a curious native ritual.

It took the better part of a week for Nina to put together something she could be moderately happy with: a small wood platform fifteen feet off the ground in the fork of a fig tree. For the roof, she made a sloping framework of branches and covered it with layers of palm leaves. She hoped it would at least keep most of the rain out.

The day after she finished it, a peal of thunder heralded the beginning of the rainy season. “I hate when I’m right,” Nina muttered.