Part 15: How does he DO that?

So Boxter and I (and the bunny rabbit) managed to survive until morning in the skeleton-infested house up on the hill.  The arrows from the skeletons that had dropped into the pit during the night gradually disappeared and the sun rose.

The view from the window was in fact very nice.

Pretty.

It was time, however, to press on in hopes of making progress northward before nightfall.

I tried to pick up my crafting table, but faced great difficulty as Boxter and the bunny rabbit took turns jumping on the crafting table.  I tried to elbow them aside, but they outnumbered me and I was getting nowhere.

Rrrgh!  Get - mppph - get off the - mff - get out of the way of the darn table!

"Maybe," I thought to myself, "Boxter is trying to tell me that I shouldn't pick up the crafting table now.  Maybe he's trying to tell me that I should be doing something else first... but what?  Oh!  I should make some more armor - those skeletons made scrap metal out of most of my armor."

I dug into my inventory for some leather, began to craft, and -

BOOM.

A creeper had apparently dropped into the house behind my back through the open roof, and, well, did what creepers do best.

Oh.  So that's what they were trying to tell me to do.

Dazed, I climbed out of the pit and surveyed the wreckage, hoping that Boxter had made it.

Fortunately, Boxter seemed to have gotten clear in time, or at least to have been tough enough to survive a close-range creeper blast.

Even the bunny rabbit seemed to have survived.

Insert Monty Python joke here

I jumped on Boxter's back and we set off, eager to put the scene of destruction behind us.

Neat hills at least, if unfortunately heavily forested.

The day passed mostly uneventfully (in and out of forests and brief clearings, or luckily bridging between islands on narrow sand banks), until it was time to stop for the night.

I thought I'd try building up against a hillside (with a roof this time), and dismounted to begin digging.  Boxter stood watching me with curiosity for a few seconds before he wandered off.

This being Boxter, I decided to stop digging and follow him.

 Sure enough:

There he was, standing by a natural cave in the hillside.  There was even coal.  I kid you not.

I lost no time hurrying to his side to turn the cave into a proper hideout.

Ok, I lost a little time when I embarrassingly fell into a hole.

If you look closely, you can see Boxter looking down into the hole, no doubt shaking his head at the blundering human.

But soon I had the opening safely closed off, and Boxter contentedly installed with a haystack to occupy him while I went off mining.  It has not escaped my notice that each night where we stay in a shelter Boxter has picked out goes significantly better than each night where we stay in a shelter that I  myself build.