Parrot Squirrels

This morning dawned quieter than usual. The entire clan still seemed a little subdued. Not sorrowful, per se. They don’t seem to view their clan member’s death as a terrible tragedy, and they don’t seem to be visibly mourning him as a human group would. I don’t know if they have anything equivalent to crying, but if they do it’s incredibly subtle. Enough that I can’t pick it out, anyway.

But in their quiet way they seem sad. I think the loss of a comrade feels pretty much the same for anyone, despite one’s species, or one’s religious beliefs, one’s philosophies on death. At the end of the day that person isn’t there, and you miss them.

So this morning was quiet. The weavers still sang while they worked, but they were mostly softer, keening songs. They all seemed to mention stars or the sky. I was dying to talk to Kohric and have him explain what was going on.

My curiosity had to wait, though, since Nanahan put me to work again almost immediately. Today my morning job was to peel and husk yesterday’s harvest. Nandi, who seems practically attached to me, showed me what to do and helped me. As we worked, several small creatures crept down from the tree we were working under and skittered around the edge of our pile. They were little green sparrow-sized creatures that vaguely resembled rats, but moved and acted a lot more like a lizard or bird. They’d skitter down close to something we’d discarded, stop dead, look around with that odd jerky motion birds sometimes do, and then snatch the object and shoot away.



Nandi flicked husks at them, or swung his tail to scare them away if they got too close to the pile. He paid them little mind otherwise, like a picnicker ignores a fly unless it lands on his sandwich. They quickly learned I had shorter reach and poor aim. Soon I had all three of them around me, waiting for me to drop something. I felt like a guest at a friend’s house and they didn’t ever break their dogs of the habit of begging.

They were oddly adorable, though, and I started making sure the pieces of shell I threw at them still had a few bits of nut meat still on them. They’d hold the pieces in their little paws, eyeing the shell with those weird little lizardy head jerks, and then snap out their prize. I kinda want one. Please, mom, it followed me home? Parrot squirrels don't eat much, I swear! Heh.

Nandi and I eventually finished. He carefully divided everything we’d prepared into two piles. The small pile he had me load into one of the floppy travel basket-bags, and tie shut against our little green thieves. The second pile, much, much larger, he put into one of the bigger community food baskets they’d been using the whole time I’d been with them. I tried to ask why so much was going to the regular food baskets, when they were going to be leaving in a day or so. Nandi simply said the regular baskets were for eating tonight, as if it were obvious. They were going to be eating an awful lot, then. The baskets were nearly twice as full as I’d seen them normally. Nandi told me I would eat plenty tonight and left it at that. Then he led me around the camp, trying his best to explain what was going on. It was kinda cute, really. I think Nandi really admires Kohric, and tries to emulate him as much as possible.

Taking down D’Keda was a bit different than I’d expected.

All around the camp, the odd green tree tents were being dismantled. Except that the Azus weren’t folding them up and packing them away as I’d expected. Instead, they were….sort of deflating them. They were flattening them out and carefully tying them down against the tree branches. A few were being cut away from the trees entirely, cut further into pieces, and then a thick green sap squeezed from the … cloth? I gaped and struggled to put the Azu words together.

“Nandi. Is kirrrrt’ok alive? Plant?”

Nandi tilted his head at me like I was stupid. He spoke slowly for me. “Yes, is plant. Leaf. We grow kirrrrt’ok carefully. Then make it grow with a tree. But it grows slowly, so we must keep it safe when we are gone.”

“Then why cut?” Hacking it to bits didn’t seem like good plant husbandry to me.

“Hifsangom is good for travel too. We travel, many… “ he faltered. “many small biters come. It keeps biters away.”

So, today I learned that the Azu-nah would probably make a killing in the pet trade, they occasionally like to go on huge food benders, and the tent thing I’ve been living in for the past few weeks has actually been a freakishly huge leaf with insect repelling capabilities. Or, whatever passes for insects on Minerva.

There are days when the utterly alien nature of this world really hits me, and I feel so hopelessly far from home where everything makes sense. Today was one of those days.