I noticed that with the changing season, the Azu-nah’s habits have begun to change too. The hunting parties have been going out more often, almost every day, and they are bringing back a lot more meat. A lot. More than the clan could ever eat before it spoiled. One of the caves has been converted to a kind of smoke house, and the extra meat was preserved that way, and stored in the back of the cave.
Plant foods are also being gathered, dried, and stored with a lot more intensity than before too. We’ve been spending every day out gathering, and my back is not happy about it. Our lessons with Kohric have been put off until this harvest frenzy has ended; that can’t be soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. I’m beginning to doubt I’ll ever walk upright properly again. Ugh.
I have an idea what all this is about. The season is turning, after all, and it’s supposed to start getting quite cold. I don’t know if “winter’ on Minerva is anything like on Earth, but I imagine foodstuffs become scarcer in the cold, and the clan is stockpiling against starvation. That or maybe they plan going on a monumental food bender at some point down the road.
Another change is that there have been more lookouts posted. This I don’t have any solid explanation for. Nandi said something cryptic about keeping watch for when the clouds dance. I took this to mean they’re watching for storms. A short period of thunder and lightning occurred a day or so ago, and it had the clan pretty spooked. They would keep glancing up at the lookouts all throughout the storm. I was surprised by their reaction, honestly. It wasn’t a bad storm at all by Earth standards. The thunder rumbled more than really thundered, and the lightning was just like any other lightning I’ve seen. Or perhaps they’re concerned about plains fires. That would be pretty frightening.
Today was a day for water, though. And thankfully it wasn’t raining.
Today I got to go fishing. Though, it was unlike any fishing I’ve ever done. More like herding, to be honest. Several of the clan worked together to weave several nets. They’re big, too; nearly five meters long. A handful of hunters gathered up the nets and strung themselves out along the water line on the beach and crouched with the nets down in the water. The Sa-kudayu gathered the rest of the clan and we were all told to wade out into the shallows and be very still.
It was pleasant, actually. The sea water was warmer than I thought, and the sandy bottom was soothing on my feet. We waited and watched while the Sa-kudayu took a basket of entrails and bits of viscera from the clan’s most recent kill, and began scattering it across the water between the net-holders and the rest of the clan. It was a little weird, seeing the solemn hunt-leader gleefully flinging guts around, but I was too busy watching to see what all that chum would attract.
Very soon, I could see creatures gliding past our legs to feed on the little gobbets floating in the water. Everyone was tensed, waiting, and no one so much as twitched a tail. By now I’d figured out the trick, and was eagerly waiting for the signal too.
Finally, after several agonizing minutes, the Sa-kudayu made a chopping motion with his arm. Everyone not holding a net began charging forward toward the shore, shouting, splashing, and making all manner of noise. We formed a kind of arc, trapping the fish with a wall of surging water and forcing them toward the nets. The net-holders surged to their feet and pulled up the nets, revealing a mass of twisting, thrashing creatures.
We did this several times, until all the nets were full and we’d stirred up the water too much for any sane creature to want to come near.
I keep calling our catch “fish” but they’re really not much like Earth fish. There are places where you can clearly see convergent evolution; many of them are streamlined and have fin-like appendages or tails. But they don’t resemble Earth fish much at all. Some have a half dozen compound eyes, for example. Some have hugely long mouths with strange suckers on the ends, one species has what almost looks like baleen in place of teeth; another was some freakish lovechild of a coral and a crab.
The Azu-nah seemed delighted with the day’s work, though, and many clan members were swapping favorites over dinner. I can’t eat them, of course. They’re actually worse than the land creatures in terms of freakish compounds and whatnot. But honestly, I’m glad I have that as an excuse. These things are a little too freaky for me to consider them dinner.
There will be no entry next week (the 12th) as I have some other work that needs to be taken care of. The week after though will have some more polished art to make up for it. Have a great week, everyone!
0 comments:
Post a Comment