Blood

The clan ended up resting for a good hour before we set off again. I didn’t mind at all. I’m still adjusting a bit to the atmosphere, and while walking and regular work doesn’t wind me like it used to, this is more hiking than I’ve done in weeks. Last thing I need is for half the clan to start freaking out over me having “weak breath.”

And damn but I was getting hungry. The clan hadn’t eaten anything that morning, and no one did more than have a few sips of water during the pit stop. I was afraid of offending someone or breaking some kind of taboo by getting caught snacking. But at the same time, the last thing I need is to pass out in front of the entire clan. They’d have to brand “weak breath” across my forehead, then. I’d NEVER live it down. I had stashed a sack of rikosh nuts in my pack from our pre-hike pig-out dinner, so I sneaked a few when I thought no one was looking.

Kohric came and checked on me before we set off again. At first I was feeling a little abandoned whenever he’d do his disappearing bit. Wasn’t I his student? How could he leave me alone in this? But lately I’ve started noticing that he always shows up when I need him. Or like during the funeral ceremony, he was suddenly at my side as soon as I was out of my depth. Apparently the Azu-nah aren’t strangers to applied learning and constructivism. No knowledge without experience and all that teaching philosophy crud. Bleh. I should introduce him to Dr. Sutherland.

As we set out again, I tried to ease my way away from the kiddy table portion of the group. I may as well have been trying to break out of Alcatraz. Nanahan was on me in seconds. Seriously, seconds. I don’t know what kind of invisible Azu nanny security beam I stepped across, but damn. I’m surprised there weren’t klaxons going off or something. She just appeared in front of me and did a kind of disapproving trot in a circle around my legs.

”Tah!” she said. “It is safe here. You are like a child. You stay here and keep safe.” Then she looped the end of her tail around my bicep and hauled me back towards the kids. I haven’t felt my face burn like this since my high school play when I knocked over King Lear mid monologue.

To top off my already crowning moment, Nandi chose that minute to finally find me. In case you’re wondering, Azu-nah laughter is a loud “kheeee” sound, punctuated with a few breathy hisses.

Sigh. At least the kids managed not to see.

I trudged along in silence for a while, waiting for my face to cool. The terrain is getting flatter as we go on. The distance is a little less hilly and with fewer trees and shrubs. There seem to be more rocks too. Big boulders are littered all around. I almost want to say they look glacial, but they’re so weathered that it would be difficult to really tell.

The animals have begun changing a little too. The odd six-legged chestha seem to prefer higher, hillier ground. There are no big herds here, only a very few small bands. We encountered a new animal too. Nandi calls it a “gensidik.” He made gestures around the end of his muzzle when he said the name, so I’m assuming it translates to something about its odd face. They look like some freakish hybrid between a horse and one of Earth’s ancient terror birds, Phorusrhacos.

There was a whole group of them ahead, and the clan slowly swerved its route to avoid walking into the herd. Most of the creatures were a dusty, dappled green-blue-gray. Those individuals mostly had their heads down grazing, looking so much like horses it was a little unnerving to me. Two, though, were red; bright hotrod red. Their weird muzzle crests had a single huge black-ringed yellow spot along the flat part, like a banner, and their faces had black and yellow spotting around the eyes and head crest too. And they were big. They towered over the green ones, nearly half-again as big.

The red ones prowled around each other, making aggressive mock charges at each other and hissing like enormous snakes. Nandi pointed to the red ones and said, “The females wish to keep all the males for themselves. They fight. Very dangerous.”

“Females?!” I had a roommate once who was a total misandrist. She’d love the gensidik.

They were incredibly aggressive. Even as we watched, one female reared on her hind legs and lashed out with her forelegs. They don’t have hooves like a horse. They have three toes with huge long claws at the end. The rearing female ripped a huge gash down her opponent’s flank. The losing female shot away, howling. The big female began galloping in circles around the herd, snapping at the males and hissing. Holy shit.

We practically tip-toed past them after that.

The kiddy table had passed them a minute or so before, and I had turned my attention to the smudge of cliffs at the edge of the horizon, when suddenly someone behind me yowled.

I turned around and barely had time to register Nanahan tearing off like a maniac right toward the herd. I heard Nandi shout from over my shoulder.

“Ghee!”

The little one had somehow escaped Nanahan’s radar, and had apparently gone charging right into the thick of the gensidik herd. She was huddled behind a small bolder, while the big red female towered over her, reared up with forepaws poised, and hissing blue murder.



It happened so fast. Nanahan came belting up to the big female, screaming a horrible, keening challenge, and brandishing both clawed hands. Ghee bolted in the millisecond it took the gensidik to register its new assailant. Nanahan flashed in front of the rearing female just as she slammed her forepaws to the ground. Then the whole scene was surrounded by a seething mass of screaming, howling Azu-nah. The huge group was enough to scare off the gensidik.

Nanahan came limping back with a very, very subdued Ghee pressed up against her flank. The gensidik had managed to slash down the entire back of Nanahan’s hind leg, and she was bleeding badly. One of the others immediately took her away to the Kan for help.

Her blood was everywhere. It was green. Azu-nah blood is apparently green.

I would give a lot to not have learned that fact today.