Gone Fishin'

Those first three days or so of rain were the worst. Thankfully, like all unpleasant things, the rain finally subsided. It still rains nearly every day, and we still have to go out in it to find food, gather supplies, medicines, and all the other things that are necessary for the clan to make ends meet. But it does stop, especially mostly during the afternoons, which makes for a welcome reprieve.

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.

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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!

Foraging Party

I reached critical brain mass last night after another couple days of language boot camp. I was tripping over words, mixing up really simple stuff, and even saying some English words wrong. Kohric decided I was useless doing any more, and sent me back to my kirrrrt’ok with my Ugly Basket full of fruit and pieces of heksanan. He told me to “sleep much,” and “No words tomorrow.” Huzzah! I get a vacation from Death By Vocabulary.

Before going to bed, I sat with the flap of the tent open, munched on my supper, and watched the Azu-nah go about their lives beneath me. There’s definitely a bit of loose hierarchy in their culture. Kohric promised to go over “Azu-nah ways” with me soon. I know they have some kind of clan leader, but not who it is or what their job description actually is. Elders seem to get respect based on age. But there isn’t any kind of caste system or much social differentiation at all

I went to bed before the sun was fully down and slept like a dead thing until mid-morning. Oreeaht was waiting for me when I opened my tent flap. Have I mentioned how disconcerting their habit of doorstep camping is? Agh! I keep wondering how long they’ve been sitting there! Next protocol lesson, I need to ask Kohric about the concept of knocking.

Despite her polite stalking, I was glad to see Oreeaht. She’d helped me make the Ugly Basket, and had been one of the first not-Kohric Azus I’d met. She bobbed a greeting to me and told me I was to come with her today to find food. Kohric rocks. I decided to bring him something extra nice home as a thank you present.

I went with Oreeaht with Nanahan (Grandma) and a cheerful youngster named Nandi. They were armed with a pair of baskets that were woven together in the middle, and sat across their hips like a pair of saddlebags or bicycle panniers. My physiology didn’t lend itself to such a setup, but Nanahan, to my utter delight, had woven shoulder straps to one basket so I could wear it like a backpack. It was an incredibly sweet gesture. I gave her a hug on impulse. She endured my barbarian affection very well.

The Azu-nah travel kilometers in a single day while looking for food. I have no idea what type of system they use to decide where to look, but we walked for what felt like hours before Oreeaht simply stopped in an area that looked like just about every other area we’d been through since leaving D’Keda’s camp. I know we passed plenty of fruit-bearing plants and trees on the way here. Another to add to the Mt. Fuji of questions I have for Kohric.

We munched a bit as we foraged. It was fascinating. Oreeaht and Nanahan showed me the different plants that bore edible things. Some of the structures I thought were beans or nuts were actually the bases of stems, or root bulbs, sort of like onions. Much of their food grows from the odd grass-like structures instead of being tubers or from trees like I expected. Oreeaht would harvest tiny green berries from one of the window-shade grasses with incredible skill. I couldn’t even stand near them without them snapping shut. But she would stand away, somehow cradle a leaf with her tail tip like a scoop, and run it along the fruit-bearing side of the grass before it could snap shut.

I apparently provided Nandi with a great deal of amusement in my failed attempts at mimicking Oreeaht’s talents.

I did manage to show them up with one thing. I am a champion digger, apparently! Hah! They can dig fine, but my hands make better scoops than theirs, and I don’t have claws to get in the way. So I had my heksanan out of the ground and dusted off before Nandi was half way through. He gave me a berry as a victory prize, bobbing his head in a joking parody of the formal greeting gesture. I like Nandi.

I got to see a fascinating tree species today too. It apparently grows new leaves, flowers, and drops fruit, all at once, for the entire growing season. Most Earth plants will flower in spring, have leaves most of the summer, and then drop fruit late summer or fall. You don’t see flowers and fruit on a tree at once. If you do, you don’t eat at that burrito shop ever again, and you sleep off whatever delusions you had.



Here, though, this tree has buds, flowers, full summer leaves, and fruit all at once. And apparently they’re all the same structure. The flower is part of the leaf, which eventually grows a fruit at its base. And when the seed is ready to go, the whole leaf package drops off and rides the wind away, sorta like a maple tree's whirly-bird seeds. I'm mentally labeling it a tiger tree for the weird stripes on the trunk. But I have to keep forcing myself. My first thought is to call it a crack tree. The nuts it drops are tasty, though. Nandi said Kohric likes them, so I loaded up to give him a nice fat pile later.

By the time my back was starting to ache, Oreeaht called it quits and said we were to head home. On the way back we crested a particularly high hill and stopped for a rest and enjoyed the view. You could see for kilometers from here! It was gorgeous. I could have sat there for hours.



Oreeaht pointed to a crest of rocky palisade right on the horizon. There’s a barely visible patch of blue next to it, and a trail of green leading away suggests a river or stream that empties into the blue patch. I know from satellite maps that blue patch is one finger of a huge, shallow inland sea. “D’Keda goes to this place soon,” Oreeaht said. I knew the clans were sort of nomadic, but I’d forgotten about it after seeing the clan so at home in their trees. While I’m not really digging the idea of hauling across all that open country, it does look like a neat area.

But oh, just looking makes my feet ache!

Azu-nah a la carte

Thanda-tu, I learned, means “teacher.” Or, really it’s more like “one who teaches. The thanda bit is their word for teach, and the “tu” changes it to a noun. This type of grammar is going to take a lot of getting used to.

Kohric is a really good teacher. I’ve said it before, but he really is good. He’s very patient and deliberate. He’s absorbed a surprising amount of English vocabulary, which is making things a hell of a lot easier. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After my altercation with my inquisitive houseguests, Kohric lead me off to a quiet, sandy spot with a few big, rounded boulders strewn about. Kohric had brought the little red language tutor the First Contact crew had left with D’Keda. Between that, my computer pad, and simple sand drawings, we actually had a decent arsenal of tools.

We spent most of the day there. My head hurts from all the intensive cramming, but I think it’s worth it. We started off with general vocabulary. A LOT of vocabulary. I can’t remember every word we went over today perfectly. I’m no Rain Man. But I’m getting better. I know with practice I’ll have a halfway decent word bank.

Kohric insisted I teach him the English version of every Azu-nah word he went over. I don’t know whether he wants to learn it to make teaching me easier, to give the Azu-nah more equal footing with humans, or whether it’s just to satisfy his own curiosity. Either way, it broke up the lessons a bit, and gave my brain a chance to rest. Kohric is picking up English faster than I’m picking up Azu-nah. But then again he’s cheating. He’s had that LangTutor for two years!

I mostly picked up nouns. Stuff like tree, rock, grass, hand, foot, mouth, eyes, tail. The proper word for the tree tents is “kirrrrt’ok” Yeah, it’s a weird, weird word. Sounds like someone dropped a quarter. You know how some human languages have rolling R’s? Well, the Azu-nah apparently wanted to one-up us. They have the regular R-sound, but they also have one that’s… well… a freakin’ mini-growl. It’s hard to describe. The closest is a cat. Ever have a cat? And when she’s hungry she follows you around making you crazy and going prrrrt? Prrrt? Prrrt? It’s almost like that. The rolling part is guttural, formed in the throat instead of with the tongue. And it ends with an abrupt, almost projected T-sound.

It wouldn’t be so bad if that was the only funky sound they incorporated. But there’s also an extended S-sound that’s a second cousin to a hiss, and they have a chirpy, high pitch sound that I despair of ever managing. Take the sound “khee,” try to make the sound back in your throat instead of near your teeth, and hike the pitch way up. It sounds a lot better in an Azu-nah throat. A bit bird-like, really. I sound like a gorilla on helium.

I eventually started losing my voice a little from the strain and Kohric decided we were done for the day. I took this opportunity to try and explain my food problem to him.

It. Took. Forever.

I drew pictures; little stick figure Azu-nah and humans, each on their own sphere to try to explain the two different worlds, pictures of food, pictures of hunters, of meat and gathered things. I drew a human eating on the human sphere, looking happy, and a second on the Azu-nah sphere lying on its side after eating food. Then I mimed it all. I went through a half dozen different motions for eating and then becoming ill or vomiting. Kohric kept staring at me intently, and after an eternity he held up the LangTutor. “Poison,” the robotic voice repeated, and the image showed a rat eating something and then falling over. The Azu-nah word is eskthi, by the way.

Things went smoother after that breakthrough. “Is food poison to me? I must learn,” I said simply. Kohric seemed excited to finally understand the point behind my idiot antics.

“We learn how?” he asked.

Dammit. I didn’t know the Azu word for “test.” I looked around in frustration and finally grabbed my computer pad. This wasn’t quite accurate, but it was close enough. “Computer will eat first,” I said, pointing to the pad. Kohric didn’t look impressed. He was probably doubting my pad’s ability to suddenly grow teeth and chow down on a steak or something. I don’t blame him for being skeptical. But he seemed to understand the basic idea.

He told me to wait and ran off. He came back almost half an hour later, balancing a saddle-like basket across his back with his tail. Inside was a small pile of finger-sized bits of different foods; pieces of fruit, tuber pieces, strips of dried meat, and a couple small chunks of fresh meat. There were leaf-looking things, stuff that seemed half nut, half bean, and several small stalk-like things that vaguely resembled pre-harvest grain grass.

I thanked Kohric over and over, both in Azu and English. He seemed pleased and watched intently as I scraped and stabbed probes from my kit into each piece. He soon recognized the chime my pad made when the analysis completed, and would ask “good?” immediately. When I’d answer “no” he’d take the offending sample and eat it. It was cute. It was almost as if he was trying to get the offending bit out of the way so it wouldn’t upset me.

I’m not entirely happy with the results.

Seems while I’m on Minerva I’m going to have to be a pretty strict vegetarian. Which is odd, because I honestly didn’t expect that. I figured the plants would be full of funky chemicals and freakish indigestible cellulose. But they’re actually mostly simple sugars, fats, and even protein in a couple of those nut-bean thingies. The meat, though. Ugh. If it isn’t full of indigestible, freakishly folded proteins, it’s so thick with the native Minervan toxins that I’d drop like a shot duck after a couple bites. I’d have to blow through several days worth of anti-toxin just to get through a meal, assuming all that chemical warfare didn’t just make my circulatory system melt or something.

So, I guess chestha steak is off the menu. Ah well. Freaky six-legged buggers looked gamey anyway.