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!
