Song and Dance

I set my plots for revenge aside for the rest of the day, since the trio had taken themselves off out of reach. For now....

The rest of the afternoon was deliciously lazy. Nandi and I had a splash fight. I’m really starting to resent my lack of a tail. Not only does it give you an extra boost swimming, but it works as an excellent wave-maker. Nandi claimed a decided victory after half-drowning me in a home made tsunami.

I dragged my water-logged carcass to the shore where Nandi and I lounged in the fragrant plants that bordered the beach. It was a huge relief, after so many days of constant walking, to just sit and relax and feel the sun on my skin. I was just finally feeling completely dry (and thankfully I’d gotten past that weird sticky skin feeling you get after swimming in sea water), when Nandi announced that he was hungry. I wanted to applaud this announcement.

We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and into the evening wandering the fields and foraging. Nandi introduced me to a fruit called koh. God DAMN is it good. It tastes a bit like strawberries, but it’s tart and a little sour, like a pineapple or something citrus. Nandi says the trees are relatively rare at the old clan site but that they are fairly plentiful here. I don’t know if that’s good or not. It’s like a dieter hearing Choco-topia has just set up on the nearest street corner, and they give away freebees every Tuesday. Nandi and I devoured an entire fruit on our own. I didn’t even stop to draw a halfway decent diagram. They’re pretty big, too; watermelon-sized.

I can quit any time, I swear!

When we were pleasantly full (and honestly starting to feel a little sick from ODing on koh) it was getting on toward full dark. So we headed back to the caves where the rest of the clan was gathering.

There were no normal cook fires built tonight. Instead there was only one very large bonfire that stood at the center of the little open common area near the cliff face. The entire clan had gathered and was talking excitedly. Apparently I was wrong about the whole no fanfare/greeting of the new clan site.

The Kan walked up to the fire and held his hand over it, holding a packet of something that dangled from a leather thong. I still have enough difficulty with the language that I couldn’t understand 100% of what he said. But I got the gist. He asked the land (their word includes a sense of consciousness, as if the land is a person) was generous in letting us live here, and that we were happy to see an old friend again. Then he said we would dance our gratitude until it was visible to both the land and the stars.

He threw the packet into the fire and it blazed blue-green for a moment. Then he began to dance. The clan began to sing in time to his steps, thumping tails on the ground, or stamping feet in a primal beat. The Kan’s dance seemed to be a series of poses that flowed into each other. He would slide into one pose, hold it for half a heartbeat, and then slip to the next one, all the while circling the fire.

Once he completed two cycles of the dance, the rest of the clan filed in behind to join him. Nandi dragged me along, even though I couldn’t do the dance properly. I can’t really do the quadruped steps, and I still don’t have a damn tail. But no one seemed to mind, and Nandi seemed to get a huge kick out of my attempts.



The celebration went on for a couple hours. There were more dances, singing, and lots more flaring colored fire. Eventually, though, the fire burnt down and we slowly made our way to our caves to go to sleep. I barely got my sleeping bag out of the pack before flopping into it.

But tired as I was, I couldn’t quite fall asleep. As comfortable as I feel with the Azu-nah, and as welcoming as they’ve been, tonight’s dancing really brought it home again how alien I am here. I simply will never be able to truly fit in with these people. Not that I’m ever going to go crazy and pull a Dances With Wolves. But the barrier between me and the Azu-nah made me feel like I would never be anything but an outsider, an alien.

It took me a while before I was able to quiet my thoughts enough to fall asleep.

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!