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!

Flashers

Science is always soothing to me. There’s something comforting about simple observation. So today I took shameless advantage of my needing to document the local wildlife, and played the anti-social scientist; I spent the day sprawled on the cliff face with my binoculars glued to my eyeballs, watching the most recent herd of uku to pass through our territory.



They eat a lot.

A lot. I think about 90^% of today was just watching the things eat. Granted, their food source is somewhat labor intensive; the plant almost resembles bamboo in that it’s primarily a cylindrical stem with thin, lefty extremities. The uku have no interest in the leaves. Instead they use their sharp, horn-like beaks to snap off pieces of the stem, and then split the pieces open to get at the soft pulp inside. Kohric says the pulp is sweet, and the Azu-nah use it to make something a little like candied fruit (I will officially not be able to die happy if I don’t get to try at least one piece of candied koh before I croak).

Anyway, when they’re not hunting around for something to eat (which is rare), they seem to engage in a lot of … shoving. There’s definitely some sort of hierarchy in the herd, but I have a very hard time telling the individual animals apart, so I haven’t been able to pin it down. The sexes look identical, for example, and other than size and their horns being a bit blunter, the young look almost the same as the adults. This makes it tricky to tell who an individual is arguing with and why.

The shoving matches are relatively subdued for the most part; one individual will saunter up to another, broadside, and just start shoving. The two will huff and honk and push back and forth for a few minutes, and then the loser will go off and sulk. Occasionally the argument will get a little more rowdy, and the two “combatants” will start puffing the dewlap-like structure on their necks. The skin seems to be thin and very flexible, like a frigatebird’s gular pouch, and can inflate into a kind of spiky red balloon under the jaw.

One encounter, though, was even more impressive. The shoving had started as usual, and had escalated to gular-pouch-dewlap-thingy puffing. But instead of one of them breaking off and going away, they just kept at it. Maybe they were evenly matched. Whatever it was, it was enough to move to the next level of behavior. One of the two suddenly reared up on its hind legs and a huge hood expanded from its neck. The bony spikes lining each side of the neck are apparently anchors for a fleshy frill structure. There are two vibrant eye spots on the inside of the hood that are normally hidden.
They’re iridescent, and the animal rocks back and forth on its hind legs while displaying them, causing them to flash. They’re surprisingly bright. The non-displaying uku immediately backed down and trotted off to hide behind a bush.

It was fascinating. I’m dying to know if the hoods are exclusively to intimidate rivals (for what I still don’t know), if both sexes have them, and if there’s some aspect of the hood that makes one “win” a fight. I wonder if the hood is mostly used for breeding displays, like with pheasants? That’s the problem with ethology; one question answered, thirty new questions arise.

Poor Kohric. I’m going to have so many more things to ask him.

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There will be no update next week. I have a commitment I can't avoid. But hopefully I will get time to make some spiffy art for the week after.

Harpoon Face

I ended up sleeping a bit too late today, after staying up late last night to watch the hunt. I always feel muzzy-headed from sleeping too late. My bio clock hates it when I deviate from its strict schedule. So I was only just stumbling out of the cave at the point when everyone else was already off and busy.

It did end up paying off, though.

Because I wasn’t immediately available first thing in the morning, like usual, Eyani and Oshtik had gone off exploring on their own along the beach. Sometimes you can find interesting things on a beach in the early parts of the day, before scavengers and other creatures have begun poking around for leavings.

Oshtik made an interesting discovery, and was practically vibrating to show it to me when I woke up. She immediately twined her tail around my wrist and hauled me off toward the wrack line, chattering excitedly about what she’d found. Eyani was waiting for us, standing guard over the object.

It turned out to be the corpse of one of the bird-creatures I’d seen flitting across the water. They’ve tended to shy away from any other creatures on the beach, so my experience with them has been little more than a flash of movement, a suggestion of wings, or a splash on the water’s surface.

This one was freshly dead, and in beautiful condition. I prodded it into a better position with a piece of drift wood (I wasn’t stupid enough to go handling it; it could have died from a disease). The wing design is fascinating, and explains a bit why I’ve had such a hard time getting a mental image of their body type.

I always thought the creatures (Oshtik says they’re called “oai”) looked bottom-heavy, but what I took for bulk was actually a second set of wings on the hind legs. They hold them tucked under the body, with the outside toe forming a second wing surface below and a partially underneath the primary arm-wings. Essentially they’re like little biplanes.

But the other, even weirder thing about them is the mouth. The upper jaw has a V-shaped notch at the tip, and an odd, bony, flexible, hook-like protrusion at the end tongue fits into the notch when the mouth is closed. The hook is part of a short, harpoon-like shaft, sheathed in fleshy tissue and backed by a thick slab of muscle.

Its tongue was like a chameleon’s. Except that instead of launching a fleshy, glue-covered punching-bag at an insect, this creature fires a tiny harpoon from above at its prey. I wonder if the biplane wings give them the stability to be able to pull off this crazy predator behavior.

This one had a tiny crest on its head, but I’m certain I’ve seen ones with larger crests, and some different, more distinct skull structures. I don’t know if they all can harpoon things, or if that’s an adaptation particular to this species, but I’m definitely going to be watching these things a lot more carefully in the future.

Nature is freakin’ fascinating!

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Today is the 1 year anniversary of Project Azu-nah. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read the blog. I really, really appreciate all your comments and feedback. I hope I've managed to entertain you at least a little. Thank you, and here's to another year!

Beach Beast

Crap, I got so obsessed with telling the vengeance story that I completely forgot to talk about yesterday! Sorry.

So, yesterday was actually pretty cool. I had another lesson with Kohric, which was fascinating in and of itself. He taught us about the body of water we’re living next to. I know I was already talking about this when we first arrived, but to recap Kohric; it’s pretty much an epeiric sea (which, if you hate geology, means a very shallow ocean sitting on top of a continent). The water is very shallow compared to what a human would be used to, and it’s completely loaded with different living things. Kohric told us all about some of the plants and animals that inhabit the shore area, and promised to go into some of the bigger sea creatures next time. I’m excited.

But the most interesting part of yesterday came after the lesson.

I was playing around on the beach with Eyani and Oshtik. I introduced them to the art of making sand castles (though it probably was pretty stupid, since the concept of “a building” is lost kinda on them). Oshtik was quick to inform me that you don’t build things on the beach, you make pictures and stories.

She even spent a good ten minutes trying to draw me. I don’t know that my pride will hold up to much of this. Even a caricature artist never made my nose THAT big, and it didn’t help when Eyani started praising the likeness. Tee-Tee Huge-Schnoze. Great.

Anyway, I was absently sitting down, doodling a happy face, when Oshtik became very excited and came slinking up next to me, pointing. She was whispering in that excited hush type of voice, like a pro bird watcher who’s spotted the rare Orange Spotted Chocobo or something.

Picking its way carefully through the shallow water was—something. Seriously, I defy you to put this thing into Earth taxonomy. It moved vaguely like a wading bird; carefully and deliberately lifting each foot and then placing it down again without disturbing the water much more than a ripple. But instead of having a long bill down in the sand, it would rest its “forehead” against the water and unroll this long trunk-thing down to the seabed. Every few minutes the trunk would come back up clutching something, and it would shove whatever it had found behind the crescent-head. When it moved closer I caught a very quick glimpse of its mouth as an object was brought up to the head. Its mouth was like a squid, only with far more “teeth.” It was a little intimidating to hear it crunching away at whatever morsel it had picked up.

Oshtik insisted I keep very still, and stay low and quiet. She explained that seeing a ba’oh is very good luck, but only if you do not disturb it. It isn’t something the Azu-nah hunt, apparently. They see it as a guardian of the beach. Through the entire whispered explanation, Oshtik was making these slow gestures; I couldn’t help but imagine her dressed in khaki and talking with a British accent, like one of those video nature guides. It was cute.

The ba’oh (which I keep thinking of as a beach beast) spent perhaps five minutes in our presence, tops. It crunched up several unfortunate sea creatures and then disappeared into a cluster of bushes without a sound.

I like it. It’s nice to see a completely benign creature like this, and get to see it with completely natural behavior. It was very, very cool. I hope I can see another one someday.

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Author's Note:
Because of the time of year, O faithful readers, I am going to be very, very busy. I hate delaying posts or putting them off, which is most likely what would happen a lot over next two weeks. So instead I'm going to put the blog on a mini hiatus. There will be no official update next week or the week after, and I will pick up again starting the 4th of January. I will very likely post a piece of art or two to keep dust from accumulating, but we won't hear anything from Tee until the new year. I hope everyone enjoys their holiday of choice, and that you all have a Happy New Year!

Alien Waters

I had expected to greet the clan’s new home with some sort of fanfare or at least some special words; a moment of silence? Something. But nothing of the sort actually happened. It was mid morning when we reached the beach. I know I’ve been using vague terms for time. It’s probably annoying. But you and every school kid knows the Minervan day is only 21.73 Earth hours long, and it really doesn’t give as good a frame of reference if I say it was 0800 on the Minervan clock. Mostly, though, I’ve started to fall out of the habit of thinking of time as a number, and more of a state of the day. It sounds stupid, but it fits my current situation a lot better than 0800’s.

The shore was surprisingly quiet. There weren’t much in the way of waves, and the usual watery beach noises were mostly absent. There were no mewing, squawking gulls or pelicans, or any other sea birds. Instead, there were other calls that were disturbingly alien. One was a series of odd, low, mournful sounds. Have you ever played “music” on a wine glass? That thing where you wet your finger and run it around the lip of the glass? You get these lovely pure notes, with a faint echoing quality. This was a bit like those sounds, only lower, much deeper, and with an organic sound to them that vaguely reminded me of a whale call. It was a haunting sound to begin with, and the fact that I couldn’t figure out what was making it creeped me out even more.

The other noises weren’t really creepy, but they messed with my head a bit. For example, the clicking chirps that immediately made me think “songbird,” were actually coming from pack of little six-legged ground creatures that were prowling the wrack line several hundred meters away. And a series of mechanical clacks and snaps that registered in my hindbrain as belonging to an insect of some sort, actually belong to this ocean’s “sea birds.” There seem to be several kinds of them. They’re really hard to see, since they go shooting by really fast, but all the species I could see seem to have two sets of wings. They aren’t actually birds, of course. But I can’t help seeing a flying thing and immediately thinking “bird.” I’m hoping to get a better look at them as we spend time here, so I can tell you what they actually are.

The Azu-nah were fairly leisurely with setting up camp. Everyone chose somewhere to live. There were a few coveted caves that caused a few disputes, but they were settled surprisingly quickly. There weren’t enough caves for everyone to have their own. I ended up sharing with Nandi. Kohric’s cave is only a dozen meters away, and Oreeaht is our next door neighbor. I’m pretty happy with the setup.

After we’d set our things down and had a short rest, most of the clan, myself included, headed down to the water for a wash up. It took all my willpower to test the water’s composition first. The ever present chlorine is there, but it’s more or less entirely been bound up by the other minerals in the water. So it means the water is really, really salty, and a little gritty. It had my eyes burning at first.

The Azu-nah are very picky about keeping their belongings clean, but absolutely no one went into the water wearing a bag or clothing of any kind. But while the Azu-nah run around more or less in the buff to begin with, I was feeling a bit more …shy. I’d stripped to my underoos and was about ankle deep when Kohric and Nandi both came splashing up to me.

They didn’t exactly forbid me to wear anything in the water. But they said that the salt and other assorted particulates would make me sorry I did (well, they said “sand”, but I got the message. Chafing sucks, no matter what species you are). Also, it’s apparently a bit of a social faux pas, and would make me look like a total idiot; the Minervan equivalent of a noob.

It took me a good twenty minutes, but I did manage to get up the courage to strip down. I practically sprinted to the water and submerged to my shoulders. But other than a few innocently curious questions about what the funny things on my torso were, they didn’t give me a second glance.

And, really, by the time I was in the water, I was so grateful to finally get clean that I wouldn’t have cared if the global counsel president had walked by at the moment. There wasn’t any soap, of course, but the salty water got most of the grime off by itself, and a good scrub with a handful of sand took care of the anything more stubborn. It was heaven.

The only downside to my bath was at the end, when the Terrible Trio decided to pay me a visit. Or, rather, an ambush. Now, I’m still not sure what’s IN the water here, right? And when three splashy, roaring somethings descend on me and give me a good dunking, I kinda, sorta, maybe freaked a bit.

The trio found this utterly hilarious. I chased them around a bit, attempting a revenge dunking, but they were too fast for me. Damn tails. I need better propulsion. They found my failed attempts even funnier. I contented myself to splash them ruthlessly for a few minutes, and they eventually took themselves off to harass some other victim.

But it’s not over. Vengeance will be mine!

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.

Parrot Squirrels

This morning dawned quieter than usual. The entire clan still seemed a little subdued. Not sorrowful, per se. They don’t seem to view their clan member’s death as a terrible tragedy, and they don’t seem to be visibly mourning him as a human group would. I don’t know if they have anything equivalent to crying, but if they do it’s incredibly subtle. Enough that I can’t pick it out, anyway.

But in their quiet way they seem sad. I think the loss of a comrade feels pretty much the same for anyone, despite one’s species, or one’s religious beliefs, one’s philosophies on death. At the end of the day that person isn’t there, and you miss them.

So this morning was quiet. The weavers still sang while they worked, but they were mostly softer, keening songs. They all seemed to mention stars or the sky. I was dying to talk to Kohric and have him explain what was going on.

My curiosity had to wait, though, since Nanahan put me to work again almost immediately. Today my morning job was to peel and husk yesterday’s harvest. Nandi, who seems practically attached to me, showed me what to do and helped me. As we worked, several small creatures crept down from the tree we were working under and skittered around the edge of our pile. They were little green sparrow-sized creatures that vaguely resembled rats, but moved and acted a lot more like a lizard or bird. They’d skitter down close to something we’d discarded, stop dead, look around with that odd jerky motion birds sometimes do, and then snatch the object and shoot away.



Nandi flicked husks at them, or swung his tail to scare them away if they got too close to the pile. He paid them little mind otherwise, like a picnicker ignores a fly unless it lands on his sandwich. They quickly learned I had shorter reach and poor aim. Soon I had all three of them around me, waiting for me to drop something. I felt like a guest at a friend’s house and they didn’t ever break their dogs of the habit of begging.

They were oddly adorable, though, and I started making sure the pieces of shell I threw at them still had a few bits of nut meat still on them. They’d hold the pieces in their little paws, eyeing the shell with those weird little lizardy head jerks, and then snap out their prize. I kinda want one. Please, mom, it followed me home? Parrot squirrels don't eat much, I swear! Heh.

Nandi and I eventually finished. He carefully divided everything we’d prepared into two piles. The small pile he had me load into one of the floppy travel basket-bags, and tie shut against our little green thieves. The second pile, much, much larger, he put into one of the bigger community food baskets they’d been using the whole time I’d been with them. I tried to ask why so much was going to the regular food baskets, when they were going to be leaving in a day or so. Nandi simply said the regular baskets were for eating tonight, as if it were obvious. They were going to be eating an awful lot, then. The baskets were nearly twice as full as I’d seen them normally. Nandi told me I would eat plenty tonight and left it at that. Then he led me around the camp, trying his best to explain what was going on. It was kinda cute, really. I think Nandi really admires Kohric, and tries to emulate him as much as possible.

Taking down D’Keda was a bit different than I’d expected.

All around the camp, the odd green tree tents were being dismantled. Except that the Azus weren’t folding them up and packing them away as I’d expected. Instead, they were….sort of deflating them. They were flattening them out and carefully tying them down against the tree branches. A few were being cut away from the trees entirely, cut further into pieces, and then a thick green sap squeezed from the … cloth? I gaped and struggled to put the Azu words together.

“Nandi. Is kirrrrt’ok alive? Plant?”

Nandi tilted his head at me like I was stupid. He spoke slowly for me. “Yes, is plant. Leaf. We grow kirrrrt’ok carefully. Then make it grow with a tree. But it grows slowly, so we must keep it safe when we are gone.”

“Then why cut?” Hacking it to bits didn’t seem like good plant husbandry to me.

“Hifsangom is good for travel too. We travel, many… “ he faltered. “many small biters come. It keeps biters away.”

So, today I learned that the Azu-nah would probably make a killing in the pet trade, they occasionally like to go on huge food benders, and the tent thing I’ve been living in for the past few weeks has actually been a freakishly huge leaf with insect repelling capabilities. Or, whatever passes for insects on Minerva.

There are days when the utterly alien nature of this world really hits me, and I feel so hopelessly far from home where everything makes sense. Today was one of those days.

Chestha

Kohric tied a thong made of braided grass around the base of the redeka tooth. He insisted I keep it with me, but he couldn’t articulate why. He just didn’t have the vocabulary. He did clutch it to his throat, perk his ears, and threw his head up and back and forth.

I figured he wasn’t trying to say the tooth would improve my dancing. I think he was trying to tell me that it will give me energy, or perhaps vitality.

Or extreme raver powers.

Regardless of the reason, I was grateful for the gesture. I was so shaken from the attack that I spent the rest of the afternoon jumping at every sound around us. Kohric didn’t seem as concerned, but I did notice he would rock back on his haunches and scan the horizon with an intensity he hadn’t shown since I’d met him. Maybe he was a little rattled too.

My canteen’s top had broken from my lucky redeka sucker punch. I lost about half its contents to spilling, but I didn’t want to go near any more water sources to fill it. By late afternoon my head was starting to ache from mild dehydration. I was also starting to cough a lot.

Minervan air and water is rich with chemicals that are very rare compared to Earth, and they aren’t that good for human health. Chlorine is one of them. There isn’t more than a trace of it in the air, and it isn’t enough to cause you problems from immediate exposure. But human physiology doesn’t really like chlorine, and long term exposure messes with your respiratory system. And it makes your eyes itch like hell. Fortunately my life support kit includes medications and reagents that protect me from long term exposure to chlorine, and the other nasties in the water and air. About two thirds of my entire pack’s contents are taken up with my life support kit: anti-toxins, vaccines, antibiotics, and testing equipment. Minerva was never meant to host human life. We need all the help we can get.

During our next rest stop, I took the opportunity to do a quick diagnostic on my vitals, dosed myself with my tri-daily hit of anti-chemical-death-juice, and waited for my lungs to stop itching. I’d been an idiot and not dosed myself this morning like I was supposed to. Laziness punished. I wonder what the Azu-nah have that protects them from chlorine.

We had chosen a high hill to take our rest. I only needed two pit stops today, instead of my four yesterday. Hah! Improvement! Anyway, the hill gave us a really nice view of some of the surrounding territory. Kohric pointed to an area near the horizon where the trees became a little denser. Nothing you would call a forest, but enough that it really wasn’t what you’d call open.

“D’Keda is there,” he said, his ears were high and his lips curved up a just a bit at the corners, with his mouth open just a little. (This was an Azu-nah grin, I discovered. We’d had a grunting, gesturing exchange on our walk, and he’d managed to explain it to me a bit that ears play a bigger part in Azu expressions than the mouth in most cases.) Tomorrow mid-morning we’ll reach D’Keda’s current encampment.

Between our hill and the distant camp was a herd of creatures I hadn’t seen yet. I sketched one after a good long look through my binoculars. Kohric calls them “chestha.” Apparently they are “good food” and “very fast-turning”. I think that probably means “agile.”



These things have three sets of legs. They move like nothing on Earth. The only hexapods we have are insects, and their leg structure is sprawling; totally different from the chestha. These guys have a long, rolling gate. They have at least one foot on the ground at all times, and the legs on one side move one after the other, in a row. Front-middle-back on one side, then front-middle-back on the other. I only saw one of them run, and only for a second, but it was incredibly fast. I’ll bet they’re hard as hell to catch.

We watched them for several minutes and then continued on. We made another couple kilometers before it started to get dark. Now I’m sitting awake, bundled in my sleeping bag, and staring out across the hills into the night. Minervan creatures are making their alien sounds again, and every once in a while there will be a flash of blue-green light somewhere out in the darkness. Kohric is sleeping next to me. I've got the redeka tooth in my hand. It's soothing to run my thumb across while I'm thinking.

I wonder if I’ll be welcome in D’Keda. Will I ever get enough vocabulary under my belt to communicate better than a two-year-old? I’m going to be depending on them for so much. I’m literally the only one of my kind within a thousand kilometer radius. It’s exciting, usually. But tonight, I feel naked and alone.

Making Water

Today began the second day of our journey. Kohric said we should be at D’Keda tomorrow morning. I was told only two days, but I guess I can’t ask for a refund.

I freaked Kohric out this morning though. Would you believe Azu-nah don’t pee? I didn’t intend to have him be partial to that particular part of my morning ritual. I sneaked behind a thing that looked rather like a bush, and was mid-stream when I heard a sharp…er.. I guess you could call it a squawk. It transcended species. I knew it was a sound of dismay.

Kohric came charging up to me. I, still with my pants around my ankles and desperately trying to finish up, tried to look as calm as on could in such a situation.

“You make water! Tee needs … needs doc-tor!”

Oh for the love of… How exactly does one explain taking a piss to an alien?

“No, no!” I waved my free hand in a negative. “This is normal for humans. This is… er.. how I … er. Removing waste…. It’s peeing! I’m fine!” I hurredly hauled my pants back on. “It’s okay, really.”

He seemed a little mollified, but still eyed me like I was going to grow a second head from my ass. “Not sickness? Tee safe?”

“Safe. Healthy. It’s okay.”

All at once he seemed to make up his mind. He shook his head vigorously and bobbed it up and down several times. “With Azu-nah, making water is sickness.”

Note to self—See any Azu-nah having a morning pee, immediately call for help.

~~~~~~~~~~
Several hours into our hike, we came across a thin stream with a great deal of trees and scrub surrounding it. Kohric lead us to it for a drink. I sat down and slowly filled my canteen, grateful for the rest. Kohric took quick, nervous gulps, looking up and around after each sip. His ears never stopped moving.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Something suddenly exploded on the opposite side of the creek. A huge dark shape splashed across toward us. Kohric leapt straight up, did a half turn in mid air, and landed running. I shrieked in terror and scrambled to my feet, my heavy pack making me much slower than Kohric. I had a half second to register something the size of a horse careening toward me, when my logical mind shut down and whatever bit of my synapses dedicated to survival kicked on.

I swung my arm hard toward the thing’s face, whipping my canteen at it by the strap. My canteen was full, and I heard it crack across the thing’s muzzle. The creature made a sound that was half hiss, half yelp, and backed away. Something wet and hard hit my cheek and bounced against my collarbone.

I didn’t waste any time. I didn’t look back. I bolted after Kohric at a dead sprint. We slowed after a time, but kept walk-trotting for another several kilometers.

Finally, I couldn’t go on anymore. I flopped into the grass. I could barely see straight, and my breath was ragged. “What was that?” I wheezed when I’d finally gotten a little breath back.

Kohric looked solomn and reached toward the front of my shirt. He plucked something white and oblong from where it had wedged between my pack strap and its padding. It was smooth and pointed at one end, ragged and coarse on the other. A broken tooth.

“Redeka,” Kohric said, staring at the tooth. “Was redeka.”