Like Little Girls

It took me a good twenty minutes of pacing up and down the beach before my face stopped burning, and I stopped trying to think up patterns for Ikaylay pelt coats and Soto shoes. Nohwasi would make an excellent rug. I wanted to tie their tails together and then chase them through a very dense forest.

But eventually my humiliation cooled and I was back to where I’d been before running into the Trio. I paced slowly along the water line, picking at interesting shells and whatnot. Or, at least, I call them shells. Many of them are flexible as if they’re made of keratin or some other protein instead of the usual calcium carbonate of Earth shells.

They were interesting enough, but without any kind of frame of reference it was difficult to learn much from them. Was this conical thing a shell for some kind of Minervan cephalopod thing? Or was it only a tiny piece of armor from something bigger? A shed claw sheath, perhaps? There was no one around to tell me. So I gathered up a handful of the most interesting ones to ask Kohric about later, and continued.

Not long into my walk I noticed I wasn’t entirely alone. One of the little flying creatures happened to dart past me, and as I turned my head to follow it, I happened to catch sight of a yellow tail and a suggestion of long ears. It was only the motion of the tail that alerted me. I’d never have seen it if not for turning my head just at the right second. For a panicked half second I thought it was Ikaylay, and the other two were about to descend on me from behind and scare the crap out of me.

But then, seeing he’d been spotted, the Azu raised his head and I saw that he was clearly not Ikaylay. The stranger carefully showed his palms in greeting and bobbed his head. It’s a wonder I ever saw him. His tawny hide and green markings blended beautifully with the grass. He looked faintly familiar; one of D’Keda I’d never talked to. But I remembered his green curlicue markings from seeing him with the hunters.

I greeted him back, and asked his name.

He seemed very shy. He kept turning his muzzle a little to the side like I’d seen some of the youngsters do when they were unsure of themselves. It was oddly comforting to see someone feeling as awkward as I was.

“My name is Slaasek,” he said, and slowly came to sit nearby. “You are Tee-Tee.” Again that muzzle turn, but his eyes were always fixed on me. “I watched when the three played their trick.”

“They have played two tricks now,” I explained to him. “I want to make them stop. I want to trick them too.”

“Yes, I watched the trick-in-the-water,” he said. “The three think they are more clever than Tee. This makes Tee sad, yes?” At this I wasn’t sure whether to be comforted or creeped out at the suggestion that this fellow had been watching me since we’d arrived at the beach.

His kind eyes decided me on “comforted.” “Yes,” I said. I debated the merits of revenge versus taking the higher ground. Then I thought about Ed having trouble getting taken seriously. Ah screw it. “Can you help me trick the three?”

Now he faced me a little more directly, and his mouth gaped in a feral grin.

“Yes.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hardly saw him the next day, and the morning after. It wasn’t until the second afternoon that he approached me again, still doing that shy muzzle-turn. He had another Azu-nah with him, a gray fellow with a thick, fluffy mane and beautiful tattoos. Slaasek introduced him as Duryl, another hunter.



Together we sat and I watched as the two of them hatched a simple plot that would put the Terrible Trio in their place. I admit, I may have cackled once or twice.

Late that same evening, just as it was growing dark, we put our plan into motion. Slaasek lead me to a big, gnarled tiger tree that leaned over a small hillock. Sandwiched between the sloping roots of the tree and the hill were a thick cluster of short little plants. They hugged the ground like strawberry runners, and had delicate little fruits growing along the underside of the leaves. Slaasek had explained earlier that these were one of the Trio’s absolute favorite foods. They had cleared out the obvious caches days ago, and had been complaining at evening meals about not finding more.

Duryl was already waiting for us, lazing happily in the thick branches of the tree several meters above. Slaasek joined him and gestured for me to start.

I wandered in a wide circle around the tree, searching for the three little buggers, and finally spotted them chasing each other a little way off. I shouted to them as Duryl and Slaasek had said. “I have found a mystery!”

The Azu-nah are apparently more curious than any ten cats.

I almost didn’t have time to blink before they were swarming around me, asking what I’d found. I directed them to the fruit and asked them, innocent as a newborn calf, if they were something edible, or if perhaps they were horribly poisonous?

Speaking of cats, have you ever seen one looking particularly smug? Yeah. I half expected Sodo to start licking a paw.

So Ikaylay, also smug as hell, started in about how these were very dangerous, and that I should probably go away right now and warn Eyani away from the area, so he or another youngster did not think to eat them.

He was taking a breath to go further, when from up in the tree came a horrible scream, and a big gray shape dropped from the tree right on top of me. I didn’t have to act my part. I shrieked in genuine surprise and had the breath knocked out of me; Duryl was supposedly going to land next to me.

But all of that was drowned out the howls of fear that came from the Trio. I barely had a chance to register the looks on their faces before they’d flailed and skittered a good half dozen meters away, bouncing from forelegs to hind almost like startled puppies. Sodo practically disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Slaasek and Duryl sat on either side of me, loudly “kheee-ing” their amusement.

Sweet vengeance!

---

This week's cameos are Slaasek and Duryl! Submitted by Prannon and Doran respectively! Thank you for submitting them!

I also just noticed just now that I forgot to include everyone's tattoos in the images. I'll be tweaking them tomorrow or Thursday. Sorry about that!

Attack of the Legumes

While talking to Ed and Doc Sutherland was wonderful, I ended up feeling a bit lost after I signed off. I missed them. I missed other humans. Hell, I missed just eating a normal meal and sleeping on more than a pile of grass in a cave. But I was also grumpy with myself for feeling that way, and I was more than a little nervous I would start sliding back toward that hopeless, miserable place I’d been a few days before. I thought back to Eyani’s expression when I’d snapped at him.

No, definitely not going back to that.

I wanted to feel comfortable with the clan. They’re people too, dammit, and there’s no reason why I couldn’t find solace for my loneliness by spending time with people. Even if they do have four legs.

A very old friend of my family always told me the best way to avoid feeling down was to “get up and move.” So I put my computer away, gathered up the solar charger, and set off to find something useful to do.

Nandi and Eyani were both sitting in the shade of a tree a few meters away. They looked suspiciously preoccupied with a leaf Eyani was holding up. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it was a very interesting leaf.

I asked Nandi if there was anything I could do. He wasn’t terribly helpful.

“There is little to be done that Tee knows,” he said, almost seeming apologetic. “Tee cannot carve, and Tee cannot hunt. Tee does not know what plants heal hurts.” I tried not to look too deflated at this. He seemed to understand, though, and tried to cheer me up by telling me I’d probably be able to help with these tasks someday. Or, as he put it, “Under one tomorrow’s sun.”

So, without any real direction, I wandered off to find something to do. Eyani was supposed to be guarding meat, which sounded pretty boring, and Kohric needed Nandi for some unknown task. So I puttered around the shrubby area between the plains and the beach, looking for interesting plants and animals.

I didn’t get terribly far before I ran into the Terrible Trio. I’m beginning to think the three of them are joined at the hip, because I never, ever see them apart. I made the hand-greeting gesture at them as I approached, and was rewarded with funny, teasing faces and an offer to go swimming again. I stuck my tongue out at them.

Little buggers.

I was dying to prank them back, but I couldn’t decide what to do. What if I went too far and did something damaging? I didn’t want to hurt anyone, or violate some taboo. So instead I tried for a more neutral conversation, and asked them about what things were good to eat, like the koh fruit, and whether there were any dangerous creatures.

Nohwasi eyed me suspiciously, clearly scanning my frame for a hidden biofoam canister, and then settled to help his cohorts answer my questions. He still hasn’t quite gotten over his first experience with my, apparently.

They went on at length about what things were good to eat, and even began a short-lived argument about what the best fruit was in the area. But their attention soon turned to the wildlife. They told me it was unwise to wade out too far into the water, as there were many aquatic predators that prowled the deeper areas. They also told me how to watch out for some of the flying creatures when they were breeding on the beach, as brooding parents would come screaming and biting at you in a protective rage.

Then they began telling me about the most dangerous creature; a tiny, green, caterpillar-shaped creature the size of a thumb, called a “langu”. It was apparently deadly poisonous, and would crawl onto you if you sat still too long. I’ve always been the type that immediately starts feeling a creature crawling on me if someone’s talking about it, and the grass gently brushing my exposed legs was starting to make me twitchy

Just as Ikaylay was finishing his description of the creature, Sodo suddenly leapt to his feet, yelping and scrabbling at his hind leg. The other two quickly jumped away in terror. Sodo brushed furiously at his thigh, sending a small green object flying in my direction.

“Langu!” Ikaylay shouted.

I couldn’t help it. I produced a yelp almost as good as Sodo’s and scrambled away from the thing as it came at me.

It landed at my feet and didn’t move. I hesitantly peered down at it, and realized not only wasn’t it moving, but that it had no legs. Or a head. Or any other visible body parts. It looked like a funny shaped bean, honestly. Then I realized the three little buggers were making the keee-ing Azu-nah version of hysterical laughter.

Hell. I walked right into that one.

I picked up the dread langu bean and threw it at Sodo, glowering. He and the others pranced out of the way and wandered off, laughing.

I’m so getting them back now.

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!

Grammar Grumbling

I’ve come to think of the place Kohric and I go over things as the “teaching place.” I feel like I’ve been at the teaching place forever, even though it's only been three days. The teaching place has become a comfortable, relatively safe haven in an environment where so much is completely unknown and alien.



Kohric is wonderful. I still don’t entirely know what his function in the clan is. He refers to himself as “thanda-tu D’Keda.” The others seem to give him respect. Their greetings to him tend to be the formal, head-bobbing kind more than the simple hand gestures. I take it he’s kind of the guy who makes sure the youngsters have enough general knowledge to make it.

That description kinda makes him sound like a bit of a dry, boring dude. But that’s really not true. He has this odd, random wit that comes out of nowhere. Like, this afternoon when I was getting really frustrated, he decided to suddenly teach me the word for “fart”. So, while I’m still struggling with their goddamn freakish grammar, I can at least tell someone it wasn’t me playing the buttock bassoon.

Oh, their grammar. I’m picking up decent amounts of vocabulary. It’s fairly simple to memorize words. It takes a lot of practice, but not really that difficult. Grammar, though, that’s basically the way your brain processes those words. And damn, if that’s not a LOT harder to grasp. I have to slowly dissect each sentence and translate it back into English in my mind right now. I despair of ever becoming fluent.

Really, I’m spoiled by Latin based languages. They have funky grammar here and there, but it really isn’t all that different from English. Take French. In English, you say “I would like the fruit.” In French it’s “Je voudrais le fruit.” It’s basically the same sentence, just with different words. “I” is still in the same place, for example. “Would like” is mashed into “voudrais” but it’s pretty much the same thing.

In Azu-nah, “I would like the fruit,” would be “edusai-doku kayo,” which, in English, is “want-me fruit.” They have a word for “the” but they don’t use it much. And verbs seem to attach themselves to nouns. Learning which verbs attach to what nouns is giving me a headache. “I want the fruit” isn’t too bad. I’d get it if they were all like that. But then you think about saying “He said she wanted the fruit to give to her brother.”

My head still hurts from today’s lessons.

Kohric turned me loose as the sun was beginning to dip so I could find something to eat and rest my aching brain. The Azu-nah tend to take their major meal in the afternoon, and they take it more or less as a group. Or, really, those who went out hunting and gathering over the day bring their finds to a circle of small fire pits. And then everyone else joins them to divvy out the food. Kohric must have said something about my meat issue, because it’s become a bit of a game for the gathered Azu to try and be the first to find something for me to eat.

Ikaylay from the terrible trio “won” tonight, and pranced up to me with a round, gray colored tuber called “heksanan.” It looks like a potato pretending to be a rock, but the inside is porous and squishy. It’s eerily reminiscent of bread. But it tastes a bit sweet, like a carrot or corn. Heksanan it is. I couldn’t classify this thing if I tried.

“Teegaahn, hai?” Ikaylay said, gesturing toward me. He pointed to himself, “Ikaylay,” then to me “Teegaahn?”

“Hai. Oki-kaibo Tee.” I said.

Ikaylay suddenly gap grinned, and gestured excitedly to his two cohorts. Sodo and Nohwasi crowded near and listened as Ikaylay chattered at them. “Oki-kaibo Tee!” he kept repeating. The others were grinning by now too, and muttering “Oki-tee Tee!”

Kohric, always relatively nearby to rescue me from a Lost in Translation, padded up behind me and gestured. He held his forepaw near the ground. “Kas” he said. Then he sat back on his haunches and reached as high as he could, “Tee.”

Oh for the love of crap. I’m officially a pun! “Tee” is their word for “tall.” And since I’m a good half meter taller than any of them, they find this discovery utterly hilarious. The Trio spent the rest of the meal calling me “Tee-Tee” and saying to their neighbors “Oki-tee Tee!” I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before this one goes away.

Oh well. At least Tee isn’t Azu for fart!

Don't eat the biofoam

I woke up this morning to the sound of animal calls; long, low, whooping sounds in the distance. Nearer, I could hear the rustling of leaves, as if something were hopping amongst the branches of my tree. That creeped me out a bit. For all I know Minerva has squirrels too, only these are venomous and eat brains or something.

I got up, pulled on my clothes and opened the tent flap, scanning the branches in front of me and below.

Nothing.

A leaf drifted down in front of me and I glanced up.



Without thinking I flung myself backward into the tent, reaching for my survival knife and swearing enough to strip paint. When the rest of my cerebrum caught up with my base instincts, and my heart was only marginally close to a blowout, I peeked my head back out of the tent.

There were three of them now, all appeared to be male. The one who’d been in the branch above was now clinging like a monkey to the limb my tree tent straddled. The second was lazing across another branch like a rust-colored panther, yellow eyes watching my every move. The third, blue, white and black, was gap-grinning down at me from the same branch his yellow friend had just abandoned.

“You guys scared the bajeezus out of me,” I blurted. The three stared blankly at me for a moment. Then the yellow one bobbed his head and raised his palms for a second in the informal version of Azu-nah greeting. He pointed to himself and said “Ikaylay,” then to the rusty one (“Sodo”), then the blue and black (“Nohwasi”). I figured those were their names. Then Ikaylay said the phrase Kohric had taught me the previous day, asking permission to come into my personal space.

I was so excited to apply some of my knowledge that I didn’t even stop to consider. I did the head-bob bow and repeated his greeting gesture.

I was suddenly surrounded by flowing, twisting Azu-nah. The three all seemed to want to examine my tree tent at once. Only two of them could cram in at a time, and that was with their tails hanging out the door and in my face. The third, Sodo, busied himself by poking my ears, sniffing my hair, and seemed to be utterly baffled by my toes.

I tolerated it for a bit until I realized the crunching sound I was hearing was them eating my rations. It took a lot of shouting, gesturing, gentle shoves, and even a bit of a tug on the blue one’s tail before I got them out of my tree tent. They’d slobbered all over my binoculars and my multi-tool. Half, HALF of my rations were devoured (how the hell can anything eat that fast?!), and one of them wouldn’t let go of the biofoam tank from my first aid kit.

It was the blue one, Nohwasi, and he kept turning the tank around, examining it with quick, jerky head movements, almost like a bird. I gestured to him in a “come” motion and mimed him giving up the tank. Ignored me and began chewing on the nozzle.

“No, don’t do tha---“

Schhhlllllrrrp!



It was difficult not to laugh at the expression on his face. He looked looked like he’d utterly failed at shaving. But I was more concerned that he would try to eat the biofoam. I mimed spitting, waving my hands urgently. He seemed to get the idea. Poor guy. I’m pretty sure that stuff tastes like crap.

I rescued my biofoam tank just about the time when Kohric came to my rescue. He took one look at the carnage around my tree tent and shoo-ed the trio off with several sharp, barked words. Other than Nohwasi, who was busy scraping biofoam residue off his tongue with a claw, they didn’t seem very apologetic.

So, that was my lesson for the morning. When someone asks permission to touch your stuff, they really mean it. Though, Kohric's reaction makes me hope they were a bit over the top. But at least they were entertaining!

Now, today's goal is to try and articulate to Kohric that I need to test some Azu-nah food before I can eat it. I mimed talking with my hands and asked “Teach?” Kohric gape grinned and gestured for me to follow him.

“Come. Kohric is thanda-tu. Kohric will teach words.”