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Peach Bringer
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>Check on Jaina’s injury
As I help Jaina thread the rope back into its holster, I look over at Jaina and notice that she’s leaving her upper right arm out of the proceedings. Her passive frown seems a little more forced than usual. “Um, Jaina… How’s your back feeling after that fight on the trolley?”
“It’s fine. Nothing to worry about, it’s already healing over.”
“Really? Maybe I should check that for you…”
“There’s no need. It’s just a bit itchy now.” She’s surprisingly quick to brush off the suggestion this time.
Anet chastises her. “Itching could mean it’s getting infected. Let me look.”
Jaina relents, shrugging her armor off the shoulder gingerly, and it's immediately evident ‘healing over’ is too optimistic. The gash oozes a greenish fluid. It looks like she was hit hard enough to crack her exoskeleton. Her armor absorbed part of the blow when it broke, so it could have been worse. Apparently the paper they used in the village to make her vest is of thicker stock than we’d find around here.
“See, this is why we should worry about you,” says Anet. “I appreciate you not wanting us to stress over how bad it is, but don’t neglect yourself.”
“Point taken… ”
The next chance we get, she’ll patch her armor with the material we found in the labs.
>Pent and the trading economy
“You’ve mentioned trading with other families a few times, Pent. How do you all know when and where to get together and exchange goods?”
<It’s all word of mouth. The gatherings are always held on neutral ground unclaimed by anyone. The location and time is tightly guarded information, given only to trusted parties. If that info changes for any reason, a warning is left at the old place and everyone has to hash out a new agreement. Gatherings happen fairly often because we can’t carry much at once without becoming easy targets. Sometimes other scavs try and steal from these trade goods - if you’re caught doing that, you’ll be forbidden from trading forever by gatherings that know what you did. Things that usually get traded are food, raw materials, crafted stuff, sometimes rumors or even territory. People who live alone usually depend on gatherings to find a group to attach themselves to for protection, or trade salvage for food. Like Bright Eyes, sometimes this includes Them. They are harder to keep in contact with, so usually They arrive by stumbling onto the meeting place and not attacking anyone. Gatherings tend to move a few cycles afterward, just in case They get any ideas. While They’re around, however, They usually accept food in exchange for scavenging in more dangerous areas or for giving your family some extra muscle.>
“What’s the most valuable item at these gatherings?”
<Some people tend very well hidden farms that grow stuff other than the vines you see everywhere, which have a lot of useful properties but taste isn’t one. You’ll never see the seeds for sale.>
As we take the first gangway up to the seat level, the ruler flexes under my feet as I walk, which is mildly worrying. Talking helps me worry less about what’s to either side of me and focus on the path ahead.
>What exactly makes Beformicans so special?
“Bright Eyes, do you know what makes you different from someone like Pent or Jaina? Besides height?”
<Am stronger. Tougher, Live longer. Eat lezz. When hungry, eat whatever. Leaf tazte fine, Pent juzt picky eater. …Oh! Big jawz.> Bright Eyes points between her fearsome mandibles and Pent’s, lack thereof. Everyone else’s mandibles form a lower jaw that rarely opens wider than a pair of lips, unless they’re very frightened. I think my own mouth might even open wider. We can’t dislocate our jaw like some aliens assume, but galactically speaking it is very broad.
<There’s more to Them than meets the eye,> Pent observes. <They can shrug off a whole lot of pain, which is how They win in a straight fight. They also have keen senses, which makes it difficult to sneak up on one. And as a whole, you might have noticed, They are generally less friendly.>
Bright Eyes nods. <When old enough to climb, mom told me buzz off, find own leaf.>
Anet asks, “How old were you? No wonder Beformicans are so prickly, they’ve lost all sense of colony…”
<That… word you keep using, why do you keep calling them…>
“Beformicans?”
<Yes, that. What does it mean?>
“I just thought it sounded cool. Besides, you didn’t have a name for them. You just keep saying Them!”
<Yes we do! Everyone knows what you mean when you say Them! They aren’t organized enough to give Themselves a name.>
“That stops making sense the second you need that word to refer to literally anything else! And Bright Eyes just said They call themselves Xanthi.”
<Not Xanthi,> Bright Eyes clarifies, pointing to herself and then the room at large. <They Xanthi.>
I cut in again. “So, are there any real downsides to all these changes done to Beformicans besides behavior? Was their… intelligence affected too? No offense, Bright Eyes.”
Pent smirks. <Underestimating Their smarts is the last mistake most scavs make.>
“They don’t get to go to school and learn from books like us,“ says Anet.
“Kind of ironic, since these guys are living in a classroom.”
>Schooling in the village
“Speaking of, what was school like in the village?”
“We have classes and teachers, just like you. Most people get eleven years of classes, then become apprentices in a trade. Scribes get five more because they have to know a lot of math, plus it’s their job to teach all the other subjects. Of course, it’s everyone’s duty to preserve knowledge, not just theirs. Our class was pretty big. We start taking classes at four and finish by fifteen. After breakfast it was lessons for the first half of the shift and chores in the second half.”
“What was your favorite class?”
“Not math,” says Jaina.
Anet exclaims, “History! It jumps around a bit, you know on account of all the missing records, but Elder Styx is the best teacher! For culture studies once, he let us watch Formican Force Five.”
“He sounds like a fun guy.”
Huh? What does Formican Force Five have to do with mushrooms?”
“Nevermind... What did you two apprentice as?”
“I apprenticed with the watchers. They’re the ones that navigate the tunnels to check on the tallmen, like what we were doing when we met you. It was kinda boring, so I started watching stuff other than tallmen. I started taking Jaina along as a partner, for safety.”
“I was training to be a smith before we started doing this. It wasn’t quite as fun,” Jaina adds.
“Elder Stone eventually approved new job titles, just for us! Jaina got to be a guard and I’m officially an explorer.”
“So, did you learn our language from the watchers?”
“A little, but most of it we learned at home from our dad. He teaches it to the watcher’s teachers.”
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