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The stronger wind makes sailing back faster than before, but we're even heavier in the water from three huge dinosaur leg bones and some huge meaty pieces and good sinew, and the dripping blood have attracted two sharks that is following along, and missing the likely feeding frenzy we've left behind. Koru truly regret marking herself with blood from the dino kills. Getting more shark teeth would be useful, but we're already overloaded. I got three crossbow bolts back as the one in the dino's mouth was broken, but I got the pieces and tip from that one too. Plus a jar of big dino teeth since Koru was more than happy to bash their skulls to pieces to make sure they were dead and stayed dead. We even have a whole bunch of feathers and three large pots with dino blood, and will make a stop by the Salt Boon to get more salt. So overall another good day. Three fewer predator dinosaurs. Probably three new people for our group, and plenty of food and salt. Apparently the venom shouldn't be a problem for eating the meat, but we didn't take meat from the dino hit by two arrows and will of course cook the meat well anyway and not eat huge amounts in one go. Well, some of us prefer lightly cooked, but surprisingly Kima isn't one. Vekalie hadn't considered that some of us might be meat eaters or omnivores, and is a bit bothered by it, but not that we will eat those dinosaurs that tried to eat us. That sort of feels 'right'. Their kind do kill predators and other animals, and use their sinew, hide and bones. Kima feels honoured that she too will eat meat from the kills.
Kima is an omnivore, but eating meat and good meat is a status thing for her, and using fire to cook it even more so, and she really didn't know how to make a fire before Xuela told her, but she have been practising making very small fires. Her homeland is desert like and with mostly bushes and thorny plants and no real trees, so she is a bit overwhelmed by the greenery and all the water here although she heard tales about it in far away green lands. Kima is from a weird semi-nocturnal culture living in caves and dug hollows to avoid the scorching sun, but having venom is apparently quite rare and prized, so venomous women are trained and give to a Lord as tribute. A Lord won't let a potent weapon and prize like that run free, so naturally Kima quietly swore herself to me, and hoped that I would appreciate the gesture and let her live and become my trusted guardian mistress. Guardian maybe, but mistress is a huge nope.
Kima might look fairly human in shape and limbs if I ignore her tail and face, and she have small tits - four of them - but she is just too lizard like and so creepy, especially with those creepy snake eyes that also hardly blink and her wandering extra side eyes and weird long tongue, which is how she smell-taste. I sure don't want to stick my penis anywhere in her, or feel her mouth or tongue anywhere on me. Again. I get shivers from just the thought, as that is basically nightmare fuel. And so is getting a handjob from someone with vicious pointy nails and venomous pinky fingers. Imagining her too wide opening mouth and those fold out fangs sure doesn't help. Just sleeping at night knowing that there is someone like Kima close by might be hard, and Kima is on our side and oath bound to me. Kima sure give of that 'you are all food' vibe, and what she calls a smile doesn't help. I'm obviously not alone in thinking that and I see the others cautiously glance at Kima. Hell, if Kima wasn't overall shaped quite close to us, and talking, it would be hard to see her as a person. She just doesn't move like a normal person would, and I wonder how she will move on land, as it seem far to natural for her to crawl on all four on the catamaran, and both backwards and sideways. And her strange voice and speech pattern doesn't make the creepiness factor decrease.
Oaths are taken extremely seriously in Kima's culture - as in a lot of alien cultures, and for good reasons - and Kima is pleased that an oath breaker is punished with death by the spirits. She have also been indoctrinated that there is great prestige in being a guardian mistress and serving a Lord, but I think she over committed when oath bounding herself to me. She literally swore her life, body and venom in my service and to follow my orders, so I have given her basically the same standing orders as I gave Koru. I've increasingly been getting the impression that Kima is young, and after a few questions that proves true. She have just completed her training and was on her way to the distant green land and her future Lord, so she is eager to show her usefulness and that she is ready to serve. I don't think Kima have really understood that this is another world and not her homeworlds 'green land', as her culture and upbringing is just very primitive, although there seems to be higher civilization in her homeworlds green land.
Four Armed Rivke captured her by basically shouting to let them capture her. Rivke was a big scary lizard like person that might be a Lord, so of course she complied. Kima have never seen a Lord before, and just recently learned that Rivke was a female. Rivke and Gjurl of course told Kima of their camp and their commander King, and that she would serve him well. Xuela and Koru seem to have really sold me as a great leader that Kima must respect, and that we attacked and wiped out Koru's group, including fearsome Rivke, and Koru's praise of me, obviously makes me a greater Lord than King, which led Kima to swear that oath before meeting me. I really hope Kima won't regret that and have her illusions about the world and me dispelled. Kima seems like the 'death before dishonour' type with a good dose of 'everyone dies'.
I'm honestly mostly happy that King or some bastard - me excluded - didn't get their hands on Kima and her potent venoms, and I'm very happy for our body armours. We have to assume there will be poisonous and venomous arrows and other things used against us, sooner or later. If we'd had Kima's venoms available during the ambush, that would have gone differently. Although it is very good that Koru is alive and oath bound. Koru surviving and oath bounding herself, literally gave us Kima too, and Queral, if she ever wakes up. Queral seems to just be sleeping, but who knows if she ever wake up or that venom will leave lasting effects. That venom is nasty shit, but at least Queral did better than those dinosaurs.
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According to Kima, Queral stumbled upon Kima's cliff last night, and Kima captured her. Apparently Kima is the first person here that Queral have met, so she got a bit of a shock that Kima is intelligent and said 'hello' instead of trying to eat her. Kima's words about Queral's reaction last night or this morning isn't the most flattering, but I get why Queral had a bit of panic attack and was screaming if Kima's smile was the first thing she saw, so Kima quickly silenced her with just a tiny bit of venom, and Queral haven't woken up since. I feel bad about looking through Queral's stuff, but it needs to be done, and both Kima and Koru have already checked her over and put all of Queral's things in her very pretty and finely decorated shoulder bag. Queral have very decorated and intricate clothes with matching gloves, and many gold piercings in both her ears, nose and lip. She also have a necklace and intricately decorated rings on the outside of her gloves. With basically white skin, grey hair, red clothes and that much gold and bright colours, Queral sure don't blend in to nature, and comes from a culture with very good craftsmanship for clothes and jewellery, that go way over the top on intricate details. In Queral's bag I find an elegant small folding knife; two thick books of an unknown language and subjects; a spectacles case with spectacles; a pouch with coins; a water filled glass bottle with a fancy lever locked stopper; and a decorated and elegant small single shot flint lock style pistol. That seems loaded. Plus some kind of makeup box with a mirror and black and red things. Yeah. Even with that pistol, Queral doesn't feel like the most dangerous person, but then again Kima have venom. Kima should be lucky that Queral didn't try to shoot her.
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It's early evening as we make our way home along the ridge trail, and we point out features for Kima and Vekalie. Kima's land movement is creepy, and she flow between walking upright and on all fours, and she sometimes move sideways and backwards. Effective in rocky terrain and she is a very good climber, but creepy. Her eyes make her have a very good view or the surroundings. Kima might not literally have eyes in the back off her head, but the moving side eyes means her field of view is damn wide, and she can look at three spread out things at the same time. Although it feels good that Kima obviously tries to guard us from danger and is attentive of her surroundings, but she haven't really moved in vegetation and jungle before and will need to practise and get used to it. Since Kima is now protecting her Lord, she is wearing a leather strap harness for carrying her two claw knives, two short 'teeth swords' and eight of what she call 'throwing-teeths'. Just like the knives and short swords, throwing-teeth is very descriptive. They obviously started as some big animals nasty teeth, but now look like four sided throwing stars with fine sawblade edges, and with venom they might be very effective. Kima's culture might not have advanced to metal weapon, but I would not want to fight a bunch of Kima's. The claw knives actually seem to be some kind of natural obsidian and damn sharp, but those teeth swords are no doubt huge teeth and pure stuff of nightmares, especially being wielded by someone like Kima. Better try to forget those thoughts and visions if I want to sleep tonight.
Seeing how Vekalie is, makes Bokyli's change even more obvious, but Bokyli's personality have really changed too, and she is more mature and with another focus. She is still jumpy and eat a lot of vegetation, but it has become subdued and she mainly eat her favourites. And helpfully point them out to Vekalie who tries them and other, so they are munching on foliage as we walk, and Bokyli really warn Vekalie about Number 3. I have not said anything, but Reiley absolutely understands that Bokyli have tried to munch on a Number 3 leaf.
It feels so good to climb up to the community hut area and we're all happy to be back. We dump all our stuff and cargo, and Koru lay Queral's sleeping body on a mattress. Xuela and Vekalie have a proper introduction and we show our newest group members around the hut and cliff. It's not much, but it is home. We will have plenty of furniture, the loft, glass and other things to do, and we'll really start to work on Xuela's personal hut. After that we need to improve the defences and build that fortified gatehouse. Our group is now eight, and that means we really have to start to organize work, plan food and so on, and we need to make more crop fields too. Ironically not for the two vegetarians amongst us, but Vekalie like that we have crop fields and a small terrace garden. It's likely that Bokyli and Vekalie will cut off and collect their favourite vegetation and put them in water so they have a couple of days supply. Harvesting from more distant places is better than taking the nearest.
There isn't just benefits with being many, but we will start to have guard duty, and not surprisingly Kima offer to do every night watch and sleep during the morning. Beside being dead set on being my guardian mistress, Kima's species is half nocturnal, and she think that even the nights here are bright, but the planetary rings are very pretty and she also like that the weak suns - aka the moons - doesn't give burning light. I don't like anyone guarding alone at night as that makes them easier to take out, but it might have to be done unless we rotate the duty. Kima seem to have vision sharpness like Reiley while seeing more colours than me, but Kima also have thermal vision through extra eyes hidden under dark plates where her eyebrows should be, which will take a bit of explaining to Reiley later tonight as I skipped explaining what that truly means for op-sec reasons. Kima doesn't really get how we all see differently and that we didn't see that hidden fur pig that was 'bright', so she threw a rock at it to scare it into running away. Fur pigs are sneakier than I knew, and I assume Kima saw the warm snout and eyes, and I can just imagine how she see the rest of us. It's just lucky that Koru, Climber or Big Archer didn't have thermal vision when we tried to ambush them, and my paranoia paid off. Trying to sneak up on or ambush Kima will be a whole other kind of tricky, especially in open nature, but at least I get thermal vision enough that it is doable, and we can use Kima to practise. Kima seems happy that I understand how she see the world and that her Lord appreciate her. Well, at least tries to. I have no idea how having 6 eyes, with two that move around on their own, actually is. How much of her brain is just dealing with processing visual data? Two eyes instead of one is of course an benefit, since it means wider view and stereoscopic vision giving depth perception. More eyes gives less return, unless it's like Kima who have two independent side eyes giving really good surround vision, and she also see a different spectrum.
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