---Raala’s perspective---

I carefully raise my head above the ridgeline, just far enough to get line of sight.

My eyes go wide at what I see.

People… hundreds of them!

More than I’ve ever seen in one place!

Maybe more than I’ve seen in my entire life!

Several times all those in the six clans!

Maybe as many as live in the entire Basin!… Which is obviously not where they’ve come from!

Their tents are arranged in rows with lines of space left empty between them for people to walk down.

There are dozens of hearths strewn about these bizarre people’s camp, one enormous one at the very centre, around which many people dance strange, unfamiliar dances to the sounds of strange, unfamiliar instruments backed by the synchronised beat of many strange, unfamiliar drums!

The song’s lyrics, though the wind is carrying them to me clearly, are complete gibberish… marking the first time I’ve ever heard another people’s language.

I… say ‘people’ but…

“I’ve never seen people that look like that!” whispers Vounul, finishing my thought while matching my posture, concealment and alarm “Have they all painted their skin that colour? Have they all dyed their hair?”

“Am I imagining it or do their bodies… not look right somehow?” asks Kaamra “It’s a little difficult to tell with all of them so heavily dressed but… No, look!” she turns her head and gestures through the hill to a small band, leaving the enormous camp and heading North, some but not all holding spears “Those ones’re stripped down to fewer layers for some reason… Look how skinny they are!”

“Why are they so heavily dressed? It’s Autum! Aren’t they boiling!? And why are they camped up on the plains when they’re so close to the woods?” queries Vounul.

“Never mind any of that!” I say, not whispering since I know that there’s no way a low speaking volume is going to be able to carry that far against the wind “Who are they and why, by the fucking Maw, are they here!? Kaamra… you’re from the West… You ever heard of people like this?”

“Never!” she denies, taking my lead on the volume “Like… I know there’s a clan on the far side of the Basin that’s, like, one third brunets but… other than that, they just look like us! Not like these guys! These guys aren’t like anything I know! They’re not from the Basin!”

“So what do they want here…?” asks Vounul, still whispering.

“I don’t know… but it’s nothing good!” I observe “We’re heading back to the hearthstead… Right now!… I know we’re tired but we can’t risk staying out here and getting found by them tonight! Let’s split up… Vounul, you head back South. Kaamra, straight back. I’ll take the North route.”

“Wait… Split up!?” says Kaamra, incredulously “Shouldn’t we stay together for protection?”

“No. Our safety is less important than getting this news home right now. If we stick together and run into ten of them, they kill us and Bison and the other clans never know they’re here until it’s too late! Splitting up gives us the best chance that at least one of us makes it back to warn them!” I explain.

“Right…” she answers, not sounding happy about it.

“We taking the mushrooms we already got?” asks Vounul.

The question stops me in my tracks as I consider if it’s worth abandoning the work we’ve already done.

“Yes…” I finally decide. There’s no sense wasting work, afterall “…we take them… but we throw them away the moment we see any of them or think we may be being followed!”

The other two grunt their agreement and I gesture for us to get down from the hill.

We climb back down to the glade.

Divvying up the half full baskets first, we break from eachother.

Vounul heads South.

His intended woman heads directly back along the route we came by.

I head North, along what’s going to be the most circuitous route, carrying my spear in my left hand and the baskets, nested into eachother, in my offhand.

It isn’t worth running unless I get chased.

I’m going to be tired enough when I get back from doing what should have been a two day round trip in one!

No sense making myself more tired for no reason!

With three of us making the trip separately, I’d say the message is almost guaranteed to make it back to Bison.

Nevertheless, I quickly find my feet moving much faster than my normal walking pace.

Apprehension builds in my belly as my feet move faster and faster.

I’m almost running when I see him!

I skid to a stop and drop the mushroom baskets, taking my spear in both hands and pointing it at his chest.

I’m on the verge of panic right now!

Stepping into my path from behind a rock is the single tallest man I’ve ever seen… by a lot!

When the baby faced man notices me, he starts and throws up his hands (one empty, one holding a weird, carved, bent stick with a string tied tight between its ends), staring at me, his dark pupiled eyes wide.

He’s nearly a head taller than Wuurlo and a head, neck and shoulders taller than me!

His body is buried in a frankly ludicrously thick layer of clothes given the time of year and, still, he’s so skinny that I can easily tell it through his clothing!

His legs are long. His feet are entirely enclosed in fur shoes and way too narrow!

On the ends of the skinniest wrists I’ve ever seen are a pair of slender, long and straight fingered hands, like he’s been hung up by the fingertips and they’ve stretched out along with the rest of his body.

His dainty featured, dark skinned face looks almost exactly like a baby’s; flat, no cheeks, no brow, a vertical forehead and a small nose.

On the other hand, his completely unsheltered, brown eyes are way too small for even an adult, let alone a baby!

That, and he’s got a weird little prong that juts out from the front of his tall, narrow bottom jaw.

He bends, slowly, to place his large, carved, curved stick and a long bag of smaller, feathered sticks down on the ground. As he turns his head, I can see that his dozens of charcoal black… hair ropes (?) are tied way too far forward at the back of his skull… in a space that should be filled with bone!

His whole baby-round head is way too tall in the top to bottom line, way too narrow on the side to side line, and way too short on the front to back line!

The bizarre looking man straightens back up and… smiles at me!?

Does a smile mean something else to these people… or does he know something I don’t!?

I’ve got a spear pointed at him and he’s unarmed! Why is he smiling?!

He steps forward on his long right leg, rolling his hips in a weird, striding, alien gait as he walks towards me.

My terror blazes as he approaches.

I shout “STAY BACK!” while giving my spear a few menacing jabs forward.

The strange man doesn’t react at all, simply continuing his approach.

Of course he doesn’t speak my language!

Fear paralyses me as I’m crushed between the risks of killing him and bringing down the anger of hundreds of his kinfolk, or not killing him… which case, he just does whatever he’s going to do to me!

I could run but, with those long legs and that straight stride, he looks like he’d easily outrun and catch me!

He doesn’t look that substantial… maybe I could fight him off without killing him?

Then again, with the confidence he’s approaching me (the only lipservice he’s paying to the fact that I’ve got a weapon trained on him being his palms raised to the left and right of his uncanny head) he doesn’t seem to think I’m any threat!

As he draws near, I smell an unfamiliar (but not unpleasant) sour tang on the air, which I’m guessing is his scent.

He stops a (long) arm’s length away from the tip of my spear and slowly reaches down with a long, slender right thumb and forefinger to pinch the very end of my flint spearhead.

All I’d have to do to kill him is thrust forward… but I don’t…

Then, the lanklet shocks me by opening his mouth and, in accented but otherwise flawless Basinspeak, saying “If you’re aiming for my heart, Sunbeam…” redirecting my speartip from the middle of his torso to his top left “…it’s right here… but, I’m afraid to tell you… you’ve already struck it(!)”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

My face twists in confusion at the strange not-quite-man’s comprehensible but baffling words.

I’ve already struck his heart?!

What does that mean!?!?!?

I haven’t even lunged for him yet and he’s standing here on his feet the way no creature could be with a pierced heart!

“What are you talking about!?” I scowl up into the face looming over me.

He wags his head from side to side, screwing up his eyes and puffing a single breath before answering “Just a joke, Sunbeam… I thought I’d lighten the mood a little… since you seem to be a bit tense right now(!)” with a confident smile.

“It wasn’t very funny… this joke of yours!” I snarl back at the rope haired man while my heart beats faster than his people’s drums.

“I’m sorry about that!” he smiles with effortless charm that has no effect at all on me “My name is Ksem… It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

He brings his right palm forward towards me, fingers pointed to the sky, seeming to be expecting something.

We stand opposite eachother in silence for several long moments, him with his hand extended, me with my spear pointed at his chest.

“What’s this?” I finally ask, twitching my spear to his hand to indicate it.

“A greeting…” he beams “…Among my people, it’s the custom for one person to introduce themself and extend their palm. The second meets the palm with their own and gives their name in reply… I’ve given you my name…”

“I’m not giving you my name and I’m not taking either hand off my spear!” I interrupt, angrily.

He withdraws the hand and playfully shrugs “‘Sunbeam’ it is then(!)”

I don’t answer.

Silence reigns.

“I’m… sure you have questions?” he finally suggests.

“How do you know I’ve got questions?” I growl back.

“Well… it’s quite natural that you would?… Most of your people that I’ve met on my way here had questions when they first met us. I’m… guessing you’ve never seen people that look like me before, have you?”

“Fine… I’ve got questions!” I admit.

Bobbing his uncanny babyface up and down this time, he says “And I will happily answer all of them… but would you mind pointing your spear somewhere else first?”

“Yes! I do mind! I’m keeping this pointed at you for if I don’t like the answers I hear!” I glare up at him.

He extends his palms away to the sides and invites “Alright… that’s fair enough… Ask your questions.”

I narrow my eyes at him, thinking.

“What are you?” I begin.

“I’m a person… I’m just a person from a long way away and, as you can see, I look quite different from what you’re used to… I’m not a spirit, I’m not a monster, I’m not an animal… If you cut me I will bleed… the same colour as you.” he smiles.

“If that’s true, why are you so calm about having a spear pointed at where you say your heart is?!”

He actually laughs at that, unnerving me, before explaining “Oh, Sunbeam… you’re far from the first person to point a weapon at me in the last year… At some point, I guess you just get used to it… You come to understand that, if anything, panicking makes you more likely to get stabbed(!)”

I give a grunt of acknowledgement before moving on, to ask “Are all your people so tall?” gesturing him up and down with my spear.

He smiles again and shakes his head from side to side “No… most are taller than your people but I’m quite tall, even for them… Most men would be about this tall…” he gestures a little more than halfway down his head to a height that’s still several fingerwidths taller than Vounul “…and most women about this tall.” dropping his hand to a little above his shoulder but still more than half a head taller than me.

“OK… Next question: What are your people doing here?”

“They’re here because I led them here.” he answers, simply.

“I’m sorry…?” I sneer “You led them here?! How old are you!?”

Honestly, with his baby head and his lankily proportioned body, I’ve got basically nothing to go on to judge his age but, just from the smoothness of his skin, I wouldn’t say he’s that old!

“I’m 25 Winters old… Though my people would phrase that as ‘25 floods’.” he smiles.

My age… that’s a bit surprising… but I don’t know what answer wouldn’t have been!

“Why would so many people follow someone so young here from so far?!”

His eyes sink to the floor and pain briefly passes over his face before he responds “That’s… a complicated question to answer but… briefly… we didn’t really have a choice… We lost our homeland…”

I snort “Not very good with directions if you can lose something as big and important as your homeland, are you(!)”

With a sombre smile, he wags his face again and says “No… Not like that… We know where it is… we just can’t go back…”

“Why not?” I growl.

“Because others decided that they deserved our homeland more than we did… We wouldn’t stand a chance of taking it back from them…”

I spend a long time trying to understand that before asking “And… is that what you’ve come to do to us? Push us out of our lands the way you were pushed out of yours?”

“No.”

“Then what are you here to do!? You still haven’t answered that!”

He frowns, seeming to be mulling over how to answer before asking “Your people… as I understand… don’t use the plains for much, is that correct?… You view them as little better than mountains…? Just a obstacle to getting around…?”

“Obviously!” I scoff “You can’t hunt on plains! Prey see you coming from the horizon and just run away!”

“You… can’t hunt on plains…” he corrects, mirthfully “…but my people don’t hunt like yours do… We can’t really hunt in forests very well because prey has too many places to hide from us… We prefer the plains…”

“Do I look stupid!?” I snarl “You expect me to believe that anyone could survive on the plains?! Let alone a clan of hundreds!!!”

Unphased, he answers “Whether you believe me or not doesn’t change the fact that what I’m telling you is true.”

“How?!” I demand “How could your hunting be so different from ours that you can’t hunt in forests but can hunt on plains?!”

He frowns, thoughtfully… I think thoughtfully anyway, and asks “When you and your people hunt, you sprint down prey before they have a chance to run away from you, right?”

“Obviously!” I scowl “How else could you do it!?”

“Well… My people can’t run that fast…”

Confused, I look down at his long legs.

He smiles “Ha! Yes, you’re not the first to be confused by longer legs making us slower runners but, I promise you, if you and I ran a race to that footprint back there…” he gestures to the path behind him, implying that not only has he seen the charcoal black Bison marker, he knows its significance “…you’d win!… Us having long legs seems like it makes us better long distance runners than sprinters… That’s why we prefer hunting on plains.”

I narrow my eyes at him and ask “So you… What? Exhaust your prey to death?!” sceptically.

He shrugs his shoulders “Basically… yes. We run until what we’re chasing can’t keep running from us… then we kill it.”

“I don’t believe you!” I sneer “No one can run that long!”

He gives a patronising smile and answers “You remind me of an old friend… He couldn’t believe it when he saw how my people hunted either!… Of course, to us, seeing the way he hunted was the unbelievable thing! If you want a demonstration, I’d be happy for you to see it firsthand?”

Not answering that, I ask “You saw the footprint, you know what it means…” jabbing my spear in that direction “…why are you trespassing on Bison territory?”

His eyebrows raise up his flat forehead as he asks “My understanding was that it isn’t trespassing so long as it’s a small group and we either don’t take anything or, if we do, we bring a third of whatever we kill or gather to your hearthstead to offer you? That was the way it worked in the lands South of the Basin… Is it different here?”

I glare at him for a few moments before answering “No… It’s the same… Groups not larger than twelve with the Due as a third of all hunted or gathered while passing through.” through gritted teeth.

He points to himself with an infuriatingly flippant smile and states “I’m just one person… and I’ve taken nothing, so I owe nothing…”

“So why are you here then!?” I spit “I’m sure your people aren’t so different from mine that you can’t see how posting up, right on the edge of my hearthstead’s territory, with a camp of what looks like hundreds is alarming, are you!?”

He wags his face “No, no! We do understand and, even if we hadn’t, the hearthsteads we passed on our way here made it very clear!… We really didn’t mean to frighten you! We’ve just set up camp here so we can introduce ourselves to our new neighbours!” he extends both his empty palms down my spear shaft to me, beaming.

“…Neighbours?” I ask with dawning dread.

“Yes… We’re moving onto the plains, just there… At least for the next year or two… After that, we might go to the other plain I’m told there is in the West of the Basin… We’ll be living next to you… that makes us your neighbours and, hopefully, your friends…!”

“And… do we get a say in whether you become our neighbours or not, outlander!”

The nervous smile on his babyface drops into a wounded frown as he asks “Do you need one?”

“Yes!… When a clan wants to reestablish themselves in a new place, they would normally spend several seasons making sure all their new potential neighbours were willing to allow it and making sure all their old ones knew where they’d gone in case anyone came looking for them! And that would be for a clan of twenty to thirty! Not however many you’ve got!”

He looks at the sky for a moment, thinking “Well, the second part of that isn’t relevant to us… For the first part, correct me if I’m wrong but… isn’t it that the approvals need to be acquired to prevent misunderstandings leading to conflict? Things like… moving into territory that’s already been claimed or earmarked? Moving into territory that’s held in common between clans? If your people don’t use the plains, then do we need you’re approval to use them?”

I give a long puff between my lips before admitting “I… don’t know! The rules don’t really cover this kind of situation! I honestly have no idea what the procedure is for people moving onto plains because people don’t move onto plains!”

Extending his arms to the side, he suggests “Then… perhaps we can make our own rules? That’s surely how the rules get made, right? Things happening that haven’t happened before?”

“Who’s the ‘we’ in that sentence, outlander?!” I snarl, suspicious.

“Oh… sorry… Your people and mine… I’m sure we can work something out that would satisfy everyone?” he says with what looks like a hopeful smile.

“What is there to work out? With so many of you back there, it’s not like you’ll just go if we ask you, is it!” I point out.

“No… that’s not true… You have some leverage on us… There are things we need from you that, if you’re not willing to trade with us, we’ll need to take our offer elsewhere…” he muses.

“Trade?… Offer?… If you’ve got something to say then spit it out! What’s our leverage?” I sneer.

“Well… as I understand…”

---Kroln’s perspective---

My one remaining hand grips the knife made from the tooth of the beast that took my other, stained with the blood of the roe deer I was taking apart when I was interrupted.

All of Bison currently in the hearthstead are gathered here, looking on.

I glare from the boy to the girl, both looking at me with frantic expressions.

“One… more… time…” I growl.

Immediately, they both begin speaking over eachother, both rendering the other’s words incomprehensible.

“One at a time!” I demand, furiously.

They both fall silent.

“*sigh*…Vounul! Explain!”

“There were hundreds of strange looking people camped on the plain at the Western edge of Bison territory! They were tall and skinny! They had brown skin and black hair. They had…”

“Where is my daughter, Vounul… Kaamra!?… Where is Raala!?!?!?”

The boy is too stunned to speak so the Westerner answers “She… said we should… split up… That one of us needed to make it back… to warn you… She went North… When I found Vounul, we waited for her at the end of the Northern path but… when she didn’t come… we got scared… We thought they might’ve got her… We decided it was better to come here to warn everyone instead of keeping on waiting…” ashamed.

“How long… did you… wait?” I ask, cold dread welling up in my belly.

“Er… it was at least a twentieth of the sunlight…” answers Vounul, desolately.

There is a long moment of silence.

“Everyone grab a weapon.” I order, chilled “We’re going to-”

“WAAAAAIT!!!” a shouted voice comes from the West.

Relief washes over me as I sheath the still bloody knife at my hip and rush to the girl who’s just appearing through the huts.

“RAALA!!!” I shout, my anger and dread audible in my voice and my relief not.

I run to her, barging those in my way aside.

She stands, holding her spear in one hand and some baskets partway full of mushrooms in the other.

That’s reassuring… Nothing so bad happened to her that she wasn’t able to keep the mushrooms at least!

Sternly, I say “Raala!… The others are saying there are hundreds of strange people on the plains! What kept you!? I thought you must’ve been seen by them!”

“I was…” she admits “…I met one on the way back… a man.”

“Did he hurt you?” I ask, immediately “Did he try?!”

“No, dad… He didn’t… We just talked… Then he went his way and I went mine.”

“You talked?” I frown.

“Yes, dad… He… he says he’s their leader… He’s asked to talk to you… They have an offer they want to make us…” she frowns, clearly not fully trusting the words she’s saying.

“An… offer?” I question.