The path to the camp of the !A!amo was a familiar one to Brooks now.

A few days after he had first visited them in their home, they had crossed the bridge and set up a new camp not far from his.

At first, their acceptance of him had been simply something of convenience; he had food to give them, and they were happy to take it.

Once he made clear that it was freely given, they accepted it as easily as they accepted any food from nature. He saw them collect and eat berries with the same attitude as they came into his camp and took the rations he offered.

Kai looked upon their casual attitude with a little more concern.

"Things are going missing," she said. "Nothing important yet, but I'm concerned that one day we'll wake up and they'll have figured out how to take down the tents."

"We'll be vigilant. Make sure you never set your rifle out of your sight," he told her.

"I never do!" she said, nearly defensive.

Kai had yet to have to fire her rifle, but the !A!amo seemed to have figured out that it was a weapon. Hard Biter had offered her a very nice spear for it, which she had spent some time declining.

"A gift of weapons," he said with some confusion, something that had ritual significance to them.

"Mine is very special to me," she had told him.

It had puzzled him to a degree, but after a time he had accepted it.

As their gift food ran low, Brooks began to offer them tools; they were simple things, axes and knives. They took an interest in other tools - mostly the children.

"They're playing with wrenches," he noted to Kai, watching some of the younger !Xomyi flit about.

Grown !Xomyi could not fly or even glide, but the young could, and a common form of play involved climbing and leaping off to glide towards the ground. There seemed some sort of rule set, and the young ones on the ground had taken to clinking metal tools together in time as another glided.

"We're not running out, I guess they can keep them," Kai said. "I don't think it's a good idea to take things away from kids, anyway."

Each day, he spent as much time as he could with and among them.

The children had accepted him as No Wings to a greater degree than the adults. There were times they climbed up him like a tree trunk, standing once they were on his shoulders and then they would jump off.

He found he could only share their joy, laughing as they used him as a springboard.

The trust of the children did seem to help; while some of the women would at first keep watch around him very cautiously, within a few days they had accepted him as a caretaker. They would frequently leave to go gather food and materials in the jungle while he stayed in camp.

It was not a lack of care, he could tell, but simply another way they took advantage of a valuable, limited resource: time. The !Xomyi had a higher metabolism than a human, and ate a lot for their size. Finding enough was difficult, and even as he gave them enough for days, they continued to collect food, drying meats and berries, and other things.

"Oh, this is very slow," Tracker told him when Brooks asked about their busy work. Among the adults, he was the most friendly, and seemed to find enjoyment in talking. He would often come over to Brooks and they'd share some of the smoking sticks, which the !Xomyi called tsetet. Y had declared them mostly harmless. Mostly it was hard for Brooks to smoke them because of his mask, but it did have a small openable intake port.

"We are relaxing most of the time because you give much," Tracker explained. "It confused us very much that you would just give. But there are stories of spirits like you. We accept, and gladly, for we do not want to offend you and have you leave."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There was no guile in his words that Brooks could find.

"I am happy to give all I have," he told Tracker. "But I soon I will be out."

"Will you go hungry?" Tracker asked him. "I have not seen you hunt."

"No, I will not," Brooks replied.

"What do you eat?" Tracker asked.

"My food is different," he told Tracker, vaguely. "You would not like it." He did not want to get too specific if he could help it; human food would be dangerous for !Xomyi.

"Ah," Tracker replied. "Spirit food. Yes, we know of it."

"And what is it that spirits eat?" Brooks asked with a smile. They had quickly figured out the expression as showing amusement.

"Air and earth," Tracker said. "Blech! Not fit for me. Only spirits can live on it."

They both laughed in their own ways, and Brooks wondered how much of what Tracker had said was just joking.

He - and most of the other !Xomyi - seemed to have a very positive outlook towards the world around them.

"No Wings, after you are out of food to give," Tracker continued after a time, "We will be moving. This is not a good place."

He heard them call him No Wings from time to time, among many other epithets. This one seemed to stick the most, and he was all right with it. It seemed a jest at his expense, but a good-natured one.

Picky Little One, Tracker's young daughter, came flitting over. Brooks had spotted her up in the tree listening, and now she came gliding down, onto Brooks's head.

"Oof, you're a little heavy for using my head like that," he said, not harshly.

"What?" the little one asked. It was her favorite word.

"It's fine," Brooks said, helping her down onto his shoulder. She weighed still about three kilograms, which seemed small to him, compared to the other children.

Tracker made a cooing sound to his daughter, reaching up to take her hand.

She made the same sing-song back to him, and Brooks felt privileged to see this moment. There was no translation for their sounds, nor was it needed.

"Hakki!" the girl-child said, holding out empty hands.

Tracker reached into a leather pouch that hung from around his neck. Rolled up in a leaf was some morsel that he gave to his daughter. She eagerly took it, examined it.

That word again; he heard it frequently, always in the context of asking for something that was expected to be given. So far they had not used it to him, which he took as a sign that he was not accepted as one of them, only a visitor they liked.

A distant cry caught Tracker's attention. "I will see you before the sun sleeps, No Wings," he said, heading away. "Goodbye. I see you still live up to your name!" he added to his daughter, who was still examining the food carefully.

Brooks had wanted to learn more about their planned leaving, but there was time yet. They were nomadic, and this was not unexpected.

"I'm going to write now," he told Picky Little One.

She was finally nibbling the morsel of food, though with an expression he took to be skepticism.

She seemed to decide she did not like it, and simply held it. "What's writing?"

Brooks took out his tablet and a stylus. He opened up his mission journal, and wrote a large version of his name. "I use this stick to draw symbols. They mean things, so that if I need to remember them later I can look back and see them."

She seemed more interested in the food again, but cast a skeptical eye to the tablet. "Why not just remember?" she asked.

"Sometimes there's a lot to remember," he said.

She looked a little skeptical again, watching him curiously, but then moved to look at the screen more. "It looks pretty," she said.

He made broad, sweeping strokes. "This is my name," he said.

"That's not your name! Your name is No Wings!"

He smiled and wrote that out. "This means No Wings."

There was further fluttering around them as a number of older !Xomyi children came in.

"What is that?" one asked. He was an older boy, Brooks's system identified him as Bold Child.

He came up and took the stylus from Brooks's hand, studying it.

It was made of a white plastic. He tried to flex it, found it would not bend, and then bit it.

"It's not food," Brooks said sternly. "And it is mine." He knew he had to make a boundary or it would disappear.

He held out his hand, and Bold Child gave it back. "I was only curious," he said.

"That's fine. Now, this is a stylus, and I was writing . . ."

He explained it all again, writing his name, and then their names.

"May I try?" an older girl, who was known as Sweet Child, asked.

Brooks gave her the stylus. She held it clumsily, but made a mark on the screen, pressing hard like it was a literal stick in mud.

"I did it!" she said excitedly. She made another mark, next to it.

"Let me try!" Bold Child said, pushing in.

"One at a time," Brooks said. "Take turns."

That idea was somewhat odd to them, but with a few commands he managed to set up some boundaries. Each child took a turn.

"How many hamomo I will hunt soon!" Bold Child proclaimed as he made many marks.

Another child smiled slyly. He was known as Causes Trouble. "Very small hamomo."

"Those don't look like hamomo," Wants to Hunt, another boy, said. "They are just sticks." He took the stylus and made a shape. It was somewhat like a potato. He drew lines coming from it. "That is a hamomo, a great one, that I will hunt very soon!"

"You two are not humble," another said. He was known as Slow Child, and Brooks was still trying to figure out if he was thought to be slow of mind or body, as he did not seem to display either trait. If anything, he seemed rather clever. "You bring bad luck to yourselves."

The other two boys seemed immediately shamed.

"I want to have a jumping game," Bold Child proclaimed.

He was very good at it, Brooks knew. But as he and the other boys climbed a tree, Bold Child seemed to hold back, letting the others do better than him.

The other children all followed, either playing or watching and beating their stolen metal tools together.

Only Picky Little One stayed.

"Not a hamomo," she said at the drawing Wants to Hunt had made.

Brooks did not actually know what a hamomo looked like, so he could not say.

He blanked the page, and the little girl gasped, reaching up to touch the screen. "Hamomo gone," she said.

"I can draw other things," Brooks told her. "Here's a tree."

He had practiced and studied line drawing in the past, but he was no artist; his talent was simple, and his sketch was basic. But it was, he thought unmistakably, a tree.

"Not a tree," Picky Little Child said.

"It's just a drawing of one," Brooks said. "Do you ever draw with a stick in the mud?"

"I don't know," she muttered, looking at the food her father had given her again.

He looked back at it. "These are the leaves." He pointed from the drawing to real leaves hanging from a tree branch nearby.

She looked. Studied the image, then looked at the tree carefully.

"No," she said. Then, leaping from his shoulder, she floated away.

Brooks smiled and leaned back. Soon, he would go to speak to another adult, but he did have a report to make.

And among the !Xomyi, he knew it would help to adjust to their timings and schedules. He could not spend all his time seeking them out. Giving them time might even help them to find they wanted to seek him.

He looked at the tree sketch again. It was a decent enough sketch, he thought, and on a whim he saved it - along with the sketches the children had made.

Perhaps, he thought, the world looked different through their eyes.