Sada keeps drawing - or "writing", as Turo had called it - the symbols that Turo had taught her, still quite in disbelief at how they worked even hours after the fact, when he had finished showing her the last symbol. It was just... Such a brilliant and simple idea, she still wasn't sure why the thought had never occurred to her before.
She didn't have to come up with a drawing for everything she wanted to take notes off anymore! She could just think about it and she now had a way to represent every single thing that came to her mind. And the best thing was, someone else that knew the symbols could understand it without having to ask her about what it meant!
She had to teach everyone at the settlement! Nerjik would love it, and the children... even if she didn't have enough paper for everyone, they could use charcoal and practice on rocks, or even just on the ground with sticks... anything would work.
It opened up so many possibilities!
« Did you... make all these?» she asked Turo after he had finished teaching her.
You still had to remember what each symbol sounded like, but it was still much easier as a system than the one she had been using. You just needed a bit of practice. Now she was just doodling - "writing" - random words in all the pages she had already taken notes in, marking all of her little symbols with the actual words they represented, making them much more accurate. It did have the disadvantage of taking up more space though... maybe she could use a mix of the two methods of taking notes? Drawings for quick immediate notes - on her map, especially- words for anything else...?
... she would have to think about it.
« ... no. My parents "showed" me.» Turo answered after a moment with a little smile, and Sada blushed slightly. Um... no wonder he had picked up that word, she must have repeated it quite a lot of times in her excitement in that couple of hours.
He was quite fast at learning new words from her, she had noticed. If she used a single word that he had never heard but the rest of the sentence made sense, he would often pick it up just from context. Same usually went with her regarding his language, and... oh! Of course! Now she could just write down what some words in his language meant if she was afraid of forgetting it!
This was incredible.
Like right now, when one word he had said had stuck out to her.
« "Parents"...?» she asked, flipping to an empty page and carefully trying to write down each symbol that made up the word.
« Oh, um...» Turo thought for a moment « "Parents" are... the people that.... make you? » he explains after some hesitation.
She stares at him. She had understood him, probably, there weren't many other things she could think of when talking about "making" a person, but he must have thought that she didn't, because he starts to think of another way to explain it.
And fails spectacularly at it, getting more and more embarassed. He points at himself, then at her.
« It's... ah... you know... when a "man" and a "woman"...» now he's raising both hands, and starts... gesticulating wildly, vaguely miming two persons... well, it's either that or they are violently murdering each other and she had actually misunderstood what "parents" is supposed to mean. She has her doubts about that though.
« ... make a...»
Sada just keeps staring at him, trying to suppress a grin from spreading on her face.
It's... incredible how weird Turo could get sometimes. In a good way. For every basic thing he had never seen or couldn't do, it seemed like he knew ten more that she could have never dreamed of... but at the same time, he missed others.
It was almost like his mind was so busy racing to the thousand of things he did know that he completely failed to see what was right under his eyes sometimes. Like right now, where the solution to his problem was so incredibly simple.
Sada giggled and started drawing again on the empty page. Two stick figures, with a smaller figure between them. She points to the bigger stick figures, then to the word she had written at the top of the page.
Turo stops his embarassed sputtering and just stares quietly at the page for a long moment.
«... yes. » he nods in a small voice, eyes kind of unfocused in a wide, disbelieving look. Probably wondering how he hadn't thought of just doing that; looks like even with writing the drawings are still going to be useful for a while after all. In any case, if his parents had taught him to "write"... was it something that was passed down from father to child? Part of his role as a sciaman... or a "scien-tist", as he had called himself.
« Are your parents scien-tist ? » she asks, and he turns slightly toward her, raising a single eyebrow with a confused frown.
« No...? » he seems puzzled, like he is trying to figure out how she got to that conclusion. Well, now she is confused too. This would be so much easier if only he was a bit more willing to talk about his people in general, but... everytime she tries to mention them or even steer the conversation in that direction, he clamps up completely. Or gives her single word answers that don't really tell her much. Had it been anyone else, she would have been suspicious of him by now, but Turo didn't seem interested in approaching the settlement in any way. Chalo's theory that he was using her to learn their language also didn't look that possible to her: she was doing the same with his, after all.
---
When Turo stands up to get away as usual, it takes her a second to realize that she is still wearing his cape and she hurries to take it off and give it back to him. It had been fun to wear, so light that she hadn't even noticed it, and the half bags sewn on the front on both sides were pretty useful. She could easily do the same with some of her clothes...
Turo rips a page out of his notebook, and instead of the usual symbols for day and night that they have been using until now, writes down a couple of words to accompany them.
She takes the piece of paper and reads them aloud: the meaning is obvious even with just the sun and moon drawings, but she is determined to show him that she's going to memorize these symbols perfectly.
« Fo- f-o-ur d-da-y-s... h-e-r-e.» she looks at him for confirmation after she is done, and he gives her a sharp nod.
Four days, though... that is no good. She has already been away from her settlement for more than five days. It wasn't uncommon for people to spend days away from the settlement - especially if they were out hunting, that took time - so no one would worry for a couple of days of absence, but... she really needed to get back before they started to wonder if she had been eaten by something after all. Besides, she kind of wanted to go back and tell everyone what she had learned. And about that red creature.
So she shakes her head and scribbles over the words Turo has written, crossing them out, then adds some more sun and moon symbols.
« Ten days... and...» she hesitates a moment, uncertain. If she could slowly get him to agree to meet her in a place that was... more convenient for her, maybe...?
Where to start, though? They had a couple of common meeting points that she could use by now: the river where they had first met, the little camp she had set up in the woods, this one up the cliff... maybe she could point out a landmark to use as their meeting point.
« ... here? » she takes out her map and points to a place just east to the river where they had first met.
« There are a lot of big rocks here, really tall... and I can start a fire as a signal.» she offers. The smoke would be visible from miles away even if he couldn't find the exact spot she meant. Turo doesn't look particularly convinced about her idea, but he nods slowly after a moment.
« Ten days. » he repeats, before turning around to start making his way towards the forest. She watches him slowly get away until he disappears under the cover of the trees - she blinks and suddenly gets up, not sure of what she had seen.
Had there been... a flash of light right there at that moment?
---
« Come oooooon Fluffyhead, moooove--» Chalo tried to coax the Spark Tail into following her, but for once the creature was being stubborn, preferring to chew calmly on some grass while refusing to budge an inch. Chalo had a rope made of leather in her hand, which was tied to a collar they had put around the creature's neck. Not that it would do much to keep it tied up: if it really wanted to escape, it could just burn the rope with the sparks generated by it's wool.
« Pleaaaase, just show Sada what you showed me yesterday... » Chalo sighed and sat back down near the fire that was burning at the center of the camp, the beads in her dark hair clinking.
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Sada had gone back to the settlement right after Turo had left, and had immediately taken it upon herself to teach the writing symbols to everyone. Her mother had listened politely at first, but hadn't looked that interested in actually learning them.
« I'm too old to move around much anymore, it's not like I will ever need to send a message to someone. Whatever I want to say, I can just say to anyone here. » had been her reasoning.
« But... you could write down anything you wanted. And people could read your words... days, moons and seasons later, learning from them. You could write everything you know about sewing!» Sada had protested, but her mother had just shook her head.
« That's not something that you can teach just with words and symbols. Same with hunting. You can tell someone the best spot to strike a Steady Glacier with a spear, but it won't stop someone from dying if he has never practiced doing it. »
That... was true, there were things that you simply couldn't teach, but she had still been a little disappointed in her reaction.
Luckily, other people had looked more interested. The kids - four in total in the whole settlement at the moment, the only ones that had survived until they learned to walk upright and talk - had been begging her to show her how to write all their names. Narjik, the old shaman, had been incredibly eager to learn just like she had tought. That wasn't surprising, the man had gathered an incredibly vast knowledge of all the local herbs and their various effects in his life, and he knew all of their old stories and legends. He had been looking for a successor, someone to teach everything he knew before he passed on into the next life; this way, his knowledge could be left behind and taught to someone - many people - even after he was gone. He seemed to find comfort in the idea.
Sada herself had learned a lot from him, but she could never take his place as the next shaman... even if Turo seemed to think the opposite.
She was currently tracing some of the symbols on a flat rock near the fire, using a stick of wood that had been left to harden in the ashes the night before and some ash. When she had covered the whole thing in symbols, she would wipe the ash from the rock to start again. Right beside her, to her left, Narjik was observing intently and slowly writing down every symbol she explained. He wore clothes not unlike those of everyone else, with different layers of furs to protect agains the cold, but the markings painted all over his face, neck and arms in black tint, even with the latter not being visible at the moment, showed his status to everyone else in the group. His hair that was turning almost completely grey was styled in an elaborate long braid that went way past his broad shoulders.
Chalo, on the other hand, looked much more interested in talking about the guy himself that whatever he had taught her.
« Sooo... You've spent quite some time with this Terg guy now.» she chuckled, giving up on getting Fluffyhead to listen to her and picking up a stick of her own to copy her.
« Not... really. He always leaves as soon as it gets dark. Comes and goes every couple of days. » Sada doesn't even bother correcting her on the name anymore - mostly because she is pretty sure she is doing it on purpose at this point.
« Wait, what? » Chalo said turning to look at her, surprised. « I thought you were spending night and day with this guy by no- Fluffyhead nooo » she wailed when the fluffy creature decided to approach her after all and flop down right over the rock she was writing on, ash sticking all over it's puffy wool.
It looked at the humans, sniffed the ground and let out a "Mareeeep". Chalo started to absentmindedly pet it, trying to get the ash off.
« I was also under the impression that you were visiting his... camp, or group. » Narjik spoke up, eyes fixed on the "j" he had scribbled with ash. There wasn't enough space on the rock to write his name completely, so he wiped it and started again, smaller this time.
« No, I... I don't know where he lives.»
« Just follow him?» Chalo proposed, before there was a zap and she let out a little yelp, shaking her hand and glaring at the creature.
« Don't burn me, I'm trying to clean you up!»
« ...eep » it lowered it's head and bumped it's nose into her hand, nuzzling it.
« I don't think he did it on purpose.» Sada offered petting the creature, trying to steer the conversation away from Turo. Unfortunately, the shaman sitting by her other side hadn't been distracted as much as the other girl had.
« You don't want to follow him.» he stated, calmly. It wasn't a question, and Sada nodded reluctantly after a long moment.
« I know he is hiding something, something he absolutely doesn't want me to see, and of course I want to know what it is... but I'm afraid that if I follow him and he realizes it, he will... just run off elsewhere and never show up here again.»
She thought back to the flash of light between the trees that she had only been able to see because she was looking down on the forest from the top of the hill. It had been over in an instant. If she had blinked at the wrong moment, she would have missed it. It was just a nagging suspicion, but she was pretty sure that Turo had caused it, somehow. The flash of light, and his first strange disappearance that had left no footprints anywhere on the ground, or the way his boots and clothes seemed able to just suddenly... stop making any sound everytime he walked away from her, after a while. Maybe it wasn't exactly that - it would be weird considering how much noise they seemed to make at any other time -, and they didn't make any sound because he literally disappeared.
There were creatures that could... "jump" between the air, disappear from one spot and reappear in another, she had seen them a couple of times. Was Turo... able to do the same? Then why didn't he do it when he had been attacked by that Brutal Fang?
It made no sense.
Anyway, that wasn't important right now.
« And I... don't want that. » the confession came out at a whisper, almost covered by the crackle of the fire. Sada had seen him just a couple of times, but... there was just so much she wanted to talk about and discover and explore with him, the more she learned his language and he learned hers.
And... she wasn't sure how to explain it, but something about Turo struck her as... so lonely. Or... pained. Maybe it was just because he had told her that he had come here alone.
There were moments where she had caught him deep in thought, eyebrows deeply furrowed and one hand half stroking his chin, and then suddenly when she said something or called out to him that carefully constructed expression would slip away for a moment, revealing a sad half-smile that he would immediately try to hide again.
Every time she watched him turn around and walk away, she was a bit afraid that he would never come back again, that he had found another place to stay at. Or that he had decided to go back to his tribe after all. Wherever it was.
And so every time she saw that fluttering white mantle appear through the trees, her heart had started to skip a beat. It was always a bit of a surprise, since they never decided on the time of the day to meet at.
« Oooh, so that's what this is all about after all.» Chalo grinned with a knowing smile while she finished cleaning up Fluffyhead's pelt.
« You've never actually described him, apart from "pale and weird looking". What is he like? ... phisically, I mean. » she asked while Narjik went back to focusing on his symbols, not interested.
Sada blushed slightly; no, that's not what it was about at all, she was just curious about him... or was she?
« He is... quite tall. Dark brown hair and eyes...» she started to answer. Her mind though was elsewhere.
She thought back to that moment when she had been inches away from his face, or when he had guided her hand with his, pressing slightly into her side to inch just a bit closer; how he would blush in that adorably awkward way when he was caught by surprise, before trying to compose himself. How he stumbled and tripped over himself while walking with her, but was a bit too prideful and stubborn to just ask her to wait to catch his breath.
Or how he looked proud when she understood a new word that he had just used, or explained something in her notes to him.
« ... and scrawny.» she added after a moment, causing Chalo to frown a moment. She was petting Fluffyhead again, apparently not minding the possibility of getting hit by another spark. (Then again, he was so fluffy and soft that she could understand her perfectly)
« So not my type then. Then again, I'm still convinced that he is a creature in disguise- AH!» the girl screamed, pointing to the Spark Tail, whose tail was... doing as it's namesake implied and glowing slightly. After a moment, Fluffyhead's whole body glowed yellow and it released a great arc of pure yellow-white light that hit the ground a dozen meters ahead, charring it black. A great, booming zap made everyone jump and the kids start crying.
« See? THAT! He did that yesterday! Now if only I could figure out how to make him do it on PURPOSE, he could help me when I go out hunting! » Chalo yelled pointing excitedly to the creature and then to Sada.
She carefully observed the creature, whose tail had stopped glowing. So the more it glowed, the more powerful the spark it could create? What had made it glow so much? She thought back to what had just happened. The only difference had been...
« ... what were you doing when he did it yesterday?» she asked, trying to confirm her idea first.
« I had just fed him and was... petting... him... » the dark haired girl's eyes widened slightly. Chalo started to rub her hand all over Fluffyhead's wool, getting zapped a couple of times. Just like she had thought, the creature's tail started to glow again.
« Yesss, look at this! » Chalo started to jump up and down, excited, then tried to get Fluffyhead to shoot another stream of yellow light in the same direction.
« Maybe... you could use a word?» Sada offered after a moment. A simple command. They used various call outs to warn each other about what a certain creature was doing when out hunting, and she had seen various creatures do the same. And Fluffyhead had showed that, while not exactly bright, it was capable of paying attention to what humans were saying. It had learned really quick which words meant "food" directed at him, at least. Maybe it could also learn that doing a certain thing meant praise and pets.
« Right.» Chalo pointed dramatically towards a tree. « Fluffyhead, KILL THAT!»
... Sada was thinking about something a bit more subtle, but... as long as it worked.
---
After spending a couple of days at the settlement, she decided to go back to the cliff to check out the red creature. She had decided to name it "Winged King"; the winged part was obvious, and the King part had come from the fact that it seemed to be the strongest creature in the whole area. What had happened with Chalo and Fluffyhead had given her an idea; she had spent the next two days with Narjik, having him teach her how to carve a simple flute out of wood.
She stepped into the place where she had been leaving food for the creature in the past days; the nest had disappeared completely, with the creatures that had lived in it probably deciding to move somewhere else now that a predator like Winged King was prowling around.
She quietly left some berries, strips of dried meat, and even one egg for it, then brought the flute to her lips and played a single, long note. She waited for a couple of seconds, then did it again; nothing moved all around, the forest almost unnaturally quiet. By experience, she knew that was usually a sign that something big and powerfull was scaring anything else away. Which meant that Winged King was somewhere around here. Sada quietly left, repeating the same little ritual for the next couple of days, always at the same time of the day.
She wanted to see if Winged King was smart enough to associate the sound of the flute with her and the one who had left it food.
The fourth day, it was already waiting for her by the tree, calmy sitting on it's hind legs.
Sada froze, her heart beating wild; this wasn't like approaching something like Fluffyhead. Sure, every creature was deadly to humans, but Fluffyhead didn't have it in it's nature to attack something if not to defend itself. It was meek and shy, while Winged King was most definitely the opposite.
But if it wanted to hurt her, it would have done so already. She kept repeating herself that while she approached it, playing a single note on the flute - it perked up at that, it definitely had learned what it meant. She gave it everything that was left in her smaller bag. It sniffed the air and got up, letting out a little "gyaaa" while it got closer. Sada reached her hand out, arm trembling slightly, only to pull it back when it growled.
All right, all right... she got the message. Little steps.
She managed to get closer while it was eating by approaching it from the side. While it was still focused on eating, she reached her hand out again.
Hesitated.
Gave a silent prayer to her ancestors, and then touched the red scales on it's neck.
For a moment, it didn't react; still busy stuffing it's face. Or, more probably, it just didn't care because it had no reason to fear her. What could she even do? If she was quick, she could get maybe one good stab of her spear in before getting absolutely torn apart. After that single moment, it turned one of it's bright orange eyes towards her, followed a second later by the rest of the head turning towards her. She quickly moved her hand away, taking a step back, but it followed her hand with it's eyes and sniffed it slowly. Sada froze again, hand half-raised, unsure on what to do. Move? Step back? Approach it again?
Winged King seemed to decide for her, closing its eyes and quietly pushing against her hand with its head for a brief moment, before backing up and getting back to eating.
She is left staring at it in quiet awe.
---
Another couple of days later, and Sada realized that her plan with the flute had worked maybe a little too well, because now Winged King comes crashing through the forest every time she plays the flute, as long as it's close enough to hear it.
And "crashing through the forest" was literal: she had been playing the flute quietly to herself one night and the creature had pretty much dropped out of the sky in front of her a couple of minutes later, scaring her half to death.
« You can't just show up every time and eat all my food.» she sighed quietly, watching it sniff around the entire camp, then look at her expectantly.
With her notebook out she was busy furiously adjusting her drawing of the creature, now that it was actually staying relatively still in front of her.
After realizing that there was no food for him (her? She had no idea how to check), Winged King walked up to her and layed down behind her, starting to snore loudly after a while. It didn't budge in the slightest even when she cautiously pressed her hand against its scales, admiring them up close.
With a satisfied smile, she went back to taking notes, quietly wondering what Turo's reaction would be to this the next time they met. Just a couple of days more.