Banon emerged from the thickly tangled jungle, everything around him shrouded in darkness besides the small, moonlit clearing in front of him. Within that open space was a modest scattering of cobbled-together mud huts, each about two-thirds his own height of almost twelve feet. Every hut was speckled all over with glowing purple flower petals.
In between and around the huts mingled dozens of Yubuou, the fourth and final creature that could be called a ‘people’ within the known world. Though most considered them lower, but Banon had long found it to be not true.
They were just different.
The Yubuou were not quite fully people in the traditional sense, yet not entirely animal in the way of a monkey, for instance. Though they did look closer to a distant cousin of the many species of monkey in the jungle than they looked like Ooura, or elf and human for that matter. Their black flesh that was covered in a complex network of white vein lines was only exposed around the few places absent of fur– their hands and feet and the wide, rounded, and cheery-looking faces they carried with them always. The rest was covered in flowing blonde fur that was somehow thick and wispy looking at the same time.
Banon had observed many times how the Yubuou communicated with one another, and the fact that they communicated at all was why he took them so seriously as a people in their own right. Sometimes it was with a complex series of gesturing, with specific hand signs and movements corresponding to a network of implications, approximating the same meaning words held. In a kind of tandem coexistence to their language of signs, they also communicated with sounds that were never more than what could only be described as a raw, vocal interpretation meant to convey a specific set of feelings. Because of this, Banon had come to conclude that they could never lie to one another. It was just too hard to fake it when expressing themselves so simply, yet so full of emotion.
Words, Banon reflected, may have been the death of authenticity.
Despite the Yubuou often living within Ooura-controlled jungles and depleting the wild fruit supply wherever they wandered, the Ooura didn’t have bad blood with the strange half-monkey people, no, not at all. Actually, they viewed them as somewhat sacred, believed to be inhabited by pre-born Ooura spirits who were too pure to be allowed to languish amid the turmoils of the sapient.
Banon did find that mythos was quite true to reality, for once. The Yubuou never showed any aggression towards anything whatsoever at all. He hadn’t even witnessed them using violence out of pure defensive necessity. They ate only plants and fruits, and had an implacable aura that seemed to ward off danger. More often than not, they could be found wandering and napping around the jungle quite lackadaisically, unworried despite the presence of monstrous predators nearby.
The chosen people to be spared from the chaos of consumption and competition constantly taking place within the rest of the jungle’s food chain all around them.
Banon had learned some of their language. The gesturing part, anyway. The verbal emoting, he found simply incapable of mimicking to any degree of affirming response from them. It had become so frustrating after dozens of failures, Banon was sure there was something more to it than the verbality alone. There was one particular Yubuou Banon found particularly agreeable to his attempts to communicate, though, even to the degree of friendship.
And that very Yubuou was just leading several others over to one of the mud huts nearest to where Banon watched from the darkness.
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Ugtang– Banon called him– beckoned and grunted to his fellow half-apes, and they all obeyed, following him to cluster around the hut. They then began producing glowing purple-petaled flowers from seemingly nowhere and transplanting them onto the muddy substrate of the outer walls, leaving them planted all over the surface of the small mud hut.
They were a rare flower in the jungle, those purple ones, and even assuming the Yubuou had collected them from the wilds, they were still in possession of seemingly impossible amounts. Adding to that enigma, Banon had never actually seen them picking any in all his time spent observing them, nor storing them on their person. He either saw Yubuou with empty hands, or hands completely full of flowers. Frequently a Yubuou would disappear for only minutes before returning with another handful of them, without possibly having had the time nor picked across enough land to have done so. Every one of the dozen or so huts visible to him were speckled with them to varying degrees, with Ugtang’s standing out as by far the most densely covered, probably due to his role as their apparent leader.
The Yubuou were far and above the closest thing to proof of the mysticism of nature. Although clearly grounded to the physical world, subject to tripping over in the mud and tangling in their aetheric fur, there was always an elevating feeling that filled one's soul just by being around them. Or, just as likely, Banon’s mind told him so because the contrived mythos became its own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Still, he did quite enjoy them.
Banon stepped gently into the moonlight, doing his best impression of the high and rapid notes the Yubuou used in their feeling-speak when greeting one another. The small group startled for a moment, then paused, looking more curious of his presence. Ugtang recognized him first, and immediately ran over to greet him.
Banon smiled, held his arms out wide and let Ugtang jump onto him. He chuckled as Ugtang swang from his arms and torso as if he were a tree. All the while the small group of other Yubuou Ugtang had been with were chittering and hooting and making frantic gestures to communicate mostly simple amusement. The child-sized Yubuou ended his dazzling display of athleticism and coordination by swinging around the base of Banon’s arm in two consecutive loops, only to end it by letting go at the peak of the last loop, launching himself flipping in the air.
He landed in easily on his feet in front of Banon again, and without missing a beat, went straight into to making a series of hand signs. “You come back here. See me. Why?” he asked. Ugtang then made a questioning gesture towards his lips to indicate asking Banon if he was here to continue their attempts to talk to one another verbally.
“No,” Banon replied in Yubuou sign language.
Banon paused for a moment, still feeling the nagging worry about this idea, but the upside was too potentially useful to not try it. He made the signal for “Orux,” which looked like two curled-up horns almost touching one another.
Ugtang began to panic momentarily. Even Yubuou feared the Orux. “Here?” he signed, between warning hoots building in volume.
“No!” Banon signed quickly back.
The hoots cut off. Ugtang made an O shape with his lips and then nodded in relief.
Banon made a placating gesture, then continued signing. “Orux. Not here. Far away. I am here. You. You help me Orux?” Some of his intended sentiments went missing in the simplicities of their sign language, mainly for their lack of a sign word for ‘kill,’ but Banon hoped Ugtang would understand enough of the intent behind his meaning.
Ugtang smiled, moonlight glinting in his eyes, then gestured for Banon to lead the way.
Banon raised an eyebrow. He really hadn’t expected it to be that easy.