Tales from the Human Settlements

“Hold on!” Azzerium cried. Caramine froze. “Would it be alright with you if I chatted with your humans a bit?”

A moment of silence. Then, “alright.”

Then Caramine and the rest of Moonlight left the room.

I turned to Azzerium, who was now looking at me and Lotus with a widening grin. What did she want? I instinctively pulled my injured leg closer to my body as she approached. She was even larger than Caramine, towering head and shoulders above me and looking close to three times the size of Lotus. I couldn’t help but feel that, if she simply fell over, she could break not just my remaining leg, but both of Lotus’s too, simultaneously.

Then, she sat. I found myself suddenly looking straight down at her face, her eyes glittering with a child-like glee.

“Now, this is embarrassing,” she began, “but for as long as I could remember I’ve always wanted to learn more about humans. You know, so many of us think of humans as these silly little monkeys who are spoiled rotten with survivability in different environments and have these really bizarre rituals. But I’ve been fascinated by that ever since I was a little girl. Stories of people coming together and drinking alcohol, multi-day festivals and feasts beyond the limits of my imagination. All we have is some singing about our ancestors. So, tell me! I wanna learn all about them.”

My jaw dropped onto the floor. Lotus began giggling. Azzerium took in our expressions, before scooting backwards by the length of her leg. “Oh, please, no pressure. I would love to learn anything you’re comfortable with.”

“Oh Julia,” Lotus said, catching her breath from laughter. “I’d love to! My name’s Lotus, and I’m from Gaurang. Do you know where the Daemon Range is?”

“No ma’am,” Azzerium replied, sounding like an excited schoolchild.

“It’s way on the west side of the continent. My village sits on a plateau, and we’re a big exporter of wheat and other grains for alcohol. We have visitors come from all over just to get a taste of our specialty.”

Azzerium cackled in delight. “Coming from all over just for alcohol! You know that stuff is straight poison for typhins? And yet! You humans seem to love it so.”

Lotus laughed. “I mean, we’re a bit separate from most villages in the area, and really the only one that depends on grain. We’re different even by human standards.”

“Tell me more,” Azzerium pressed.

“In early fall, we commemorate the subduing of the second Old One by making makeshift suns using circles of young wheat and hanging them on our doors and across the village. We fast until sundown, at which point we bring all the suns except one to the river to be taken away by the river nymphs, who are also daughters of the Old One. We use the remaining sun as a centerpiece for the feast that night, to represent our newfound peace with the Old One,” Lotus explained.

“How fun! Who’s the Old One?” Azzerium asked.

Lotus smiled. “So at first, there was only Julia. Julia is the forebearer of nature herself, the bringer of all life and everything in the world. But she did not have infinite life to give. After creating much of the world, she chose to use her last blessings to create three spirits, known as the Old Ones. The first, and the eldest, was born from Julia’s wisdom. The second was born of Julia’s heart, her passion, and her emotions. The third and final Old One was created from Julia’s body, and gives us all nourishment and keeps all her creatures alive.”

“The second Old One controls the sun and moon, weaving divine messages in the heavens. Yet, seeing that he was not as beloved as his siblings, his jealousy overwhelmed him, and so he created more suns, in a desperate gambit to win the hearts of the people of Julia. But he failed to see the consequences of creating so many suns, and submitted the people of Julia to a terrible drought, destroying the very life the sun was meant to bless. The people of Julia, working together with the nymphs, shot down the false suns and made the Old One see the error in his ways. They opened his eyes to how much the people truly honored him and how hurt they were by his hurt.”

Azzerium started clapping, a tear in her eye. “That—that is such a beautiful tale. I, oh dear me, I completely forgot to ask. What’s your name, young one?”

“Lotus Sugarleaf,” Lotus chirped.

“Lotus. Lotus. I will remember that,” Azzerium breathed. “Sorry. There is so much love and trust in that story. I will cherish that forever.”

“I’m really glad you liked it,” Lotus said, sliding closer to Azzerium. “We have a lot of really messed up stories too, but I always really liked this one instead. It feels…pretty.”

“Yes, it is very pretty, indeed.”

I sat down, too. I felt like I heard about some progenitor god in the villages, but by this point I might just be making that up myself. I wondered what Julia's relationship to the Aether was, or to Accipitus.

“Do you have stories, little one?” Azzerium asked, sniffling as she turned to me. “Sorry for getting so carried away there. I’m alright.”

“Uhh, nothing as eloquent as what Lotus said,” I admitted, staring at my right foot.

“That’s alright. Any stories, festivals, even something your people do every so often for fun. It’s all good by me.”

Well, the most obvious candidate was the annual hunting festival. “I’m from one of the six hunting villages of the Daemon lowlands. The land isn’t the best, but we have a diverse supply of game and monster hordes, thanks to the spirits who we call nymphs.

“One of our original spirits was Accipitus, who we call the warrior king. He taught our ancestors how the beasts work, where they eat, how they live, as well as how to care for the land itself. To thank him for all he’s given us, the villages host a joint festival in his honor every year. It lasts a week, and includes a hunting competition, dances, and a lot of feasting.”

Azzerium nodded. “What is the competition?”

“Participating hunters have the festival week to track and kill as much game as possible, and are scored based on the number of kills and difficulty of their targets. The winner is whoever got the best haul, and they’re given a trophy as well as a laurel in the name of Accipitus. The winning village is also given the lion’s share of the slaughter. Honestly, I think the competition is kind of silly. It always ends up being an ego stroking contest instead. ”

“But I think it sounds very fun,” Azzerium said.

I shook my head. “I guess it could be. I haven’t been old enough to participate though. But once, some people from another town disagreed with the judging panel’s call, and it escalated into a fight that ultimately resulted in my town ceding some hunting grounds.”

“And you still go to festival with these people?” Azzerium asked, astounded.

“Exactly! We could’ve at least removed their representative and ours from the judging panel for a few years. Make people think twice about betting their borders. Instead nothing happened and everyone’s just free to act however they want.”

Azzerium stared at me like I personally admitted to making out with a pigeon. “So that means most people were completely fine with what they did? Even what you just said implies that you don’t look at it as that big of a deal.”

“Huh?”

“Two villages, supposedly in competition with each other, got into a fight so severe that territory was ceded. And yet not only was this fight mediated by what sounds like a third party, but both these villages are reinvited to the same tradition with no consequences the very next year. If that isn’t a show of true trust and solidarity, I don’t know what is.”

It was my turn to be stunned now. A show of trust? “Oh, uh, I never thought about it that way.”

Come to think of it, I never felt threatened by the territory scuffle. The fight itself was just a contest to kill as many wombats as possible within 48 hours, and the plot of land being fought over was not particularly big. It just helped up the stakes. I thought the whole thing was dumb, but would I actually close my door on any of the participants if they were in need?

My mind returned to Moonlight’s meeting before ambushing Tundra. Negotiation was never a possibility there, and I understood why. Despite the villages being supposedly in competition with each other, our relationship was deeply and fundamentally different from that between Moonlight and Tundra, or any other two bands.

“How long have y’all being having this festival?” asked Azzerium.

I sucked the inside of my cheek. “At least since the war. But I think even then it was a revival of something that had been going on for centuries. It seemed like the old practices were different though.”

Azzerium nodded. “Thank you, dear, for sharing. You might not think so yet, but I really think that what you just described is truly aspirational. Cherish that peace. Hold onto it like your life depends on it. Treasure your people.”

“A-alright,” I said.

“Culture is created from the actions of everyone within,” Azzerium continued. “Both of you are still so young, you know. You hold the power to mold your communities in your image. Traditions won’t keep themselves. You already know that, with the festival changing after a war. But still, change doesn’t happen without an agent. I’m trying to live my life being intentional about change, but really, all of us are doing it, all the time.”

Huh, I never thought about it that way. So I’m actively contributing to Apple Valley’s culture? The way I thought about Apple Valley’s culture was that it was centered around—no, singularly obsessed with hunting. So I hunted.

Everyone else was barely acknowledged at best. We never really celebrated the cooks who knew how to turn grain into flour or the medics who staved off wound infections day and night. This wasn’t new to me. I’ve snarkily pointed out this gap in recognition many times starting in the later years of my training, only to get hurried and dismissive acknowledgements meant to end the conversation right then and there.

I didn’t change any of my own behavior to reflect what I was saying. Maybe that was it.

I turned to Lotus, whose gaze was directed at her knees, eyes open yet seeing nothing in particular. Was she also thinking about what she could do to influence her people? Maybe not, knowing that she ran away. Maybe she was thinking about how hard she already tried, and failed.

Before I could say anything to her, she snapped back into reality. “The villages sound so cute,” she chirped.

“If you think a bunch of rats is cute,” I said, a flush of redness flooding my cheeks.

Lotus faced Azzerium. “Do you mind showing us where our stay is?”