Sanjura then purchased a large amount of giba cooking and headed off to the restaurant space. He must have been planning on taking the food back to the castle town with him, so he was probably trying to speak with Yun Sudra right away.
Having the opportunity to forge a relationship with Sanjura and Lefreya with no more roadblocks in the way was something I was very much grateful for. Though things with the observers had gotten pretty dicey and worrying for a while, a lot of good had resulted from their visit in the end.
The only new point of concern we had was Tia. If we wanted to continue living in peace, we would have to make sure that issue got resolved smoothly. I spent the rest of the work day praying that it would be.
Time kept on ticking by, and eventually we returned to the forest’s edge. Just like always, our first stop was the Ruu settlement, which looked nice and peaceful, as it usually did. The women were chopping firewood and drying out pico leaves—their normal everyday tasks—while the young children were running around and enjoying themselves. The older children were climbing trees and sword fighting with sticks to train, among other things. They were all bursting with energy. I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight, then headed around to the main house’s kitchen, where Tia was waiting.
“Asuta, you’re back,” Tia said as she unsteadily approached me using her grigee crutch. She didn’t have any particular expression on her face, but it was easy to see the joy shining in her red eyes. “You kept your promise. I’m so glad.”
“Yeah. It’s a crime at the forest’s edge to lie, so you can be sure that I’ll always tell you the truth.”
“Good,” Tia replied with a childish nod.
Then, Mia Lea Ruu walked up behind her with a smile. “Welcome, Asuta. I hear that you’ll be giving a cooking lesson here today.”
“Ah, yes. Sorry for the sudden shift in plans.”
I had been planning to continue with my banquet food practice at the Fa house until the day of the festival of the hunt, but today, I had asked Toor Deen and Yun Sudra to take charge and help the other women with that.
“You have nothing to apologize for. We’re all thrilled to be able to learn from you, Asuta. You should’ve seen how Reina sulked when she heard you wouldn’t be showing up for a while.”
“I-I didn’t sulk! Festivals of the hunt are important! There was no helping that he couldn’t come here!” Reina Ruu shot back loudly, her face bright red and her tone a lot more childish than usual since she was speaking with family.
After chuckling a little at that, I turned back toward Tia and said, “All right, I’m going to get to work. What have you been up to here, Tia?”
“I’m not doing anything right now. Up until a little while ago, though, I was skinning the peifei,” Tia said, pointing outside.
I tilted my head in curiosity as Bartha walked over with a smile. She didn’t look like she was helping out with the cooking, so she must’ve been keeping an eye on Tia. “The tanned pelt is outside drying. Before you get to work, why don’t you come take a look for a moment?” she suggested.
And so, Tia, Bartha, and I exited the kitchen and circled around the side of the building, where I found a rather unexpected sight. The pelt was hanging from a wooden pole suspended between a pair of tree branches, but that wasn’t all. There were others with roughly cut chunks of meat and cleanly washed innards hanging from them as well.
“Apparently, all you have to do to make dried meat out of the flesh of these peifei things is to leave it out in the sun. I’m jealous of how convenient that must be,” Bartha said.
It was a surprising amount of meat, considering it had come from a single creature. The torso had been split in half, and the arms and legs left to dangle. It was a brilliant red color, and even discounting all the tendons, the amount of fat on the meat was remarkably small. It looked like she had removed every single one of its organs as well. Even as someone who was fairly well accustomed to handling innards, seeing them all dangling in the air like that still felt pretty surreal to me.
“Supposedly, you can eat this stuff raw too. She cut some meat right off the bone earlier and ate it just like that.”
“Peifei eat a lot of ramoramo herbs, so their meat doesn’t go bad easily. But madarama, rionnu, and naccha meat goes bad in a day if you don’t wrap them in ramoramo leaves,” Tia explained as she leaned her crutch up against a branch.
When she noticed what Tia was doing, Bartha’s eyes widened and she said, “Hey, are you trying to grab something? If you are, you should let me get it for you.”
“No, I don’t want to be a burden,” Tia replied. Then she jumped upward using only her left leg. That alone was enough for her to jump two meters high and grab the peifei hide hanging from one of the poles. She landed on her good leg as well, before grabbing her crutch and walking back over to me. “Peifei hides are very sturdy and incredibly soft. I made sure to chew it thoroughly for you, Asuta.”
“Ch-Chewed it? Is that how your people tan hides?”
“If you don’t, then the pelt will go bad. Do the people of the forest’s edge not do that?”
The people of the forest’s edge used some sort of sap when tanning giba hides. But as I stood there at a loss for words, Bartha smiled and explained.
“We didn’t do that on Mount Masara either, but I have heard of that tanning method before. Apparently, human saliva can prevent hides from going bad.”
“Really? I had no idea,” I said.
Tia held the peifei pelt out to me in her left hand as she stared up at my face. “We red people sleep on peifei pelts. They feel nice and soft if you pile up a lot of them... I want to give you the pelt of this peifei I hunted as part of my atonement, Asuta.”
“Are you sure? I really appreciate it, but still...”
“If you appreciate it, then please accept it,” Tia said, her eyes deadly serious.
Her earnest gaze really touched me, so I nodded and replied, “Okay, I’ll accept your gift. Thanks, Tia.”
At that, the young girl broke out in a bright smile, the first I had ever seen from her. It was an incredibly pure expression, one that made her look even younger than twelve years old.
“I’m really happy,” she said. “I’ve finally repaid you at least a little. Enough to amount to a little toenail’s worth.”
“Huh? Wait, so you’re still not done paying me back?”
“Of course not. I tried to take your life. This isn’t anywhere near enough to make up for that. Are you trying to say your life is only worth as much as a single peifei pelt?” Tia shot back, though she was still smiling at me. Her red eyes were sparkling like gemstones and radiating pure joy without any sense of restraint. “Anyway, we should let the hide dry a little more for now. Oh, and I’d like you to accept the peifei’s claws too,” Tia said, grabbing something from the sash around her waist. They were definitely the claws I had seen on the peifei’s hands and feet, shining black with tips that looked as sharp as a needle. “Peifei claws can be used to open holes in meat and pelts or to crack open tough tree nuts. You can also use them to make arrowheads that will even be able to pierce through the scales of a madarama. They’re very useful.”
“Thanks. They’ve got a really pretty color to them.”
“I rubbed the claws together to polish them. They’re very sharp, so please take care not to hurt yourself.”