Lexa, Ophus and Yunto rejoined their firsts among the other sekons scattering into their own village groups. Lexa saw brief flashes of Lincoln's first and heda, two dark-skinned geda, one male, one female, both with shorn heads and a collection of patterned tattoos. The heda flashed her a look, and Lexa met those dark, serious eyes with a look of her own. The two silently regarded each other, and then she gave the slightest of nods to Lexa. She fought to keep her face straight.
Her attention was directed away as Anya punched her shoulder to tell her to pay attention as the village groups headed into a large, low, wide-slatted building. It smelled like the ocean. A huge table stretched inside, and the finest metal diningware lined the strong wooden table. There were propbably close to a hundred seats in the room.
At the very head of the table, an older man stepped forward. Commander Qin. His tanned skin, dark brown hair and black tattoos were quite intimidating. He stood at the front of the table.
"Gad oso op nodotaim, lukots, splika, geda. Teina, geda kom mils en mils cel oso op. Kom, geda. Oso suda gib machop op, choj oso op!"
Lexa followed the tregedasleng in her head as the Commander told the geda to give thanks and to eat. The geda filed in, in order of eldest sekon to lowest, excluding the Commander's village, who sat at the head of the table. Then came Rena's village, and Vause and Lincoln's, and so on. Lexa's village was near the end of the table, followed by the two villages who did not have sekons that year. The heda were marked by an extra cup on their plate, Lexa did not know why, although she assumed it would be answered by the end of the dinner.
The geda and sekons sat down, and the cups were turned over. Down the line was passed a chunk of bread and several large jugs of water. Lexa watched as the Commander slipped into a language more ancient than trigedasleng or english itself, as he said a blessing of thanks. The sekons were the only ones new to this, as everyone else seemed to follow with a bite of bread and a sip of water. Lexa hastened to follow.
And then all twelve heda stood, and raised their glasses, now filled with a red liquid. Together, they all spoke, "Tregedakru," and drank from their glasses. All twelve heda were completely different. There was Qin in the front, and of course Lexa's own heda, Tohru, one of the more elder heda. And she recognized Lincoln and Vause's, Indra. And there were other heda. Young women to old men, dark skinned to almost white. There was a younger woman with flaming red hair, and a large, tall man with blonde hair that reached down to his lower back. There was an old man, almost stooped with age, even older than Tohru, with a grey beard that was so long he had to tuck it into his belt. And there was a woman there who was as tall as if Lexa stood on Anya's shoulder. Lexa marvelled at the variety just within the room.
And then everyone was sitting down, and like clockwork, the sekons of the village came out, all dressed in the same black-dyed cotton shirts and leggings, their hair knotted back. They were older, Lexa noticed, but didn't quite resemble geda, not quite yet. And the food started to come out.
The meal was a long process, and for the sekons who had been used to venison jerky and an apple on the harder days, it was a feast beyond imagination. Dish upon dish was served, some of which Lexa recognized, most of which she had no idea what it was, and she, Ophus and Yunto would guess as to where the creature came from. After the first dish, which was a strange, lumpy-white sort of meat encased in a bone-like struncture, smothered in butter and spices, wherein the three sekons joked increasingly inappropriate things, Ian leaned forward and started telling them what they were eating. "Clam," he said, after Yunto made a horrific joke about it being the testical of ancient humans, dug up and fossilized after hundreds of years. "You're eating clams."
The three sekons looked up, and while they didn't really know what a clam was, at least they knew what the dish was called. Ian saw their confusion and smiled again. "It comes from the sea," he added. And a sort of comprehension dawned on them, and they pried it open and tasted the meat. It was actually quite flavorful.
And the dishes only grew more exotic from there. With help from Ian, who insisted that the only time the geda had ever had feasts this extravagant were at the equinoxes, and the solstices (which were celebrated in one's own village), the sekons learned what they were eating: sardines, potatoes satueed with leeks, a soup of birds' egg and spice, squash and rabbit stew, stuffed quail, roast venison with apples and cinnamon, the list grew and grew. Lexa lost track around dish fifteen. And each dish was just a bite, just a taste of the food, each one brought out on another clean metal plate by the sekons. The feast finally ended with an entire roast deer, and each geda got a cut of the meat, with fresh bread, onions, leeks and chives.
Full and satisfied, the heda ended the meal again with another blessing in a language that Lexa didn't understand, but she copied the others when they lifted their glasses. And then the meal was ended, and the plates cleared away. Lexa moved push her chair back to stand, but no one else moved, so she sat back in her chair.
"Pro equinox," said the Commander. The rest of the geda nodded, and murmered "pro equinox" back. "Welcome to the equinox meeting of the twelve tribes of the Tregedakru."
One of the heda stood, the man with long blonde hair. His skin, pale, signalled that he was from deep in the woods. "Heda Garth," he said in a surprisingly quiet voice. "The First Village. And I have brought with me Kendra, Charles, Rubin and Sen, and sekons, Brooke and Yan." He sat after this introduction.
"Heda Bran," stood an older man with buzzed hair and pale skin. He had a nasty scar across the bottom of his jaw. "And I have brought with me Judo, Kan, Rachel and Shaw, and sekons Mat and Dan."
So the hedas went. Lexa's village, the Fourth came and went fairly quickly, and it ended with the Twelfth village, who had the sekons who were fifteen. Villages five and six did not have any sekons, but both villages brought recent geda, and called them out for congratulations, upon which the congregation clapped for the names said. Once all of the villages had gone through the indroductory motions, the Commander folded his hands neatly on the table and began to speak. Lexa's attention began to waver as the conversation made its way through everything they had to talk about - the increasing tension with the Isagedakru, the Sea Clan moving into new teritory far to the south, trade issues with the Northern Clan, and so on. It was only when silence hit did Lexa's attention snap to, and she suddenly realized everyone was looking at their tribe.
"The Reapers," whispered Yunto to Lexa, who also elbowed Ophus. Yunto was always one to pay attention, even if his first was reading the stock list of one of the food storage units.
"Our village has experienced something that we have never seen before," began Tohru. "And our people have lived through many unique dangers and pains. Several weeks ago, during a raid on an outlying Ice Clan village, my geda had gained the upper hand, and the Isageda had just begun to retreat when a different enemy entered the battle. I believe one of my sekons had the best experience with the event, which is one of the reasons she is here today." Tohru looked straight at Lexa, and in a low voice said, "Lexa, if you could stand and relate to the Clan gathered before you the events of Milo's passing."
Lexa gulped and nodded, rising. She had never spoken in front of this many strangers before. It was one thing in her village when she knew everyone, it was quite another when she had to speak in front of memebers of the entire clan. She cleared her throat softly, and in her mind suddenly burst the memory of sitting on the cliff holding a weeping Costia. She set her jaw. She could do this. She would do this. For Costia.
"The battle had almost ended," Lexa began, and using her best speaking voice, nice, slow and deep, she told the geda of watching Milo being pulled under by the reapers and being dragged away. She told them that the reapers looked like men, but their heads were bigger and thicker, and their arms stronger, their legs faster. Her voice almost broke, but she recounted watching them tear Milo apart and consume his flesh before Anya pulled her away.
"The last thing I saw was a crowd of them around where Milo went down," Lexa finished. "After that our people retreated, and my memory blurs." She sat down. The room was silent.
"Have the reapers made any appearence since this battle?" asked the Commander.
"None," Tohru replied. "My scouts have reported nothing back. We know nothing of where they live, where they come from, or what their goal is. We've never seen them before, and we have nothing to predict what they'll do next."
"Our village had a similar experience," Heda Indra replied. Unsurprising, Lexa thought. Indra's village wasn't too far from their own. The geda listened as Indra called forth one of her geda, who explained a similar situation, only instead of attacking after a battle, the reapers had taken down a scouting party of four, the forth managing to make it back to speak of the event, who spoke now. Lexa watched his face, haunted with the memory of watching his friends being destroyed.
"Clearly the reapers are a new, and dangerous threat," the Commander began. "And especially with the tension we already have with the Isagedakru, I don't like the look of where this is going. But the only choice we have at the moment is to learn everything we can about these...(here he paused, searching)...people, and if any sort of alliance can be made with them. I suggest that your scouting parties be sent specifically on missions to search for them, especially in the Forth, Eighth and Tenth villages, which are located in and around that area. Any sightings of these creatures will be reported to myself, and I will alert the twelve villages. Times like these are when internal tensions need to be forgotten, and the Clan must work together as a whole. I don't like the sound of these people, and I don't like the fact that we know next to nothing about them. Hopefully by next spring, that will have changed drastically."
The heda nodded in agreement, disappointed that they couldn't do more. The conversation moved on from there and Lexa fell back into a stupor, catching perhaps every other word, and as the evening went on, every fifth word. Eventually, she stoped listening entirely, instead focusing her attention on one knot on the table shaped like a two-headed deer bounding through the woods. She marvelled at how that exact shape could be created, contemplating the wood, when Anya's hand on her shoulder jerked her out of her stupor. Lexa looked up, suddenly exhausted. Anya smiled. "Goufa," she said. "The meeting is over. It's the middle of the night. Let's get some sleep."
Lexa nodded sleepily and in a haze got up and followed her first. They wove their way through the village and back to their sleeping shelter, where Lexa pulled off her shoes and her pants and collapsed on her mat, falling asleep between the time she started falling, and the time her head hit her pillow.
