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Chapter 3 - A Little Engagement

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I took a deep breath, you know, the kind that you use the diaphragm muscle for; the kind of thing that yoga instructors on Youtube tell you to do whenever you're entering a slower part of the exercise. Indeed, the stretch that I was doing now felt similar to yoga. Feet apart. Hands on the floor, making sure not to bend your back but to bend from the waist instead. Slowly, I gathered my torso upwards in a slow cat stretch, steadily raising my outstretched arms until both palms were facing the sky. The wind shook my mane, my shiny new mask scattering light upon the rest of the land from the rock in which I stood upon. With all the muscles inside my chest, I gathered my breath and shouted:

"Valo!"

Four years old banzai! Viva la reincarnated life and accelerated non-human maturation!

"Valo!" the (living) mountain below me shouted back, drowning out whatever echo I had made with my initial statement. The outcrop I'd perched myself on totally did not crack from the shockwave that is Lawa Lata Mon's voice. The man himself was oblivious to it, therefore I was to be oblivious as well.

As said, it's been four years since my date of birth. I had grown to about the size of my father's forearm and had developed a physique that my old human self would have envied. You know the genetic mutation that some cows get, the one that makes them mega buff and muscular as if making fat out of the stuff they eat was never an option? Myostatin something hyper-something? Apparently, I got that, and so did everyone else. It doesn't take that much for any of us to bulk up and if you combine that with our generally manual labor-centric culture, you'd realize why you've never seen a fat Hilichurl.

Although the sheer hulking mass of my father suggests that there's more to Hilichurl growth than uninhibited muscle recruitment.

Anyway, where was I?

"Cannon ball!" I said. In English.

I splashed into the lake, which felt like getting slapped simultaneously from every angle imaginable. It was an instant regret but hey, at least I was able to jump into a lake in the wilderness for once in my life. Now, to survive the next few seconds I'd have to—

"Kan un Bal!"

The water shook, like earthquake shook, as the gargantuan form of my father smashed through the surface of the water, sending me careening through the aquatic environment until I was genuinely confused where up and down was. It took a forever of flailing my limbs into a facsimile of breaststroke, and even then, a forever of making sure I didn't inhale the rest of the water that had entered my mouth before I broke into the surface.

And even then, my relief was short-lived as the great blue shadow pushed up the water right beside me and began the world's most mind-boggling doggie paddle, displacing whatever flimsy threading I was able to manage on the water's surface and sending me back to my careening. I had almost consigned myself to the fate of going to my third life early when my father managed to grab me in the water and dump me on the shore.

"Fun," he said, then shook himself like a dog, which threw all that water right onto me. I have to tell you, it was freezing.

Haha Frostarm Lawachurl go brr.

"I have to say, son. Your harebrained ideas may not be the most useful, but they are most relaxing."

Relaxing to you, maybe, I wanted to say.

Instead, I did a double thumbs-up on the floor. "Your welcome."

The man—I've taken to calling Hilichurls men because saying Hilichurl is about three times more taxing—laughed and picked me up without my consent, carrying us back to the tribe.

The years have allowed me to know my home a lot better. We were the Tribe of Still Waters, one of maybe three other Hilichurl groups that lived around the lake that funneled in from the plains up North. We weren't that big of a tribe, five families each headed by a Mitachurl, each of whom comprised our five core warriors that took up a quarter of our war potential. Another quarter of said war potential were the eldest sons of those five, a mix of Mitachurls and Element-capable normal-physique folk, and not to mention our one Samachurl.

The remaining half of our military was taken up by my father alone.

That fact was never more apparent as he walked into the cave with me on his shoulder as the guards, sentries, and outside workers stopped whatever they were doing to bow their heads at him as he passed. The big man walked all the way to the big rock throne in the big leather pavilion at the center of our little community and sat down. A Mitachurl had been waiting inside approached Lata Mon—still can't get over the name that literally meant Blue Mountain—a moment later.

"Nod, how goes the gathering?" my father asked.

Nod was an old one. The warrior rose to an impressive height that was at least up to the resident Lawachurl's shoulders and had fur that was already partially covered in stone. There was a nasty knot of pale and twisted flesh on his left side where he was once stabbed; a story he never told me no matter how many times I'd asked.

He was my father's right-hand man.

"The fishermen have seven baskets, the hunters have three boars, the gatherers have…"

I slapped my father, hard. Hitting him honestly felt like attacking cool kevlar with your bare fists, and that was him not in super seiyan. I hit him again before the colossal chieftain finally noticed the midget making noise on his shoulder.

"What is it, Samu?"

"Let me down, I will play."

I grimaced. Shit, I sounded like a kid—which I was, but that's beside the point.

Predictably, he laughed. "Go then."

And with that, I was dismissed. Speaking of which, I was still on his shoulder. Since last year, it had become too much to ask him to take me down from my perch as he had taken it as a personal exercise for my arboreal skills. I had a fear of heights too, a fear that was beaten out of me through well-meaning intense exposure therapy that had felt like something dying inside. Now, I find myself being a tad too careless when dealing with verticality.

...seeing as my idea for a birthday trip was to jump off a cliff and into the lake, I think I've developed a small death wish. Maybe.

Anyway, I monkey'd down his form and ran out of the chief's pavilion, ducking under the other elders making their way into my father's audience. My destination was the hut just next door, a structure that was less bombastic and fortified than what the Lawa Hall necessitated but quite a bit more sophisticated. It was taller than the other huts in our little community, its cloth painted in patterns that I suspect depicted wind and its foundations a hybrid of pale wood and stone that had the imagery of past battles carved into them. A column of smoke drifted from the little opening on the vertex of the sharp, conical structure, a cloud that went straight up into the cave ceiling before being sucked into yawning opening into the outside world. It told me that someone was home.

"Oy! Al!" I called out.

There was a high-pitched shriek from the inside. It went, "A!" Someone bumped into furniture on the inside and knocked over some kind of pan or maybe a cooking pot before a chibi Hilichurl—hehe, Chibichurl—like I was pushed through the entrance flap stomping tiny feet with bite-sized indignation.

"Not Al!" she cried. "Alexa!"

I scratched my head.

This was Al—Alexa. She was the tribe's Samachurl's prodigious apprentice and apparently the crib-sister of my infanthood that torn apart our nursery with a hurricane. Her appearance gave credit as to why the Sama in Samachurl meant 'black'; it was the color of her mane. Her mask, though lacking the same ornaments as an adult Samachurl's, had an eye hole in it, exhibiting a pale blue-green eye in a shade called teal. That eye trained itself on me and began to glow, and I could swear I could hear the wind cut into the surrounding fabric.

"Fine, Alexa," I relented. "I'm here."

She grinned—er, well, her eye did the cartoony thing of closing and making a crease that went an upward angle—and giggled. As for why she insisted on the very human name 'Alexa'?

Boredom struck me on a lazy afternoon while watching the lake waters at age two and a half. I stood, struck a pose, snapped my fingers, and breathed.

"Alexa, play Despacito."

"Ah-lek-sa?"

"No, not Ah-lek-sa, Alexa."

"Hehe, Alexa."

"...You know what Al, let's not do this."

"No, Alexa."

"Al?"

"Alexa!"

...

...

...I'm regretting my life decisions.

That aside, Alexa brought me inside the hut, shuffling a few pieces of furniture around to make seats out of animal hide—mostly boar—on the floor. Afterward, she went to wear a pair of thick hand muffs and picked up the pot that had been simmering on the fireplace in the back and put it right in front of us with a plunk. I looked at it.

"It's a pyro slime," I observed.

"And?"

"It's a pyro slime in water."

"And?"

I hesitated. "I assume you want me to drink the water?"

"No, stupid. You eat the slime."

Nope.

"Where are you going?"

"You expect me to eat that."

"Yeah!"

"Have you tried eating that?"

Alexa paused. "No?"

"Then do you think I can eat that?"

"Yes."

"...do you think you can eat that?"

"Yes?"

"Do it then."

Alexa pouted. "Weakling."

Yowai has no business being in the language of the Hilichurls.

"A chef has to check their—"

"Brewer."

"...fine, a brewer has to check the effectiveness and taste of their own make before giving it to their patients."

"They do?"

"How do you think they know it works?"

"Cause grandma Zeno says so."

I smacked my mask and slowly let it fall from my face.

"...did the Sama say that this one works?"

"Um." Alexa twiddled her thumbs. "I haven't asked."

"So how can you say that this one works?"

Alexa said nothing. I turned to her and found her trembling.

"I," she sniffed, "I can't."

Oh fuck.

"Hey," I said. "It's alright to be wrong about things. The important part is to learn from them, right?"

Alexa's sobbing only got worse. I'm officially bad with kids.

What followed was a similarly pointless and long back and forth between me and Alexa where I tried to convince her she did something wrong while also trying to convince her she didn't do something wrong. By the time that I'd finally managed to calm her down, the lights of the sky had already gone out and the scent of supper being brewed in the community pantry was filling our XL-sized cavern.

Alexa was now asleep on the couch made of animal hide and wood and was hugging the dowsed-but-still-alive Pyro slime in her arms. I found it kind of cute but was too exhausted to care any more than that since I, too, had a 4-year-old's energy reserves. Still, there was still something to attend to. I got up and walked as fast as my short feet could take me to the back of the hut and pulled open a flap to reveal the sneaky little hidden compartment and the hunched and black-furred tribe shaman hiding behind it.

I sighed. "Zeno."

The old woman crossed her arms and replied in a surprisingly sultry voice, "That's Sama Zeno to you, little cub."

I shrugged noncommittedly. The Anemo Samachurl had long since known that I was a reincarnated soul. What grated me wasn't that she knew; it was that it took her a total of three visits to determine the nature of my "oddly high intelligence" and confronted me at what should probably have been two fucking AM the next day, and ever since then, she's been pestering me for all kinds of knowledge from Earth, and if it wasn't that:

"So how has spending time with your betrothed been?"

Yeah. That.

"It is what it is." I shrugged.

"Which is?"

I shrugged. "It was fine?"

"Making my little protege cry like that was just fine?"

I raised my hands placatingly. "Hey, I was just trying to tell her that dipping a Pyro Slime in water won't make a drink that will suddenly give you control over fire."

"Well," the old woman said. "Al may not be quite right, but ingesting Pyro essence from the slimes does facilitate the blessing, though a safer method would be to just wipe them on your skin for many years as you grow."

"Sorry, but I don't have any intention of burning into a pile of ashes from the inside, thank you."

The Sama chuckled at that. I wasn't sure if it was out of good humor or if she actually intended for me to ingest what is functionally a blob of lava.

"Well, go on then," she said. "The nightly feast is already there. I will wake little Al later and feed her myself."

I shifted on my feet.

Zeno threw a wooden spoon at me. "Git!"

I ran out of the shaman's hut while ducking from flying utensils.

...

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CHAPTER 3 END

Edits: Details I forgot to correct lol.