Chapter Fourteen: Discovery of a New Culture

The woman practically seemed to flicker as she leapt down from the tree. Dipper gasped. She was almost 30 feet up when she jumped. She free fell and landed on all fours, curling into a ball and rolling into a standing position, looking intensely at Dipper, grinning at him.

"Hey there." She said. She had a thick accent that Dipper couldn't quite place. Dipper pulled away from her as she started to sniff him, moving onto the women next.

"Hmm… You've been to that hot spring, haven't you?" She asked.

"Umm… Yeah. Why?" Pacifica asked, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with this girl. She didn't seem to value boundaries.

"How did you get past my watch? My tribe watches over the Eternal Spring of Sacrifice and Pain. It's been decades since anyone has been able to bathe in it. How did you get past our guard?" The woman asked.

"I don't know. We went there on a date at midnight." Wendy said, looking at Dipper.

"I see… Well… It's possible that you might make it past our guard that late at night. We know that your kind usually sleep at night." The woman said.

"Yes… Our kind… Who are you?"
"Well, my name is Blackest Water Alight Under the Full Moon. But you can call me Nearra." Nearra said.

"I'm a member of the Lysnuck Tribe." Nearra said.

"Have you bathed in the Eternal Spring?" Dipper asked, taking out his notebook.

"No. It's one of the few things in our society that's forbidden. Nobody in our society is allowed to bathe in that hot spring. We believe that while it offers physical immortality, that it causes spiritual death. And that is something our society cannot abide. Those who bathe in the hot spring are banished from the tribe." Nearra said. Dipper was taking down notes intently about the Lysnuck Tribe.

"Are you just one tribe of a larger people? Are you a lost tribe of Native Americans?" Dipper asked.
"Yes. There are many tribes of us around the world. But in these woods, there are only three. There are us, the Lysnut. We are known as the Tribe of the Moon. There are the Sultryn, known as the Tribe of the Sun and then there's the Trenvyk, the Tribe of the Earth. I recommend you stay far away from the East Side of the forest. The Trenvyk aren't terribly friendly to outsiders." Nearra said.

"You mentioned that you believe that bathing in the spring causes spiritual death. Does your tribe have a god? Gods? Spirits?" Dipper asked curiously. He'd always been deeply interested in sociology and anthropology. This was an opportunity for him to explore a different culture.

"We do have godlike beings in our culture. But unlike the gods of your human cultures, we generally don't believe that our gods require or even desire worship.

"Instead, the Lysnuck believe that the moon created all the spirits and that the spirits each represented a different aspect of Lysarvoh's desires. As a result, they created life, they created animals and plants and water. Lysarvoh exerted her dominance over the earth by creating the tides and allowing earth to move in such a way that she may support life." Nearra said. Dipper nodded, taking this down on a note on the entry for the Lysnuck.

"So the Lysnuck are a single tribe. What is your race at large called?" Dipper asked.

"Well, for the most part, we don't consider ourselves to be a single people. But humans have recognized certain similarities that they claim exist between us and have called us the Zyltrenaeir." Nearra said.

"How did you jump down from a 20-foot tree like that?"
"Our bodies are designed differently from you humans. We look like humans, but our legs are designed to support long falls and to jump higher and longer. I can't really tell you that much more about our people. It's not that it's a secret. It's more that our people exist separately from humans for a reason and we really don't want humans coming and disturbing our society." Nearra said.

"We've stayed separate from humans for centuries. We're not likely to stop now.

"However… I think it is important that I allow our elders to examine you. It's not every day. It's not even common for anyone, especially humans to make it past our guards and bathe in the Eternal Spring.

"You mention 'you humans'. Do you not consider yourselves humans?" Dipper asked. He knew it was likely that she wouldn't answer him. But he was deeply curious. Nearra sighed.
"Okay… Okay, okay. But you need to promise to be cool about this." Nearra said. She took a deep breath and began transforming into a bipedal anthropomorphic cat person.

"Humans have called us Catfolk for centuries, though we don't acknowledge that name for ourselves." Nearra said. The reason I was able to jump down from the tree like that was a combination of my legs and the magic that suffuses our bodies. Most of us have a few special abilities. You humans call it magic. We simply acknowledge that our abilities are beyond that of humans. One of our abilities is illusion. Most of us have a human form. For me, it's Nearra.

"My real name is…" She let out a series of purrs and hisses and growls.

"And you promise you won't tell anyone about us?" Nearra demanded.

"Of course we won't. I have a mentor who might be interested in your culture. But if you don't want anyone but us to know, I'll keep it a secret." Dipper said. He knew Ford would be fascinated by the Zyltrenaeir. But he could see why they wouldn't want their secrets revealed.

"And you have to promise not to bring anyone else to the Eternal Spring." Nearra said.

Dipper nodded.
"Can I ask a few questions about the spring?" Dipper asked, bringing his tablet open to the hot spring. Nearra nodded hesitantly.

"Does drinking from the spring have any effect.

"Only if the water is still hot and even then, not even half as strong an effect as bathing in it.

"We can't say for certain what causes the immortality, but we've experimented with it over the centuries. And those who drink hot water from the spring tend to live longer than those who don't. But they still age and die eventually. Those who drink water directly from the spring, as in the water is still hot, they can live as much as 30 years longer and their healing speeds up slightly, though not nearly as much as when someone bathes in it. Did you take a glass of the water and drank it cold?" Nearra asked.

"Yes. Some members of my family drank the water cold." Dipper said. Nearra sighed.

"I'm not sure. Their healing might increase a little bit. But they won't live longer in the same way that someone drinking hot water from it or bathing in it will."
"I… My great uncle is dying. Are you sure you can't let us let him bathe in the hot spring?" Dipper asked. Nearra sighed.

"I'm sorry that your uncle is sick. But no. I can't let him bathe in it." She said.

"Now, I need to take you to my elders and let them decide what happens to you. Don't worry, they're not going to kill you. As far as I know, even the Elders don't know a way to kill someone who's bathed in the Eternal Spring." Nearra said, taking Dipper, Mabel, Pacifica and Wendy to her village.

-0-

She was speaking in a strange, purring language to another catlike being. The catlike being nodded and let Nearra and the gang through. Nearra took them to a building with four elderly looking Catfolk in it.
"Do any of them speak English?" Dipper asked.
"I do. No speak… Um… Perfect. But get idea of." One of them said. Nearra spoke the language much better.

"I'll translate." Nearra said.
"My name is Dipper Pines. This is Mabel, Wendy, Pacifica. We bathed in what you call the Eternal Spring. Wendy and I were on a date and we went there to relax." Dipper said. Nearra translated into their growling, purring language.

"Later, we brough Mabel and Pacifica with us to the hot spring and they bathed in it as well." Dipper said. Nearra translated again to Catfolk. The Elders nodded. One stepped forward and began sniffing Dipper's neck. Dipper couldn't say he liked being sniffed like this. The elder looked at Nearra and spoke in their language. Nearra chuckled and spoke back to the Elder. The Elder sniffed the girls as well, then spoke to Nearra.

"He says that you don't smell like threats, but would like to question you before they make a decision.

"Would that be okay with you?" Nearra asked. Wendy shrugged.
"I don't mind." She said. The rest were also fine with it.

"What drew you to the hot spring?" Nearra asked after a female elder spoke.

"Oh, well, I was exploring the woods on my own one day and came further into the woods than I usually do and happened across this crazy cave with this sweet smelling hot spring. I was actually gonna take a dip in it myself, but that didn't seem like much fun.

"And most of my friends are away right now, either at college or doing other stuff. Robbie is in Cali, I actually wonder how he's doing with the whole earthquake thing. Tambry is visiting relatives in Michigan. Thompson is in New York in college. Lee and Nate are on a road trip. Not sure where they are and I guess I just waited for Dipper and Mabel to come back and well… Here we are." Wendy said. Nearra rolled her eyes at the three minutes she'd never get back after that answer. She gave a shortened version that Wendy discovered it on her own and only recently brought Dipper with her.

Another elder spoke.

"Elder Nicarus wishes to know why you then brought the brown-haired girl and the blonde-haired girl with you to the hot spring." Nearra said.

"Well, Pacifica and Wendy are my girlfriends. Do you have polyamory in your tribe? You know, having more than one partner?" Dipper asked.
"And Mabel is my sister. It just felt right to bring them." Dipper said. Nearra relayed that to them and they spoke amongst themselves. One of them spoke to Dipper.

"We do have polyamory in our tribe. I am not sure how it works for humans, but amongst us, relationships are less of a chain between two people and more a method of sharing. Relationships start with close emotional attachments. Physical and romantic relationships are just an extension of close friendships. Is that not how human relationships work?" Nearra asked, translating for an elder.

"Well… Some human relationships do. Humans are weird and look for strange things sometimes in a partner. You'd be amazed how many people just want to 'hook up'."

Nearra did her best to translate 'hook up' into the Zyltrenaeir Language. But as they didn't really have that as a concept amongst their people, it was difficult for Nearra to understand it herself.

"What does this… "Hook up" mean?" Nearra asked. She had a loose concept of it from the context, but she needed Dipper to be more specific.

"Do you Zyltrenaeir ever just get together for sex? Like you get together at night, go back to your place and have sex and then go your separate ways? You know?"

Dipper felt a bit embarrassed to be explaining this. Nearra explained the concept. The elders looked between each other, and Dipper couldn't really read their expressions, but he got the impression that they were not impressed.

"I see. And all human relationships are like this?" Nearra asked.

"No. Wendy, Pacifica and I have a poly relationship. But it's just the three of us and I guess you could say that it's an extension of close friendships.

"I'm not sure how exactly to explain it… Some humans hook up. But a lot don't. No two humans are exactly the same." Dipper said. The cats nodded as Nearra translated.
"Thank you for this information. Are you considered a scholar of your people?" Nearra asked Dipper, translating for the female elder.

"No. Just a high school graduate right now." Dipper said.

"Come on, dude! I've never met anyone your age who knows as much as you!" Wendy laughed.

Dipper blushed slightly.

"Okay, okay. I know more than most I guess." He had gotten a perfect score on his SAT after all.

"Why do you want to experience eternity?" One of the elders asked in fairly skilled English. Nearra looked at her. She didn't know that elder could speak human languages.

"I disguised myself as a house cat for a decade and then ran away. I was curious as to what humans were like." She said.

"They didn't impress me terribly. But it was interesting how eager they seemed to wait on me hand and foot." She said. It seemed that a few of the other Elders didn't know she'd done that either.

"I didn't realize that I was going to experience eternity. I went to the hot spring with Pacifica, Wendy and Mabel for two reasons. One was my original date with Wendy. She wanted to show me the hot spring. Okay, a few reasons. I came to the hot spring at night, when a lot of the plants were showing their bioluminescence. So I wanted to come back to study the plants and animals in this grove.

"I'm sure that you know that Gravity Falls has a lot of supernatural phenomena that go on."
"Gravity Falls. Is that what you humans call it now?" The English-speaking elder asked. It seemed as good a name as any, she guessed.

"Yes, they say they're aware of the supernatural goings on in the area." Nearra said.

"I hoped that I would discover something new to add to Grunkle Ford's and now my journals. He's been researching the weird stuff in Gravity Falls for decades and now I'm working with him to pick up."

Dipper seemed excited saying this. The Zyltrenaeir Elders discussed amongst each other. They looked back at Dipper, some seeming concerned. Finally, they turned back to them and the English speaking one spoke.

"If you can promise that you will not reveal our culture to anyone… And I do mean anyone, we will let you leave in peace." She said.

"What about Grunkle Ford?" Dipper asked.
"What is a Grunkle? Is it some form of familial relation?" She asked.
"Great Uncle. He's my grandfather's brother." Dipper said.

"Oh. Well… I suppose…" They spoke amongst each other again for a few minutes.

"If you really believe that you will be unable to keep it from him, you may share the knowledge with him. But we do not give out our secrets lightly. You are pledging an oath not only to the Elders, but to all members of the Zyltrenaeir People that you will not go freely spreading knowledge of our existence. We have not interacted freely with humans for 400 years. We don't need to start now." She said. Her own foray into being a house cat was a different story and was simply a case of curiosity, something that struck most youthful members of the Zyltrenaeir People. They were cats at heart after all.

Dipper nodded, promising not to tell anyone except Ford.

"And remember, we expect you to not bring anyone else to the hot springs. We are aware that you've blocked them off with a rockslide. But that might not stop more determined individuals. You may come and go in the grove as you please. But avoid the spring itself." The English-Speaking woman said. Dipper nodded, taking the girls back to the Shack, eager to share what he'd discovered with Ford and Ford alone. He put at the top of the entry for the Zyltrenaeir that it was top secret information.