User blog:Wuldnakest/The Cat and the Bird Part 4

       The next morning Yin awoke and sat up excitedly for the first time in too long. There was someone new she could talk to, if she could get to him. She sprung out of bed and dressed herself in her armor: green and gold plates for her toned thighs and a corset covering her abdomen, with a breast plates covering her chest with pauldrons decorated as foo dogs. She also had a helmet, but very rarely did she need to wear it since it was so time consuming to put her long orange and black hair in a bun, plus the jinkos never really got into fights anyway. Just as she jumped onto the ground from her hut she was beckoned by one of her fellow jinkos.

       "Yin, wait!" the other called.        "What do you need?" Yin replied from under her hut as she turned towards the other girl.        "We're going up the river for some firewood, and we need one more to help out."        Yin's heart sank. Gathering firewood took all day, and she needed some time to see if she could talk to the foreigners, but she knew the other jinkos wouldn't understand. "Alright," she gave in. She made sure to keep her tribe’s needs above her own recreation, but sometimes it was nearly impossible.        "Great, thanks," the other girl said with gratitude. She led Yin to the canoes already on the river. A couple of the long boats were already going upstream, against the gentle current of the river. Yin sat herself in the front of a beached canoe with the other girl sitting in the rear. This way Yin could have an unobstructed view of the river in front of her, and help navigate much easier.

       Her canoe set off into the river, and she paddled upstream with the others. Luckily the current wasn't very strong, so it made the trip that much easier. She looked at the forest on either side of the river while the sun was keeping the mist away. Sometimes kakuens would come out of the mountains and meet with the jinkos. Normally this was just for trade, and never during the kakuens' mating season, which came about as often as a jinko's.

       Soon the canoes made it to their destination and beached themselves on the riverbank. She got out into the ankle-deep water and grabbed the canoe's front, pulling it onto the shore. A single jinko like her was strong enough to pull the canoe by herself. Her partner got out when she was in shallow water and handed Yin an axe. They followed the other girls into the forest to their usual spot of collecting firewood. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman";color:#222222">       For hours the jinkos worked in the intensifying sun, with only the forest canopy to give them any protection. Two jinkos sawed down trees and then the others joined in to saw the trees into manageable logs. Others took the logs back to the boats to be taken back to the village at the end of the day. Even for strong jinkos, this wasn't easy work. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12pt;">       Yin wiped her brow with her furry paw. Moving these logs onto the boats was hard work, even for powerful jinkos. She heaved another log up and carried it to the boat, where she dropped it on the pile of other logs sitting in the boat’s center. With the winter approaching, these logs were a necessity for the village to continue on, since they provided both warmth and a place to cook food, though a jinko eating raw meat was commonplace. <span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12pt;">She raised her arms over her head and stretched letting the cool breeze touch her shiny, sweaty skin. She relaxed and glanced around for the other girls. When she saw none, she happily jumped into the cool river and gasped at the cold water touching her skin. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman";color:#222222">       "Yin!" someone called out, ruining her fun, "You can swim later, but right now you need to help us with our wood." It was Mei, the jinko next in line to take over rule of the village. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman";color:#222222">       "Yes, I-I know," Yin stammered as she got out of the water, "I just...slipped is all." She needed to be careful because Mei didn't put up with any nonsense. "Well lunch time will be here soon and you can swim then. Until then we need you to help collect wood for the winter. The Elders think it's going to be a harsh one." She turned back to the trees and Yin followed closely.

"Do you ever wonder why the humans don't like us?" Yin suddenly spoke up.

Mei rolled her eyes. Again and again Yin wanted this explained to her. "I don't wonder why because it doesn't matter. They're set in their ways and we can't change that. The best thing we can do is just try to stay out of their way. They don't seem to want to go looking for trouble, so that's the best we can work with."

"Yeah, but what if a new one showed up who didn't know anything about us?" <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman";color:#222222">       "Then...I don't know. I wouldn't bother, though. The human villagers would have told the new one all about us by now, so there's no point. We'll just have to worry about ourselves." Mei stopped and looked at Yin. "The humans are the ones who have to decide on peace since they decided on war when we first arrived here. We can't approach them unless we know they're not going to hurt us, and the only way for us to know they don't want to hurt us is if they tell us so." Yin looked at the ground and then back up at Mei. "I know. I just wish there was a way we could reach out to them and make them see we don't want to harm them."

"I do too," Mei caved. "I would love nothing more than to see our village prosper from trade with humans." She sighed and looked Yin in the eye, "But as of now, the safest way for us to live is by living how we have since the beginning, and staying out of the humans' way."

"I know." Yin said. "I'll get back to moving logs then."

"Try to stay focused." <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-font-family:"TimesNewRoman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman";color:#222222">       When lunch came about, Yin found some other girls to talk to. Two jinkos sat on a canoe, each eating their own raccoon. Yin approached them with her own lunch: two ravens she had caught just moments ago. <span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:12pt;">"Hey," she spoke. She didn't converse much with these particular jinkos, so she took things slowly. "I heard a new human came to the village last night." "Oh yeah?" one asked through a mouthful of raccoon.

Yin took a bite of her raven after cleaning the black feathers from it and nodded. "Yeah. A carriage came into town with someone."

"Cool," the other said. "Does anyone know anything more?"

"No," Yin admitted as she dug into her raven again, this time biting the meat off of its wings. "Well other than he might be from the Dark Lands. Someone said she saw a boat with red and white sails pull into Yangzhou's harbor. Then the carriage came into town, so there must be an outlander."

"Hmm...cool," one of the jinkos said after swallowing her bite of raccoon meat. "But why do we care? Aren't the villagers just gonna tell him not to trust us or something?"

"Maybe," Yin admitted. She dug into her second raven after cleaning off its feathers. "But that's assuming one of us doesn't go talk to him first."

"Yeah well good luck with that. Those villagers are gonna tell him all about us, and it won't even matter," one of the jinkos said. "Maybe not," Yin said after swallowing part of her raven, "But think of all the things we could learn from him about the Dark Continent." She chuffed excitedly

.        "That would be neat," the other jinkos agreed. When not in heat, a jinko liked to devote her time to bettering herself both physically and mentally. When they met a few travelers several years ago, and some of them decided to stay with the jinkos, every girl jumped at the opportunity to learn the lingua franca of the Dark Continent.

"Right?" Yin pressed her persuasion harder, "Think of all the things we could learn. A-and what if we got invited to travel there?" She chuffed again as well as the other two, but she didn't try to hide it like they did.

"Gosh, that'd be so cool," one of the others dreamed. "Huge stone buildings...and magic. One of the Elders' husbands told me about the magic they have there. He said there's this group of islands called...Gol...Golden Islands or something, where everyone is descended from a tribe of humans who were enslaved to elves, but then they rebelled and stole a bunch of elf magic and ran away to those islands. Now they're all just fantastic magicians. Imagine getting to learn magic from one." She put her paws against her cheeks as she dreamed about what a "Golden Mage" could teach her.

"And imagine how strong they'd have to be to build their houses out of stone," the other mused. "One of the men told me that they have castles as big or sometimes bigger than the palace in Yangzhou. Imagine how much they could teach us about improving our physical strength! And imagine how good our village could become with architecture made of stones!" She pressed her paws against her cheeks as she chuffed with anticipation.

Yin smiled at the other two. It was good to see they were realizing the importance of establishing contact with the outlander. Now if she could get the rest of the girls on board, and then get the humans in their village on board, there'd be no stopping the jinkos from learning all about human civilization, opening trade, and ultimately flourishing. She chuffed at the idea of jinkos working with humans until something tore her from her fantasies.

"Yin, Ling, Yu, we need you three to help out," Mei's voice came.

"Oh, certainly," Yin said as the three girls got up and headed back into the forest.