Chapter 2: Chapter 2 – Unfortunate realizations

After a night of sleep, I've been able to integrate my scattered memories and make some sense of the environment around me.

Not about the actual memories, no. I still don't know where they came from. Or why I have them. I just moved them to the back of my mind for later. I'm speaking of my present, current life. The only one that actually mattered to me at the moment.

Some parts remain blurry, but I remember we were once part of a more prominent cat tribe with almost a thousand members and counting. My birth family was never rich, but my parents were probably decent hunters. They often returned home with parts of prey and were well respected by my neighbors at the time, so starvation was never something I had to worry about from a young age.

They gave me a good childhood.

I was hungry, sure. But only the families of official equivalents ate till they were full. We all knew to keep enough for our next meal.

The time period in between a hunting session could be very long and our prey was never consistently bountiful. Some nights the hunters returned to the tribe victorious and proud as they struggled not to buckle under the weight of their enormous prey. Our leader would hold a clan-wide commendation ceremony and the families of the warriors being commended would all grin widely, flushed under the envy of their acquaintances and their tails wagging violently behind them in excitement. Those were good nights. On some less fortunate nights, the hunters would walk through the gates of our walls shamefaced from their meager harvests and wearing downtrodden expressions. I remember my parents returning home from a hunt with severe expressions and an aura of gloom engulfing their every step. My younger self would at first try to make conversation, but it all eventually dies off under the heavy atmosphere of our tent.

I wouldn't say things were perfect, not by a long shot, but I liked my life in the tribe. Even after the council of shamans came to our door and my parents immediately signed me up for child labor, life was good. In the morning I would have a piece of jerky before running off to the shaman's shrine to begin my duties as an apprentice.

I would help process common herbs in the afternoon, copy some old texts onto a sturdier piece of hide in the evening, and at night I'll join them at their prayer service.

If things hadn't changed when disaster struck later that year, then I would've probably grown into another member of the council of shamans not before long.

I still think it's just a string of bad luck, but our head shaman at the time had adamantly believed it was all retribution from the gods for daring to offer fewer sacrifices at last year's spring festival.

'The gods are angry!' He would scream at literally anyone willing to listen.

Or me.

I was always willing to listen. Not because he sounded crazy, no. But in admiration.

He might've been right, I wouldn't know. The circumstances of the events were a bit was suspicions, I admit.

First my parents, in addition to over half of the tribe's able-bodied hunters, perished as collateral damage in a heated battle between two berserk beasts fighting over territory.

Then as if adding salt to injury, the other beasts whose homes were also destroyed as collateral, began taking frequent strolls down the mountain range in search of a new home. And food.

Probably only food, actually. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things. Their mere presence alone spelled a disaster for our tribe. Since as our name depicted, cats were neither the strongest nor the fastest in the feline ancestry. That position was firmly occupied by the tiger tribe and cheetah tribe respectively. We only had our long lifespans going for us but that was useless in a battle of strength.

The beasts overran our fields, ate our crops, attacked our tribesmen at night, and made it generally impossible for us to leave the vicinity of our village to forage for lunch.

The remaining percentage of our hunters got quartered during these beast attacks, and the few left were disabled since they didn't care if we hadn't had time to recover from their last attack, they just wanted to eat.

Those few months were a nightmare.

Cries rang aloud from our tents and morale quickly deteriorated.

Our leader ran out every day pleading for help from our allies. But the tribes around us were struggling from a similar affliction. We only bore the burnt due to our distance from the forest. How could they offer help when they couldn't even guarantee their own livelihood?

So despite his pleads, no help came.

Our shamans ran themselves to the brink of exhaustion begging for forgiveness from the gods. They made numerous bountiful offerings with our dwindling supplies, 'cleansed' the outskirts of our village with concoctions to ward off evil, and chanted incantations from sunrise to sundown till their throat dried up from dehydration and their voice cracked. Nothing worked.

Our meager autumn harvests was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.

Relocation was finally placed on our agenda but just the thought of moving with half a thousand people was headache-inducing.

We didn't have enough food, our cattle were less than a hundred; and unlike the more advanced tribes, carriage-making was never a skill we had found necessary to learn.

We didn't have maps.

Our warriors were almost extinct.

And our potteries were of low quality, at best. Oftentimes porosity was an issue. So how would we even ensure we had enough water in the grasslands, a place famously known for being arid and dry?

At this rate, the chances that we'll die from starvation or thirst were higher than the feasibility of actually finding a suitable piece of land.

Relocation would only be possible if the gods the shamans preached of decided to bless us.

Or we took only the least amount of people and absolutely no one else.

The question was a no-brainer.

Even the shamans didn't hesitate to choose the second option.

So after another sleepless night, our leader called a meeting first thing at sunrise that morning.

"The trials of the gods have no mercy on man." He began emotionally.

Then he told us the story of his journey to his current position in the tribe, the burden of responsibility he feels weighing down his shoulders at our situation, and the ache of guilt in his heart from hearing the cries of heartbroken mothers mourning their children daily.

He spoke of the trying times plaguing our tribe then he spoke about how even the gods sometimes had to make difficult sacrifices for the common good of the people.

My younger self would've probably been less resentful of his rhetoric if he hadn't taken out a parchment containing the names of 'sacrifices' immediately after his speech. It would've been more believable too, and given us enough time to make mental preparations for the possibility that we might be losing our homes very soon.

The leader gave us some tents, wooden spares, and enough food to last the week but the people being exiled were too devastated to care.

Most cat tribes thrived in large numbers so the first few months after the exile, we stuck together to tide through the hard times.

Ironically, unlike our feline ancestors, we were not solitary creatures. At all.

I think we took more from our human half than we normally think since we shared the tendency to look to the loudest speaker in the room and automatically assign them the position of leader.

This would have been a nonissue if our group only had one loud speaker.

But we had a lot.

A bit too many, in my humble opinion. Which you might take with a grain of salt since I was also coincidentally, a very loud speaker.

Crazy, I know.

My supporters, as few as they might have been, didn't care that I was ten years old.

Being able to treat a common cold was a valuable skill in the grasslands. And I think the fact that I could somewhat identify edible plants made them feel safer than wandering through the land with a layman and potentially dying from food poisoning.

We argued about where to camp, what to hunt, what to forage, and even on the topic of what to call ourselves, we argued.

Eventually, we realized the difference in our views for the future and we dispersed into smaller groups.

My group has survived three winters so far, and that has to count for something, right?

We've even multiplied. From a small group of sixteen teenage orphans and twelve children to a small group of twelve teenage orphans, thirteen adults, and Twenty-two toddlers. That's an exponential increase right there. In toddlers, I know.

But in like, only fifteen years that's a lot of manpower.

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And I'm not exactly sure what to do about it.

They…they mate like cats.

One moment I'm explaining what'll happen to the human physique if they keep birthing twins and triplets like actual fucking animals, and someone comes up to tell me they're pregnant. Again.

Since I'm the shaman, the closest equivalent to a healer we currently have. And it's my responsibility to ensure the birthing process is successful for both the mother and the child.

I'm not sure what they thought being a shaman's apprentice ensured, but delivering a baby was definitely not part if it.

My first year bearing witness to the miracle of life was traumatic. For both me, the mother, and the baby. Mom was a teenage mom-Hah, pun-and I was an adolescent boy.

I didn't know I had to cut the umbilical cord. I had no idea I could cut the vagina to make it wider. I didn't even know what a placenta was and the entire tribe watched in horror as I held up our new baby sister wondering why she had an elongated head.

Mom was fine. Eventually.

But she hasn't had a baby ever since and I don't blame her.

I wish others in the tribe could actually follow her example and stop multiplying like they’re trying to repopulate the earth.

I've found some herbs to substitute contraception but they’re not very effective. I’m not even sure they work at all since every winter we get a bunch of pregnant women milling about with big bellies. The toddlers eat a lot and do absolutely nothing else for the rest of the day.

Our food supply is a bit stretched as a result but we make do with foraged plants and hunting.

And sleeping draughts. A whole lot of sleeping draughts.

In their breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s the only reason we're able to leave the tents ungraded during the day.

We haven't had the time to build a fence yet so I'm scared they'll wander off into the forest and become some wild animal's lucky meal.

An incident we have unfortunately witnessed multiple times in our previous camps.

Poor Tabitha, she was only three years old.

During the day teenagers forage and adults hunt.

....with varying degrees of success.

Most nights they return home with a deer, an elk, or any of the numerous carnivores populating the grasslands in bulk. We marinate the meat with aromatic herbs and hang them on our drying racks for preservation. This process usually takes about four to six hours, depending on the weather we get that day and the intensity of sunlight.

After preservation, I add the meat to our winter rations and keep a part of it for daily consumption. Then I begin fleshing the hide for tanning, but that's an activity for later in the day.

Last night was not most nights. The team returned with a small flock of seven emus they found wandering gallantly around in a large clearing. I mentioned keeping an eye out for them in the past so they tied up the flock and brought them home. Even with my fragmented memories I still know almost nothing about emus, other than their docile nature. But I thought raising some would be a feasible idea as a long-term source of meat since eventually, the easy prey in our vicinity would reduce and we'll have to travel further for our future hunts.

Emus were bipedal and had feathers. They were basically chickens, right?

Chickens can’t be that hard to raise.

They probably also laid eggs. So that's another source of potential protein for the tribe if it all works out well. Winters in the grasslands were harsh and unforgiving. We needed more salt to preserve our food, we needed some seeds to plant next spring, and more weapons and tents would be nice, but all these items required something of equal value to trade with other tribes. If we can domesticate the emus, maybe we'll finally have some currency to improve our living conditions.

Our hunters tied their legs with rope made from the fibers of soapweed and tied their beaks with reed. We haven't had the time to build a cage, so I fed them some leftover fruits last night and prayed to god they would survive till the next day.

The gods probably didn't hear my prayer, or care to answer them, and two passed away before I work up this morning.

But the freezing weather kept them fresh. They’re still perfectly good for jerky.

And it turns out, my comment about eating herbal medicine last night was right. Since our dinner was herbal medicine, to fight off the cold.

All the plants that were cooked had medicinal properties and boosted our immune systems.

It's an old recipe I saw the shaman make for the hunters retiring from a hunt on a snow-filled winter. I couldn't find all the right herbs so I made readjustments with fruits I thought would have the same effects while increasing our energy intake from consuming the meal.

My stone harpoon plunges into the lake with explosive force, piercing through the head of a fish meandering through the current aimlessly. I pull it off the shaft and throw it into the basket on the bank to join its fellow brothers in misery. Then I regain my balance on the rock and remain still till the next one meanders along my path.

Our settlement is at most a five minutes walk from the lake, so every morning I wake up early to get a head start on my chores for the day and try for some fish. At first, this was easier said than done but after four years I think I've gotten pretty decent at it.

I repeat this process till the sun begins to rise on the horizon and the symphony of birds tweeting from the forest slowly increases in intensity.

I take my bottle gourd off its sling on my back and lower into the take gently against the current.

So far, this has been our only viable way to transport water from a long distance and I don't think it's going to change in the near future. I still don't know what type of clay is used for pottery and even if I did, I don't think I can make a fire hot enough to burn it correctly.

Bottle gourds are a pretty great substitute since whatever it is amping up the genetics of the beasts roaming the grasslands, it's probably doing the same for some plants.

I don't think they often got this big in my last life?

They grow almost everywhere during the summer months. And after some processing, we use them as plates and bowls and even for storage. It's almost as useful as soapweed yucca.

The gourd fills to the top and I heft it up from the lake with varying degrees of success. Some parts spill but it's more than half my height, so it's excusable. I tie the top close and jump from the rock to the shore, picking up my basket and beginning to pace around the tallest tree in the vicinity; in an attempt to find the perfect angle I could jump that would place me on a branch large enough to hold my weight in addition to my cargo.

I visualize my next step, bouncing on the balls of my feet to build inertia. Then I hop.

And wonder why there's such a thick forest in the middle of a temperate grassland.

Where do the trees get the water to grow?

I leap to another tree, barely making it onto a large branch with the help of my arms. It shakes precariously from my added weight but eventually stabilizes, and I grin at my success.

?

Then my smile wanes and I think back to my last train of thought.

I know it hasn't rained in a while.

The plants in our vicinity are all dried up and dying.

So it doesn't make sense. It'll need to snow a lot to grow a whole forest in the grasslands.

Like, snow a lot.

I look down at the tree I'm standing on, almost fifty feet in height and blooming majestically.

….

Fuck.

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