Once he’d turned human, Bai Shuo got thoroughly mobbed by the tribe members down at the foot of the mountain, a whole crowd looking over the pale, tender little chick, patting and pinching him from every side, until he finally hid behind Bai Yun and refused to come out, and only then did people reluctantly withdraw their hands.
A moment later, Bai Shuo changed into a clean piece of animal hide, with simple shoes made from hide scraps on his feet. Animal hide was precious material in the tribe, most people went without shoes at all, but Bai Yun, worried her chick would hurt his feet, had specially made him a pair.
Even with shoes, Bai Shuo didn’t dare wander off. He found a rock in the corner and sat down to wait while Bai Yun collected their food, with his shadow of a little brother, Bai Le, tagging along at his heels. Bai Le had been thoroughly frightened by the sight of his brother getting knocked all the way off the mountain, and it had taken Bai Shuo quite some effort to comfort him, he was still hiccupping from crying.
Bai Shuo rubbed his little brother’s head and glanced over at what was going on down the mountain. Even though saying he was hungry earlier had really been an excuse to cover up why his mood had dipped, he genuinely was hungry now, turning human had burned through a lot of energy, and he badly needed to refuel.
Food the tribe brought back each day got piled together, and once every last member of the tribe had returned, distribution would begin, the hunting and gathering parties went first, then the elders and chicks, with those further down the line getting less and less. Still, urgency mattered, everyone knew a freshly-shifted chick would need a lot of food, so Cailin, the Feather Clan woman currently sorting the food, let Bai Yun collect hers early.
“Bai Yun, your chick turning human is so cute.” Cailin glanced at the chick sneaking peeks their way and complimented him. The tribe’s chicks liked roughhousing from a young age, and whether in feather form or human form, most of them ended up filthy, Bai Yun’s chick wasn’t just clean, he was paler than the other chicks too, making people want to pinch his cheeks for no particular reason.
Utterly charmed by the chick, Cailin handed over her own share to Bai Yun. “Chicks need to eat plenty.” Plenty in the tribe knew that Bai Yun and Bai Xun’s chick, who’d never managed to shapeshift, loved fresh fruit, sometimes Bai Yun would even trade other food for it.
Bai Yun didn’t stand on ceremony with her. “All right, I’ll send you over a chunk of grilled meat later.” Cailin had hurt her leg on a hunt once, and now could only work at the foot of the mountain, so her share of meat was small. Before her injury, she and Bai Yun had been in the same gathering party, and the two got along well, often trading food.
Cailin waved her off. “No need, no need, what I’ve got’s enough for me, just a few fruits, let the chick eat more.” She handed the food over to Bai Yun as she spoke.
It was currently the second month of the growth season, the plants had just come through their budding stage, and precious few had flowered and fruited yet, only a handful of fast-growing plants had produced fruit so far, so what the gathering party had brought back wasn’t much, mostly leaf-greens. Leaf-greens were, like fruit, one of the Feather Clan’s staple foods, but with a faint bitter edge, their flavor far inferior to fruit, the upside being they grew everywhere on the tribe’s territory in great quantity, available from now until the end of the growth season.
Once Bai Yun had collected the whole family’s share of fruit and leaf-greens, she washed the fruit clean first, gave one each to Wu Yan and Bai Le, and set the rest down in front of Bai Shuo, with the leaf-greens off to the side.
At the sight of the fruit, Bai Shuo felt even hungrier, but before eating, he handed one to his mother first. “Thank you, Mama, you should eat too.” His mother had come straight to find him the moment she got back, so she surely hadn’t eaten anything yet.
“I’m not hungry yet, Shuo, you go ahead and eat.” Bai Yun didn’t take it, reaching out instead to rub her chick’s head, she knew his preferences well, he loved fruit of every color and hated grilled meat and leaf-greens. With fruit in short supply right now, of course she wouldn’t compete with her chick for it.
There’d been so little fruit picked today that the whole family could only claim nine pieces total. Bai Yun decided she’d go further out tomorrow to look, and picked up the leaf-greens beside her. “I’ll go wash the greens. Don’t wander off, you two.” That last part was mainly aimed at Bai Shuo, after all, this was his first time in human form, and he’d get lost easily if he strayed too far.
Bai Shuo nodded obediently in agreement.
Wu Yan looked at the fruit in his own hand, recalled something the other chicks had said, and reached out to put it into Bai Shuo’s hand instead. “I don’t like fruit, you eat it. I’ll wait for the hunting party to get back and eat meat.”
Hearing this, Bai Shuo decided he’d split half his meat tonight with Wu Yan.
Bai Le glanced at Wu Yan, then at his brother, feeling a bit like his brother had just been snatched away from him, and a small streak of displeasure flickered through him, but remembering he’d messed up today, he didn’t dare start crying again. Swallowing back the urge, Bai Le leaned in closer to Bai Shuo, closing the distance, and held out his own fruit right to his brother’s mouth. “Brother, eat mine.”
Bai Shuo nearly got shoved right off the rock. Shocked, he said, “Le, did your strength get bigger?” Bai Shuo had already felt something was off about being knocked out of the nest today, and now, feeling his silly little brother’s strength for a second time, he’d suddenly found the reason.
It wasn’t unheard of for chicks to fight in the nest, plenty of chicks fell out of their nests every year, but usually they slid out along the rim and didn’t land too far from the nest, some even ended up dangling on the tree, waiting for their parents to rescue them. But today he’d been knocked flying outright, sure, the wind bore no small share of the blame, but Bai Le’s initial shove was absolutely a major contributing factor.
At the time of the fall, Bai Shuo had been too tense to think it through, and afterward, too happy about turning human to dwell on the strangeness of it, but this shove from Bai Le made it click instantly. Bai Le didn’t even reach his shoulder, and while Bai Shuo himself was a bit shorter than Wu Yan, he was well within healthy range, being nearly shoved off a rock meant Bai Le’s strength was absolutely not normal.
“What?” Bai Le looked utterly bewildered, glanced at the fruit in his hand, and pushed it forward again. “Brother, eat mine, eat mine.”
Watching Bai Le’s grubby little hand nearly stuffing itself into his mouth, Bai Shuo set aside the matter of his brother’s abnormal strength for now and took the fruit. Bai Le was probably influenced by the rest of the family, whenever he had fruit, he especially loved shoving it toward Bai Shuo, and he was particularly bossy about it too, insisting that Bai Shuo always take the first bite of whatever he offered.
Bai Shuo peeled the skin off and bit down, the flesh was tangy-sweet, crisp and juicy, instantly soothing his hungry taste buds. He didn’t pause after finishing one, he immediately picked up the next and started peeling.
This fruit resembled grapes from his past life, the skin was thin, easy to peel off, but unlike grapes, which grew in clusters on a vine, it grew singly on the tree, like cherries or apples. The texture was similar to cherries too, somewhere between grape and cherry, about the size of a walnut. As it ripened, it turned red starting from the top, and the more red covered the surface, the riper it was. It was called Redtop fruit.
Every year, early in the growth season, Redtop fruit was what Bai Shuo ate the most of, he knew exactly where to start peeling for the least effort. Before, he’d only had his beak and two claws to work with, now, with hands, and with the peeling experience of eating grapes in his past life, eating had become almost effortless.
Wu Yan watched him deftly peel the skin with both hands, swallow the flesh in two bites, and reduce a whole fruit to nothing but skin and pit in the blink of an eye, before Wu Yan knew it, five or six were already gone, and a flicker of shock broke through his otherwise calm face.
Bai Yun, back from washing the leaf-greens, wasn’t in the least surprised at how fast her chick ate fruit. Seeing he’d only eaten a few and still had half left, she asked, puzzled, “Shuo, why’d you stop eating? Want Mama to peel them for you?”
Bai Shuo hurriedly shielded the rest. “No, Mama, I want to save these for pickling the meat.” The redder the top of a Redtop fruit, the riper it was, the ones he’d already eaten were essentially fully ripe, while the remaining ones had only just started ripening, still edible, but not as sweet, with more tartness. Bai Shuo wanted to use them to marinate meat.
“Pickling meat?” That was an unfamiliar concept to Bai Yun.
Bai Shuo nodded and explained, “You mash up the Redtop fruit and mix it with the meat, and the grilled meat comes out tasting a lot better.”
Bai Yun understood the words, even if she couldn’t quite grasp why her chick wanted to do this, but the fact that he wanted to eat meat at all was already good news. Of her three chicks, this was the one she worried about most, not eating meat meant his body would only grow weaker. Now, hearing he wanted to save Redtop fruit to eat together with meat, she didn’t hesitate much before agreeing, however he wanted to fuss over it, as long as her chick was willing to eat meat, that was what mattered.
Bai Shuo let out a breath of relief, with his mother’s agreement, things would go much more smoothly.
“Mama, I want to use the pot and the stone slab, and I want to use the wooden bowls and the stone knife,” Bai Shuo spoke up again. Most resources in the tribe belonged to the collective, distributed by the chieftain, but some tools that people had ground themselves or traded meat they’d saved up to get belonged to individuals. Their family owned no small number of tools, the trouble was, they were all up the mountain, and with his short arms and legs, going up himself was fine, but hauling stone pots and stone slabs down was simply out of the question, so he had no choice but to ask Bai Yun for help.
“All right, I’ll go get them.” Bai Yun agreed and stood to leave, then paused, still uneasy, and added one more reminder: “The hunting party should be back soon, don’t wander off.” If their obedient, adorable chick got bumped into by some Feather Clan member who wasn’t watching where they were going, that would be no small trouble.
“Mm-hm, got it, Mama, I’ll stay right here.” Bai Shuo assured his mother again, privately, he figured the only one likely to wander off around here was Bai Le.
Bai Yun clearly wasn’t worried about her youngest chick, a chick raised through tumbles and scrapes was different from one who’d spent his whole life cooped up in a nest. In fact, Bai Shuo in human form wasn’t any weaker than the other chicks, plenty of chicks were even less healthy than him, but whenever Bai Yun looked at him, she couldn’t help thinking of his feather form, and the moment she pictured that palm-sized little fluffball, she just couldn’t help fussing over him more.
The moment Bai Yun left, a six- or seven-year-old kid poked his head out from a nearby pile of branches, spotted Bai Shuo, and his eyes went wide before he spun around and dashed off in the other direction.
The kid’s face had been full of terror, as if he’d just seen something horrifying.
Bai Shuo was busy looking down at his remaining Redtop fruit, Bai Le was trying to drag him over to watch someone else start a fire, and Wu Yan was lost in his own thoughts, no one noticed the kid who’d appeared and vanished.
The fleeing kid ran straight for one of the spots where the tribe’s chicks picked fruit, searched a good while before finally spotting Bai Su, and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Bai Su, it’s bad, it’s bad, your mama’s going to raise another chick!”
Bai Su, up in a tree picking fruit, was completely baffled.
By the time Bai Su made it back to the tribe, the first thing he saw was Wu Yan talking with Bai Yun.
Mama’s going to raise Wu Yan? Bai Su thought it over and couldn’t make sense of it, some adult Feather Clan members in the tribe did sometimes raise other chicks, but the chicks being raised usually had no parents, or parents who couldn’t afford to raise them. Wu Yan didn’t have a mother, true, but he had a father just as strong as their own, plenty capable of keeping him fed. Why would Mama suddenly want to raise Wu Yan?
Puzzled by his mother’s behavior, Bai Su walked a few steps closer to see what was going on, and then he froze.
There, across from his mother, between his youngest brother and Wu Yan, sat a stranger-chick. The one talking with his mother just now had been this strange chick, not Wu Yan, it was just that Wu Yan had been standing in front of him, making it look like Mama was chatting with Wu Yan.
Bai Su studied this chick he’d never seen before, but who somehow felt strangely familiar, and thought this chick looked a little like his youngest brother. Right after that, Bai Su noticed the chick didn’t just resemble his youngest brother, he resembled their father too, and even more so, their mother.
A certain possibility suddenly surfaced in Bai Su’s mind. He snapped back to attention and looked more carefully at the chick’s face and age across from him, his eyes instantly lit up.
……
The hunting party got back a little late today, not until the sky had darkened did all three hunting parties finally return, but every single face was beaming, because all three groups had made a kill.
The biggest haul belonged to the last group back, they’d chased a moo-beast a long distance. Catching the prey had taken so long, and the animal was so large, that they’d come back late, but one look at the results made it clear it had all been worth it.
The rule in the tribe was that food distribution only began once everyone had returned, a mark of respect for the members out searching for food. Before the hunting parties returned, no one knew whether they’d caught prey or run into danger, so it wasn’t until the very last group made it back safely that everyone finally cheered over the day’s harvest.
Besides that one hefty moo-beast, the hunting party had also caught a baa-beast and several cluck-birds today.
Prey that had died had to be fully distributed the same day, or it would spoil, so even with dusk approaching, no one was idle, everyone hurried to bring the kills to the riverbank to wash and butcher them, in preparation for the food distribution to come.
Bai Shuo caught a glimpse from a distance, the moo-beast resembled a cow, the baa-beast something like a goat, except both were much larger than their real-world cow and goat counterparts, a baa-beast weighed roughly two or three hundred jin, while a moo-beast looked to weigh about a ton.
Cluck-birds were a bit smaller than ostriches, without the long legs and long neck, their wings were very short, and this kind of bird couldn’t fly at all, for the Feather Clan, it counted as fairly easy prey to catch.
Bai Xun’s hunting party was the last one to return, as members of the hunting party, they didn’t need to help with butchering, the tribe’s elders, who couldn’t go out hunting anymore, and the near-adults about to come of age handled that job, and distribution followed afterward.
Covered head to toe in the smell of blood, Bai Xun went straight to bathe in the river the moment they dumped off the kills. When he came back, he found his eldest and youngest sons in a corner, walked over, and scooped both chicks up, one on each shoulder. After setting them down, he noticed a chick he’d never seen before still sitting where they’d been, and blurted out in surprise, “Su, where’d you pick up this chick?”
Bai Su: “……”
Bai Shuo: “……”
Bai Shuo was just about to speak up when Bai Xun looked him up and down and, without missing a beat, went right on talking to Bai Su: “I’ll tell you what, this chick looks a whole lot like your mother, if the age weren’t off, I’d start suspecting she’d secretly hatched a fourth one on the sly.”
Watching his own father ramble on to himself, Bai Shuo found himself, for once, at a complete loss for words.