No sooner said than done. Bai Shuo first checked the second egg, on the surface it looked no different from any other, but holding it up to his ear, he could just make out the faintest chirping sound.
This one was about to hatch too, probably within the next day or two.
Once he’d confirmed the little cluck-bird inside the second egg was still alive, Bai Shuo took some meat and went to find Cailin to trade for the rest of the eggs.
Cailin’s first reaction on hearing the request was to refuse, a chick trading one piece of meat for food was normal enough, but suddenly wanting to trade for this many cluck-bird eggs all at once made Cailin worry the chick might be up to something reckless. Even though Bai Shuo was clearly a well-behaved chick, and Bai Su one of the most obedient chicks in the whole tribe, Cailin still couldn’t just say yes without thinking it through.
“That’s a lot of cluck-bird eggs to bring back, if you drop even one, it’ll spoil right away,” Cailin said. Cluck-bird eggs tasted good, but keeping them required care, bumped, knocked, or cracked, and by the next day they’d already have gone bad. Trading over a dozen eggs to one family, who’d probably never manage to eat them all in time, would be such a waste.
Bai Shuo had no choice but to explain his real reason for wanting the eggs. “These are for hatching little cluck-birds. I want to take them back and raise them once they hatch.” To prove his point, Bai Shuo went back and brought over the chick that had already emerged from its shell, as evidence.
The little cluck-bird had been out of its shell a while now, and its feathers were still fairly sparse. Cluck-birds could only run, never fly, even as adults, and their wings were quite short, one careful look made it obvious they were nothing like the Feather Clan’s own feather form, so there was no chance of mistaking one for the other, and certainly no possibility of some chick disguising themselves as a baby cluck-bird to pull a fast one on anyone.
Cailin looked at the newly hatched cluck-bird chick, a bit startled that the egg she’d just traded away had already hatched, but she still couldn’t quite bring herself to agree to trading away every last cluck-bird egg. Instead, she offered a compromise: “There are too many cluck-bird eggs in the cave. How about this, I’ll keep them set aside for you, and you can come trade for them tonight once your parents get back. What do you think?”
Watching an obedient, adorable chick show off his results right in front of her, only to have to turn him down, Cailin sighed. The tribe had brought back no shortage of cluck-bird eggs, but no one had ever raised a cluck-bird before, Bai Xun and Bai Yun surely wouldn’t allow their chick to waste food this way. The chick was probably in for disappointment come nightfall, thinking of that, Cailin couldn’t bring herself to tell him the little cluck-birds would likely be dead within a couple of days.
Bai Shuo hesitated. Cluck-birds naturally incubated their own eggs, without a parent bird brooding them now, the temperature would surely be different, and the longer the incubation was interrupted, the lower the odds of a successful hatch. But Cailin clearly wasn’t planning to agree, and even if he pushed and pleaded, the odds of getting all the eggs traded away were slim. He thought it over and made a suggestion instead: “Then can I have my little brother watch over those cluck-bird eggs?”
Assuming he was worried someone else might trade the eggs away, Cailin agreed. “Sure, watch them as long as you like.”
With her answer secured, Bai Shuo went to find his little brother to work out the details.
“I thought of a really delicious food, do you want to try it?” Bai Shuo asked his little brother.
Bai Le, remembering the pan-fried meat from the day before, swallowed and nodded seriously. “Want to.” His brother’s cooking was too good, if only he could eat it every single day, Bai Le thought to himself.
“But I’ve run into a tiny little problem. Could you help me solve it? If you can, I’ll go cook right away.”
“I can!” Bai Le nodded seriously. He definitely could!
Hearing the answer, Bai Shuo smiled, satisfied. “All right then. Shift into feather form now.”
A moment later, in feather form, Bai Le sat brooding the cluck-bird eggs, glancing at the cluck-bird eggs beside him, then at his brothers’ retreating backs, feeling like something was off somewhere.
Meanwhile, Bai Shuo found that the stone pot had finally heated up, scooped out a chunk of lard and dropped it in, poured in the moo-beast meat, stir-fried it, and scooped it out into a bowl before stir-frying the Redsour fruit.
Redsour fruit tasted something like tomato, and once fried, resembled one even more closely. Bai Shuo added water, then poured the meat he’d fried earlier back in, and a pot of Redsour-fruit-and-moo-beast-meat soup was finished.
He ladled a small spoonful into a bowl, waited until it wasn’t too hot to touch, and tasted it, instantly won over by the flavor.
A faint tang mixed with a hint of sweetness, the meat tender and fragrant, thoroughly appetizing. Bai Shuo felt just the smallest twinge of regret, if only there were rice to go with this now. A soup like this, paired with rice, would surely be delicious. Then again, he’d never once seen rice in his whole life here, let alone cooked rice, for now, all he could do was imagine it.
Beside him, Bai Su was frying meat over the stone slab, Bai Shuo stopped the fire under the pot and went to call his brother, spotting Wu Yan along the way. He waved at him and asked casually, “Have you eaten breakfast yet? I made some soup, want to try it?”
Wu Yan had been about to head out on his own, hearing Bai Shuo’s words, he froze for a moment, hesitated, then nodded slowly.
“Wait here a bit, I’ll be right back.” Bai Shuo said this and went to call his brother, who was still in the cave brooding the eggs. Before announcing that food was ready, Bai Shuo got Bai Le to come out first, worried that in his excitement he’d shift straight into human form and squash every last cluck-bird egg into a pancake.
Sure enough, the moment he heard it was mealtime, Bai Le turned human and made straight for the exit, Bai Shuo caught him by the arm and pulled the hide garment over his head. The thing wasn’t much to look at, but it certainly was convenient, you just threw it on and you were dressed.
The tangy-sweet soup proved a real hit, Bai Le drank a whole big bowl of it. Full at last, Bai Le patted his round little belly and, following his brother’s instructions, went back to the cave to keep brooding the eggs.
Cailin was right at the cave entrance, so there was no worry about their little brother wandering off, Bai Shuo and Bai Su felt perfectly at ease. Not that it would have mattered much anyway, once chicks in the tribe turned three and could shift into human form, they started playing down at the foot of the mountain, and the tribe’s elders would help keep an eye on them.
Bai Shuo had made a bit too much soup, nearly a full pot’s worth, and even with four chicks, two of them big eaters, they hadn’t managed to finish it all. Bai Shuo ladled some out for Cailin, then called over the chicks nearby.
These were the chicks who usually went out with Bai Su, and by now it was about the right time for them to show up. Seeing the group eating, with the pan-fried meat sitting in front of Bai Su besides, they nearly drooled on the spot. Most of the chicks had smelled the pan-fried meat the day before, but only a handful had actually gotten to taste it. Now, the ones who hadn’t tried it yet wanted to, the ones who had, remembering yesterday’s delicious meal, wanted it even more.
Bai Shuo ladled out the rest of the soup for the chicks to share, then asked them, “Do you all want to eat pan-fried meat?”
The moment he finished speaking, the whole crowd of chicks whipped their heads around to look at him in unison.
“Are you going to give us pan-fried meat?” One chick, who looked around five or six, couldn’t hold back the temptation, swallowed, and asked in a small voice.
Bai Shuo nodded, then shook his head, and answered, “I can give you all pan-fried meat, but not for free, you’ll have to bring me Redtop fruit to trade for it.” He was running low on Redtop fruit for making pan-fried meat, and trading raw meat with Cailin for it wasn’t cost-effective, the Redtop fruit left in the cave was too unripe, too sour, trading pan-fried meat with the chicks for it was a much better deal.
The chicks glanced at the soup in their bowls, then at the pan-fried meat on the slab, and huddled together to discuss it.
In the end, the group pushed forward one chick as their representative.
The representative walked up to Bai Shuo, looking a little embarrassed, but with the others behind him pushing him on, he had no choice but to state their request: “We want to try a bite first!” The chicks were sharp enough to know that some foods smelled great but tasted like something else entirely, so they wanted a taste first, to decide whether it was worth trading Redtop fruit for.
Such a small request, Bai Shuo obviously wasn’t going to refuse it, especially since he still had work he wanted these chicks to do. Right now, he needed to drive home one idea above all others: stick with him, and there’s meat to eat.
He cut a few pan-fried slices into small pieces and handed them out to the chicks, then waited quietly for their reaction.
“I want to trade, I want to trade!” the first chick to finish shouted, and the others quickly echoed him, terrified of being left out. Redtop fruit, they ate all the time, but pan-fried meat, they’d never had before.
A moment later, Bai Shuo was marinating the rest of the meat slices with the Redtop fruit he’d just traded for, Wu Yan helping out beside him, Bai Su still flipping slices on the other side, and not far off, a crowd of chicks happily eating pan-fried meat.
Plenty of chicks, desperate to get their hands on pan-fried meat, had brought out every last bit of their private stash of Redtop fruit. Unripe Redtop fruit could keep for a good ten days without spoiling, so quite a few chicks had a small hoard saved up, except from this moment on, not a single one of them had a scrap left, every last chick had caved and traded their entire reserve away.
Once he’d stashed away a few finished bowls of processed pan-fried meat in the cave for the Feather Clan members to collect that evening, Bai Shuo told Bai Su he wanted to go out with him: “Brother, I want to go pick Redtop fruit.” Picking Redtop fruit was just an excuse, what he actually wanted to do was scout out the plants growing nearby.
There was no shortage of plants around the tribe, but the gathering party only picked what people actually ate, anything with a strange taste, not part of the Feather Clan’s regular diet, naturally never got picked. Bai Shuo needed exactly those kinds of plants, as seasoning.
But Bai Su turned down the idea of Bai Shuo coming along. “No, you just turned human, you have to stay in the cave. You can’t go out for another couple of years.”
Newly shapeshifted chicks in the tribe were exempt from work, at this stage they still had trouble controlling their own form, flickering between human and feather shape without warning, so going out was genuinely dangerous. Say two people were walking one behind the other, and the one in front suddenly flickered into feather form without warning, if the one behind didn’t react in time, they could easily step right on them.
For most chicks, that risk just meant a chance of getting hurt, landing on Bai Shuo would obviously be far more dangerous, his feather form couldn’t withstand so much as a light kick.
Bai Su had no intention at all of bringing his little brother along to pick Redtop fruit, his brother just needed to stay home and wait obediently for him to come back.
Although Feather Clan siblings from the same clutch weren’t twins, Bai Shuo knew his brother well enough, the moment Bai Su finished that sentence, Bai Shuo had already guessed what he was thinking.
“Brother, I’ll just go look, you all work, and I’ll just watch from the side, okay?”
“This is the very first time in my life I’ve turned human, I want to see where you all go to pick Redtop fruit.”
Bai Su had always been a pushover when it came to his little brother, before Bai Shuo could even get to his third sentence, he’d already agreed, though he kept fussing the whole way: “You have to stay right next to me, and tell me right away if anything feels off…” He went on and on, and to make sure he wouldn’t miss it if his little brother suddenly shifted into feather form, Bai Su kept a hand clamped on his the whole time.
Bai Shuo knew his brother’s personality well enough, he let him hold on however he wanted, as long as he got to come along.
A group of chicks headed into the woods. In the tribe, the hunting party could travel the farthest, followed by the gathering party, with the chicks having the smallest range of all, so it didn’t take the chicks long to reach their usual meeting spot. Once there, they scattered in different directions, whoever finished picking up branches would pile them here, and once enough had accumulated, they’d all be carried back to the tribe together.
Bai Su had to go gather branches too, and before he left, once again reminded his little brother not to wander off, not to move around, half-wishing he could just shift his brother into feather form and tuck him into his own clothes, since surely walking this much had already worn him out.
Bai Shuo, who wasn’t tired in the slightest: “……” He couldn’t help but notice, ever since he’d turned human, his brother had started talking a whole lot more than before.
To keep his brother from worrying any further, Bai Shuo seriously promised, “Brother, I know, I’ll just stay right here, not moving. I definitely won’t wander off.” Even without Bai Su saying so, Bai Shuo had no intention of running off, the trees around here were thick, and unlike the other chicks, who wandered these woods all the time, he’d get lost in no time if he wasn’t careful.
Staying within this one small patch, though, was fine. Within Bai Su’s line of sight, Bai Shuo studied the plants around him. Plenty of species grew here, though most were still just seedlings this early on, their size still small, Bai Shuo looked around, scanning for anything useful.
Finding one single specified plant in a whole field of vegetation would be difficult, but telling which ones in that same field were useful and which weren’t was actually quite easy.
The first thing Bai Shuo spotted was a cluster of plants that looked like scallions. He snapped one stalk off and sniffed it, the smell was much like scallion, and decided to pick a few to bring back, to test whether they worked the same way.
Some of the other plants felt vaguely familiar, others utterly foreign, Bai Shuo picked a bit of this and that as he went, but the biggest surprise came when he actually spotted wheat.
At first glance, Bai Shuo doubted his own eyes, but walking closer and taking a good look confirmed it: wheat, no mistake. It was a bit smaller than he remembered, the awns at the tips a touch longer, but it really was wheat.
If there was wheat, then flour could be milled, and flour meant noodles and pastries and all sorts of wheat-based food.
Bai Shuo’s mind instantly flooded with countless different kinds of wheat-flour dishes, from steamed buns and stuffed buns to noodles and dumplings, then to fried dough sticks and pancakes, the more he thought about it, the hungrier he got. But looking down at the wheat in his hand, Bai Shuo quietly pushed all those flour dishes to the back of his mind, this little bit of wheat wasn’t even enough to use as seed, let alone eat. He probably wouldn’t get to enjoy any of that kind of food anytime soon.
“Shuo, what are you holding?” Bai Su, arms full of branches, noticed his little brother staring fixedly at something in his hands and couldn’t help but ask.
“It’s wheat.” Bai Shuo had never seen anyone bring wheat back before, which meant the Feather Clan, at least the Feather Clan of their own tribe, didn’t know what it was. Since this plant had no established name, he could go ahead and name it himself.
Bai Shuo explained to Bai Su how wheat was harvested and ground into flour, emphasizing the part about what kind of food could be made from the flour: “Food made from white flour is really delicious, it’s just that there’s so little of it right now.” Bai Shuo looked at the small patch of wheat in front of him, even picking every last stalk wouldn’t add up to two jin.
Suddenly recalling something, Bai Shuo asked Bai Su, “Brother, have you seen this kind of plant before?”
Bai Su looked it over carefully and nodded. “I’ve seen it, I’ll help you pick some.” With that, he started trying to recall where else he’d seen it, as a chick who’d grown up in the tribe and spent two years roaming these woods, Bai Su had seen just about every plant in the area, though with so much ground to cover, it took him a moment to place the exact spots.
Hearing all this, Bai Shuo fell into thought.
So once Bai Su left, whenever another chick wandered over, Bai Shuo started telling them there was a certain plant they could trade for meat, and even for the soup they’d had that morning. He added that if he ever managed to make more delicious food in the future, they’d be able to trade for that too.
The chicks had already used up nearly all the Redtop fruit they’d saved up on pan-fried meat that morning, even though it stung to part with it, when they weighed it against a lifetime of eating the same things, pan-fried meat clearly won out. The one regret was that it had all been eaten in a single meal, no more chances after that, and thinking back on it, they’d been mourning the loss of tomorrow’s treat right up until Bai Shuo spoke up, and instantly perked back up.
“Bai Shuo, what do we trade for it?” It was the same young representative from that morning, a chick named Caihong, a year older than both Bai Shuo and Bai Su. Although chicks under ten were generally lumped together, their tribe actually had very few nine- and ten-year-olds, only three total, it was only in the past few years that the tribe’s chick population had really started to grow.
Bai Shuo handed him the head of wheat and let the chicks pass it around to look. “This one’s called wheat. If you spot it, remember to bring it back.”
“I’ve seen this before!” one chick suddenly blurted out after a couple glances, then dashed off in a flash, determined to bring some back and trade it for food!
And right after him, the rest of the chicks.
Watching one eager back after another sprint off, Bai Shuo was thoroughly pleased.
A flock of chicks really did come in handy.