Unto the Ages

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As the two sisters gawked at the sleeping man, their attention mainly focused on his third leg and the two massive orbs resting on the ground between his spread-out legs.

 

Kaya nudged her sister and asked in a low whisper, “Are they supposed to be that big?”

 

“I don’t think so, when I was helping the witch doctor treat injured warriors after hunting or battle, none of them were close to that size. The other difference in size is the rest of his body, he is wider than all the other men, yet he does not look fat, his wide frame is filled out with muscles.” Tala replied as drool dripped from the side of her mouth without her knowing.

 

As they took their eyes away from the man’s privates and examined the rest of his body, they started to recognize the condition the man was in.

 

“Are those ant acid burns all over his body?” Kaya asked as she took a closer look.

 

When Tala herself closed in to inspect the patches of wounds she gasped, “By the ancestors! They are all over his body… but is it me, or do the acid burn marks look weird?”

 

As they studied the wounds, the oddness of it stood out more. The acid burns looked fresh, yet the skin around the acid burns looked healthy.

 

“Whatever the case, we should go get help, he does not seem to have any markings from any tribe and he is badly hurt.” Kaya urged.

 

Tala thought about it for a while before coming up with a compromise that aligned with their objective of coming here in the first place, “Fine, he seems stable at the moment. So let’s quickly collect half a load of clay for now and then report back. That way we will be able to follow the men coming to retrieve him and get more clay.”

 

Kaya thought about it for a while and agreed, after collecting the clay, the sisters took one last look at the man’s naked form which unconsciously made them slightly damp between the legs before turning to leave.

 

After taking a few steps, Kaya asked her sister, “Should we at least cover up his… you know…”

 

Tala relented and agreed, so Kaya undid an extra sash and laid it to cover the man’s privates before heading back to the village.

 

When the sisters returned to the village, the first person they went to report about the injured man to was the village Chief, but upon seeing the chief with his irritating son, they decided that they did not want any of Thak’s bullshit today and went to the village’s witch doctor Yara.

 

When they knocked and entered Yara’s hut, they found the old hunched-over woman grinding away on some harsh-smelling herbs with her mortar and pestle, the old woman turned around and greeted the sisters, “Girls, welcome, I did not know you were coming, why didn't you knock.”

 

“We did knock, but that is beside the point, we got something to tell you.” the sisters then told Yara about the wounded man with weird ant acid burns near the clay collection point.

 

When the sisters were done, Yara gave the sisters an annoyed look, “As interesting as it is to find a wounded man by the river, why did you come to me? You should be going to tell the Chief.”

 

“We would have… but Thak is there, and we do not want to deal with that idiot, especially with his doting father around.” Tala said with irritation in her voice.

 

Yara sighed, “That fool boy still has not given up yet. His ambition and greed far outstrips his ability. I swear, if the position of village Chief gets passed on to Thak, his grandfather would rise up from the grave and end that disgrace immediately… tell you girls what, I will handle it but you are taking care of that injured man, I got better things to do.” 

 

With that settled, the sisters went to offload their clay and prepare for another round of clay collection, this time with an escort.

 

—

 

Soon after the sisters left Grud’s shelter, Mita came back with some food, fed Grud, and let him go back to sleep before going to search for more food.

 

Sometime later, while she was picking some fruits, Mita felt a weird feeling through her bond with Grud. She felt that Grud was still sleeping, but for some reason, she felt the direction of her bond moving.

 

Worried that something was happening or some beast was carrying him away to eat later, Mita turned into her wisp form and flew towards Grud at full speed.

 

What she saw from above when she reached Grud’s position was four men carrying the sleeping Grud on a stretcher while two women with baskets on their backs were following behind them.

 

As Mita looked at the people with Grud, she noticed that they looked slightly different from the people back home. They had darker skin, were noticeably taller, and were more slender than average. 

 

The other thing she noticed was their equipment. Besides the spears, the men had a long curved stick with a string connecting both ends, and each man had a bunch of arrows similar to the ones recovered by the scouts who came back after discovering the new lands.

 

Seeing these new people, Mita was cautious, so she employed the use of her Mystical sight to study these people.

 

After a while of studying them, Mita found that besides having slightly weaker lifeforce when compared to Grud’s people, they were pretty much the same, and setting that none of them had any strong or structured mana flow, decided it was safe to go into Grud’s body without being seen.

 

After entering Grud’s body with no issue or being detected, Mita just sat tight and monitored the situation.

 

—

 

When Grud eventually woke up and opened his eyes, he was forced to squint due to the sensitivity of his very recently recovered eyes, when he focused his vision, he noticed he was staring at a wooden ceiling he had never seen before.

 

Not knowing where he was, he called out, “Anyone ther-”

 

His call was interrupted by Mita shushing him telepathically and telling him, >Grud, we are not among our people.< Mita then proceeded to fill Grud in on what happened from finding him until now

 

After listening to Mita’s update, he came to the decision that he was not in immediate danger, Grud mentally acknowledged her warning and looked around to assess his surroundings. After looking around, he was in some kind of wooden hut. When he checked the condition of his own body, he noticed that some kind of poultice was smeared on his exposed acid burn wounds.

 

Grud also noticed that his junk was covered in some kind of… fur? Grud held up the material that was covering him and ran his fingers along the material, it had a rougher texture than fur and he was pretty sure this was not some kind of skin.

 

Grud did not know it, but he was the first of his people to come into contact with textiles.

 

After playing around with this cloth, Grud found that besides being rougher in texture than furs, this cloth was lighter and airier than what he was used to wearing.

 

As Grud was mentally discussing with Mita what this textile was made of, Grud heard the slow shuffling of two feet and the sound of wood knocking on the floor accompanying the shuffling.

 

Grud quickly put the cloth back to cover his third leg and sat upright with a grunt. A few moments later, a wooden cane pushed aside a cloth curtain and in shuffled a wrinkled and hunched old woman.

 

When the old woman stepped beyond the doorway, Mita told Grud >That is the shaman I told you about, it seems we are in her home.<

 

Grud thanked Mita for the information as the old woman shuffled forward and looked Grud up and down before saying something to Grud in a language he could not understand but somehow sounded familiar.

 

—

 

Yara got a good look at the big (in more ways than one) man to take his measure, he did not seem hostile, more cautious than anything else, and bore no marking to tell where he was from, even the features on his face were so different that she asked herself ‘Where is this man from, is he from a village so far away that he looks nothing like us? If that is the case, what is he doing here?’

 

The old witch doctor walked up to the man and asked, “How are you feeling?”

 

The only response Yara got back was the man cocking his head to the side in confusion like he did not understand her, which was very unlikely.

 

Yara had seen quite a few people throughout the years and even though there were accents that may differ from village to village, she had not seen anyone besides the particularly dim or deaf not understand the common tongue.

 

Maybe he was one of them. Yara decided to start by seeing if the man was just slow, “Hoowww. Aarree. Yoouu. Feeellinng?” Yara said as she dragged out her words while using hand gestures.

 

When she was done, not only did the man look confused, but she was pretty sure he looked slightly offended, ‘So, he is not slow then.’

 

Before Yara could bring her hand up to the man’s ears to test his hearing, the man spoke, and while his accent was weird for sure, she did not understand a word he said, even though the words he said somehow seemed familiar.