Drifting to an Alien Planet for a Slow Life After a Mutual Kill with the Enemy - Chapter 9

The afternoon mist lifted from the valley floor, so thin it was like a sheer veil someone had carelessly draped across the sky. Outside the wooden wall, the wind rustled the tree shadows, flipping the leaves over and over, the scattered light trembling into silvery flashes. The Redleaf Clan’s yard was buzzing, as usual: wooden joints were being driven home with mallets, knots were pulled tight with teeth, then smoothed down with a quick swipe of the hand, and children ran loops under the clotheslines, their little shoes scuffing the dirt into a shallow, snaking line.
Reina, the apprentice scout, jumped down from the tower ladder, her tail giving a little wiggle as she landed. She held a small string of strawberry-red berries out to Qiluo, the Guard Captain. “Qiluo, want to try one? They’re perfectly starting to wake you up.”
Qiluo took a berry, bit into it, and simply nodded. She stood by the gatepost, pressing the sword at her hip deeper into its sheath, her eyes tracing the line past the wooden fence and the treetops. “The deer track on the northern slope is much heavier. They’ve been moving along that path a lot lately.” She spoke almost to herself. “It feels like they’re shifting slopes earlier this year than ever.”
“It’s not completely unheard of for them to move a bit early, is it?” Reina licked her fingertips and grinned.
“But this year, they aren’t moving in bits and pieces,” Qiluo’s voice was low and serious. “Something’s off.”
Yuna, the Spiritual Guide apprentice, stepped out of the Guidance Hall, a faint, damp herbal stain on her cuff. She looked up at the sky; the clouds were wispy, the breeze light, and the sun angled between the branches, punching two bright holes of light. “The dew’s been light this year, and the grass tips are drier than normal,” she said softly. “It makes sense for the deer to leave sooner.”
Reina held up a hand to shade her eyes. “Honestly, you two. One says it’s early, the other says it’s reasonable. Which am I supposed to write down?”
“Record both,” Qiluo said. “But we don’t need to change the patrol routes or add extra night watches just yet.”
Yuna smiled, agreeing with Qiluo’s assessment.
Yuna picked up the small bamboo basket near the door and tucked the newly dried talismans inside, gently smoothing the loose fibres with her thumb as she walked. She stopped at the corner of the wall, crouched down, and tapped her knuckles against a fresh hoofprint in the mud—oval, clean around the edges, with a few dry grass roots mixed in. She wiped the mud off her fingertips onto her skirt and stayed quiet.
Across the yard, a carpenter was running his blade over an oilstone; the light zipped along the back of the knife and collected at the point, like a focused burst of energy. Reina had already dashed off to help a craftsman steady a beam, while two apprentices rolled logs out front, panting heavily but still trying to shout their work chant bravely.
Qiluo walked a circuit along the wall, pressing her palm against the grain of each upright post, as if taking their pulse. When she returned inside the gate, a fine layer of dust clung to her shoulder plates, which she ignored as she handed a canvas waterskin to Yuna.
“There are two silent gaps we haven’t plugged yet,” she murmured after a drink. “If you pack the mud in before sunset, the wind won’t seep through tonight.”
Yuna murmured, “Mhm.” She took back the waterskin, paused, her gaze resting briefly to the north before coming back. “Once the Windfall Tree seedlings grow a bit more, I think we can move them down to the base of the slope.”
“I’ve noticed you look north often lately,” Qiluo remarked casually.
“I am, I’m watching the clouds,” Yuna replied.
“What’s different about them?”
“They seem to know exactly where they’re going.” She gave a small laugh. “Sorry, that sounds a bit daft.”
Reina came over with a tray of freshly baked flatbreads; the scent of the baking dough overpowered the herbal smell in the courtyard. “Not daft at all! Sometimes the clouds really do know the way better than people!” She pushed the biggest piece into Qiluo’s hand. “For you—the best edge bit.”
Qiluo chewed a couple of bites, her expression blank, but her tail gave an involuntary twitch upwards. “It’s a bit flavorless.”
“If I add one more grain of salt you say it’s too salty, and if I add one less you say it’s bland. You’re so picky,” Reina grumbled, but she still grabbed the salt pot and sprinkled a little more onto Qiluo’s portion.
The afternoon wore on slowly. The loom’s pedal clacked—a rhythm that sometimes matched and sometimes fell out of sync with the distant wooden mallet. Two apprentices got their beam numbers mixed up, earned a light rap on the forehead from the master, and pouted as they went to re-sort the marked strips in their basket.
The shadows on the wall stretched out. A fire was lit first near the cooking hearth. As the heat rose, the grass smell deepened, the scent of fat sizzled up, and the birds in the high branches shifted to a more stable roost.
As dusk fell, the forest scout returned. Reina spotted the net bag hanging over his shoulder from a distance. Inside lay two silver-bodied fish; one tail-fin gave a final shudder, and then they were still. She took the bag; the scales felt wet and cool in her palm, like shattered glass in the light.
“There’s a denser patch of wolf scat on the northern line,” the scout handed Qiluo a wooden tablet. “The seeds in the droppings are more numerous than before, suggesting their recent prey were desperate to find grass.”
“The weather’s been dry, so wolves would be quicker to hunt grazing prey,” Qiluo noted while asking, “Direction?”
“Outwards. Still thirty li away, not too close, but they’re definitely moving.”
Qiluo nodded, added two strokes to the end of the tablet, and put it away. “The usual then. You’ll switch to the western slope tomorrow morning.”
“Got it.” The scout backed away, winked at Reina as he passed, and murmured, “Heard the berries were sweet today?”
Reina suppressed a laugh, miming for him to go and wash his hands.
The night was quieter than usual. The flame in the wall lamp was steady, the sound of the insects was muffled by the wind, and close by there was only the gentle scrape of knife on stone, with a tiny, distant ‘pfft’—likely a bird changing branches. Reina sat on the steps with her knees hugged, gazing up at the stars. She whispered, counting: “One, two, three…” She counted until she lost track, then laughed to herself: “It’s impossible!”
“Stop counting,” Qiluo said, pulling her shawl tighter from behind. “You’ll strain your neck.”
“But you should look up, too!” Reina protested, turning around. “You’re always staring at the ground, it won’t disappear, you know.”
“The sky won’t fall either,” Qiluo said dryly. “But people walking on the ground can still trip up.”
Reina stuck out her tongue, quiet for a while, then suddenly said, “When we go back, I want to plant a row of trees in front of the house that turn fiercely red. When the wind blows, the whole road will look like it’s on fire.”
Qiluo smoothed the hair behind her ear. “First, tie the knot properly so the flag doesn’t keep getting snagged into a hard tangle.”
Reina ‘hmph’ed, muttering, “The wind was too strong last time.”
Yuna didn’t join their squabble. She held her small bamboo pamphlet, leaning by the door, writing down the day’s weather, wind direction, and the bloom times of the plants she saw on patrol, item by item. On the last line, she paused and meticulously wrote one sentence: —
“Northern deer line more active than usual years; wolf scat seeds increased. Moving outwards, small extent, not yet a warning level.”
She closed the bamboo pamphlet and put it back in the basket on the shelf, dropping the curtain halfway. The night wind probed in, pushing the scent of herbs toward her face. She remembered the day she left the clan land, the wind chimes at the ancestral shrine ringing constantly, like they were seeing someone off, or perhaps hurrying them along. Some said she was a commoner’s daughter, and coming here was a failure; others said she had spiritual senses, and coming here was an opportunity. She let both statements pass—she wasn’t planning to find the answer right now.
Outside the wall, a shadow shifted ever so slightly, and then settled back. Far off in the deeper forest, something seemed to change its sleeping posture, making no sound, just its breathing shifting only a finger’s breadth.
Qiluo topped up the oil in the last lamp. Turning around, she automatically scanned the four corners, then realized Reina wasn’t on the steps. “Gone inside?” she asked loudly.
“Still here,” Reina poked half her face out from behind a beam. “I’m honestly practicing knots.”
“Show me in the morning,” Qiluo walked over and tapped the rope on her knee. “Don’t mess about.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Reina straightened her chest, giving a brief, mock salute.
Yuna took one last look north before closing the door. There was nothing there, just the breathing of the trees. She knew she shouldn’t overthink things right now—she shouldn’t turn tiny changes that were still within the normal range into panic. And she wasn’t. She simply held her palm open, letting the wind pass through her lifelines, like offering a cautious animal a sniff of her scent.
“Good night,” she told the wind.
Luvis-ha, the forest spirit, spread the night out like a blanket. The people inside the wall slept in their own breaths; the woods outside the wall slept in a rhythm one layer deeper than a breath. The next day, they would wake up and keep carving beams, tying knots, patrolling, and writing in the pamphlet. What couldn’t be changed, they wouldn’t try to change; and until it was time for a change, they would just do the work at hand well.
The wind direction had only shifted a finger’s breadth.
For now, that was all it was.