5 Looking back at your past self...

Luca nods and makes sure to internalise her name, he wouldn't forgive himself if he forgot the first civilised person who might well save him from this hellish wilderness.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Sarr'ina." he says, finding the pronunciation of her name slightly weird on his tongue but manages with a bit of effort.

She continues to smile at him as she picks up the squirming animal which tribes to bite, claw and kick to escape her grip. Luca's about to ask what she's going to do with it but is stopped when a loud *CRACK* echoes through the area, Sarr'ina had brutally pulled the hare's neck enough to cause it to snap.

Luca finds himself at a lose at the incongruous situation, he hadn't expected such a pure looking girl to brutally murder an rabbit, the smile on her face as she did it also made him start to reconsider following her.

"C-can you help me?" he eventually asks after working up his courage.

She nods, "Follow me back to home, I will show you to father, he will decide." she says as she lifts the animal by it's ears and starts walking away. Luca quickly follows not wanting to lose her in the thick underbrush.

He matches her pace and walks besides her and begins asking questions that had been niggling away at him since he'd come here.

"Where are we?" he asks.

She raises her arms to gesture at the forest surrounding them, "In nature!"

"Er, yes... But I meant what country are we win... Continent even."

At hearing this she looks confused, "Coun-try? Con-ti-nent?" she utters slowly, trying to mimic the way he'd said the words.

"Yeah, you know like Africa, Asia, Europe..."

Again she looks confused, "I am sorry, I do not know what you mean." she says, looking apologetic that she doesn't understand what he's saying.

Luca sighs to himself, maybe this is just an incredibly isolated area and the native people aren't aware of the outside world... It's slightly strange because he'd heard that not many of these tribes were left in the world, but maybe he was kidnapped and sent here to see how he'd interact with them. Luca doesn't really buy this idea as he'd almost been eaten by a bear and gotten poisoned by a mushroom.

"Ok... What's the date then? Surely your people have calendars..."

Sarr'ina kicks a pebbles and sounds his words out, "Ca-lander? Date... Fruit?"

He almost face palms himself when he hears this, clearly he won't get any valuable information from this person and likely the rest of her tribe.

An hour or two later Luca see's that they've almost reached the origin of the smoke, they breach the treeline and he sees a large clearing with many small primitive looking huts. In the middle sits a large fire that is currently roaring with a few carcasses of animals being hung over it. He sees a few people around and judging by the number of buildings Luca assumes there must only be around fifty people living here.

The duo's presence is noticed and a couple large tanned men wearing similar attire to Sarr'ina walk over, all eyeing him suspiciously. The biggest of them walks close to Luca, causing him to back away and allowing the man to stands beside his saviour. Sarr'ina smiles at him, "Das'ju, tell father that I have brought an outsider without a tribe." she says.

The man apparently named Das'ju looks Luca up and down and smirks, "What is the reason you brought this weakling here Sarr'ina?"

"He needs help, it's up to us to assist those in need, it's the tribe's way."

He reluctantly nods and starts walking towards one of the larger huts, leaving Luca alone with Sarr'ina and the two other men. His guide decides to introduce them to him, "This is Zul'meshi" she pats him on his muscular tanned arm, the man has long brown hair and similar eyes that look similar to Sarr'ina's. The man grunts and nods in some form of greeting and she moves onto the next man who looks similar but is a head taller than Zul'meshi and Luca. "This is Gil'ga." the man smiles and nods, "Greetings, Lu'ka"

Luca wishes to correct the man's misunderstanding of his name but feels that arguing with someone who could probably throw him with one hand didn't sound like a good idea.

Both men had facial hair that looked wild, probably because they were unable to cut it. Luca found himself feeling emasculated just by standing next to them.

The group just stand there in an awkward silence until Das'ju comes back with an even larger man in tow. The man has short brown hair that looks as if it's started to grey, "Daughter, you said you would bring back food. This won't feed more than a few people." he growls out.

Sarr'ina giggles, "Father, do not scare our guest!"

The man's hardened expression softens at her as he nods, "So, your name is Luca is it?"

"Y-y-yes" he stutters out, making a few of the surrounding men chuckle.

"From which tribe were you born?" Sarr'ina's father says while starting to lean over Luca.

He steps back unconsciously but replies, "N-no tribe sir."

"Liar! What tribe were your mother and father from?" he says, gradually raising his voice.

"N-n-no tribe sir!" Luca shouts, more in an attempt to not piss himself then to go against this man. He reaches up to feel his mothers necklace but is horrified to find it missing. His mind goes into overdrive to think of where he had lost it, could it still be with that bear?

The large man continues, "If you wish to be one of us then you will need to follow our traditions, the first being respect! For nature and your neighbours, the second is that you will be productive and do

your best to provide for your tribe. If you can agree to these rules then I Sarr'vuln will accept you among us."

Sarr'ina smiles at her father for accepting her selfish wish in accepting this stranger, but the smile slowly fades as she sees the pale boy halt with a terrible expression. "Luca?" she asks, worried.

"I'm sorry, but I've dropped something that belonged to my mother, I'll come back after I've found it." he says before running off in the direction of the bear, hoping that it would have moved on to somewhere else to hunt.

It takes two hours to find the clearing again as he constantly backtracks due to taking the wrong path. He sticks his head out of a push and glances over the large clearing in an attempt to spot the bear that he had dreamt tore him limb from limb. Seeing nothing out of place he still doesn't trust that the bear is gone, he throws a couple large rocks into the clearing which scare a couple birds but nothing else. "Ok Luca, run in, find the necklace and maybe the duvet and run back out." he says to himself as his heart rate increasing at the mere thought of doing something so stupid and and near suicidal.

A moment of silence is suddenly broken as he sprints out of the treeline and towards the large rocky outcropping in he middle of the clearing where he'd black out from being attacked by the bear. It doesn't take long to reach it and he circles round to look for his necklace, he can smell the blood in the air and the stench of death. He pushes past some of the long grass in the vague vicinity he remembers waking up from and eventually feels something wet... He pushes the grass blocking his vision away which reveals... A human face... His face?

A sense of dread overtakes him as he backs away and violently vomits on the ground, not knowing what the FUCK is happening! That's his body! That's his corpse! BUT HE'S ALIVE! Isn't he? After clearing the contents of his stomach he continues to dry heave as he gets a massive migraine, the massive amount of conflicting thoughts cause him to tremble and shudder. The dream of the bear attack coming back in vivid intensity, the pain of having his entrails torn out and eaten while he was alive and watching causes him to vomit what little he had left in his stomach. His eyes stream with tears as he stumbles back and examines the body that has his face, it's almost stripped clean of meat... The only thing the bear hadn't eaten being a few strands of muscle still clinging to his bones and the majority of his face. He looks down at "His" neck and sees the titanium necklace still somehow intact, looking to the side he sees his duvet covered in his own blood also there, it also smells horrid, like something pissed all over it. He temporarily stifles all his existential thoughts and concentrates on getting what he came here for and returning to safety.

He grabs the necklace and the duvet and starts sprinting towards the Sua'jiki tribe in hopes that they'll still accept him despite running off for seemingly no reason at all.