Lutis

Lutis, Rebellion-Held Aviye

Zai

After a brief talk with the village chief, Zai assented to being brought to Lutis village. There were two roads there, one which went through the mountains, and the hidden depot, and the other, longer road that stayed by the river.

She agreed for two reasons.

The first was that Auntie said some children had escaped during the attack. She reasoned that they'd gone to find the Nightravens, but that if they hadn't found them they'd be at the Nightraven's base. If the Nightravens had them, that meant they'd be taken to the village. Either way, once the villagers were able to circle back to pick up the villagers that stayed behind they'd be able to look for them.

The second was that, as a result of the encounter with the plane, several villagers had been injured in the scramble away from the road. To avoid exacerbating everyone's injuries, it was decided not to risk rockslides and bumpier surfaces in exchange for a little more speed.

Thus, Zai found herself being carried into the house of the village doctor ahead of the villagers.

"You've been shot," the old lady with glasses said as soon as she saw Zai's leg. "This will need stitches."

"I'm very aware of that," Zai replied.

"Hush, child. I talk to myself to stay on task." She lifted the bandage. "Whoever did this did a decent job."

Quynh preened a little at the compliment before turning away to help carry more people inside.

"I'll send her your way later," the Chief of Zuret said, her arm in a sling, "Get her done so you can see me next."

"Oh, Qinqui, when did you arrive? My you've gotten old," the old doctor said.

"Says the woman who was old when I was young," the Chief chuckled. "Good to see you too, Auntie."

"Your name is Qinqui?" Zai sat up, speaking to the woman she'd known as Auntie for three years.

"Yes," Auntie replied in a tone that said if Zai told anyone she was a dead woman. Qinqui was considered one of the cutest names in Aviye, appropriate for a little girl.

"You know, I prefer Auntie." Zai replied hastily.

"Alright, soldier, time to lay down," the doctor rose up and went to open several small drawers from a medicine cabinet, extracting a needle and thread as well as a phial of numbing ointment. "Your name is Zai, right?"

"Yes- ow!" The numbing ointment stung as it went on, but very quickly spread a cool sort of painlessness into Zai's leg.

"I remember you from the community hall. Your lessons in the dialectic needs work. Mea did not only teach equality, she also taught humility and collective pride. If you teach the first without the latter, people will focus on tearing down others just so they can raise themselves up."

"I'll..." Zai gasped as the needle went in, more from seeing it than feeling it, "...keep that in mind."

Despite her age, the doctor's hands were steady, and it was over quickly. "It'll scar, but I suppose you knew that when you let them pour alcohol on it. Try not to jump until it heals."

"I can't promise that," Zai chuckled, only for the doctor to slap her right on top of the new bandage. "Ow! Why do people keep doing that!?" Zai shouted, discovering that the anesthetic was wearing off.

Auntie shooed Zai off the table so that she could have her shoulder seen to. "Who do you think trained Sh'zi?" she said rhetorically before laying down.

Zai felt a little grateful to learn the doctor was just as merciless to Auntie, advising her not to use the arm at all until it healed, and giving her shoulder wound a light slap when she talked back.

As soon as the pain in her leg became more of a dull glow, Zai pushed herself to stand and limped out the truck where Rabbit was sitting before gingerly climbing up to sit next to the frame. The small exertion left her sweating, but not out of breath. "Well Rabbit... we did our best..." she chuckled. "Never thought I'd down a plane..."

Zai sat there with her pain for a long time, watching some of the villagers repainting both trucks to look less military and removing the canvas. Eventually, she was asked to take Rabbit off so the villagers could start heading back.

She took it slow, then guided her frame to a seat next to the dawn redwood tree at the center of town. Sitting in Rabbits palm, she enjoyed the coolness of an early valley-sunset, her eyes closing as she listened to the birdsong...

"You seem at rest," a voice said, and Zai opened her eyes to find the village doctor standing above her, a cane in one hand and a clear jar of tea in the other, various plants and roots soaking at the bottom.

"Oh, doctor. Hello. I guess I fell asleep."

"I'm off work, so you can call me Shenmi. Come, it's getting late and I'm told you haven't eaten."

Zai, curiously enough, didn't feel very hungry. She stood up a bit shakily, accepting the cane when the old woman offered it and following behind her at a slight limp. "Thank you, doc- I mean Shenmi."

"Hm. You young folks today, always thinking you're invincible." She chuckled as they walked through the village. The community hall was well lit, since it was where they were sheltering the survivors from Zuret ran Rhosi.

They arrived at the doctor's house to find it empty of patients and full of aromatic scents. "That smells wonderful." Zai said, the smells reawakening her appetite.

"I hope you don't mind, but it is vegetarian. Lotus and onion soup, and some medicinal herbs that will help digestion."

"I can't wait to try it." Zai replied earnestly.

They sat at a small circular table, the dining room smelling far more fragrant and herby than the clinic, and with far more medicine cabinets. Hundreds of tiny drawers with more medicines than Zai could name surrounded them, and in the middle of the table a clay pot steamed with the smell of cooked vegetables. She was surprised when something wet and sticky dug into her pants leg, and she looked down to see a pangolin sticking its tongue out at her. She exclaimed at the cuteness, causing Shenme to tilt to the side and see.

"Oh, that's just Jiji. Pay her no mind. I've kept her and her ancestors around for generations. They keep the ants away from my cabinets."

Zai pet the pangolin and it stared up at her with tiny black eyes, its tongue flicking in and out before it marched off and hopped down the single step and out the open front door. "She's adorable."

"I started keeping them outside, but she always found a way back in, even if she had to wait at the front door like a rock. Won't do to have them needing me after I'm dead."

"You don't... use them as medicine, do you?" Zai asked, remembering that some traditional doctors in the cities said the scales did wonders for anything.

"Heavens, no. Their scales are just like fingernails. You don't see doctors telling you to eat your nails."

"Actually... it's very common to hear it from traditional doctors in the city. About the scales, not fingernails."

"Idiots, all of them." Shenmi proclaimed. "Mea taught people to think for themselves and reason with each other. You'd think people would figure some things out after centuries." She handed Zai a bowl and gestured with chopsticks to help herself to the pot in the middle of the table.

After serving herself, Zai smiled and ate her food, tasting the herbs and vegetables in a way she'd never thought was possible. "This is delicious... what's your secret?"

"Practice." The doctor answered simply, slurping her bowl and passing the vegetables into her mouth from up close. "Do enough of a thing and it becomes second nature. Do it with the right mindset, and in a way it will become part of you."

"That's very wise."

"It should be. Mea wrote it to sound wise."

Zai found herself pausing. Thinking. "You seem to know a lot more about the Iconoclast than me. How come you didn't teach the villagers before my squad came to the valley?"

Shenmi chewed vigorously for several seconds before swallowing and answering. "When you were two years old and walking, did you go around teaching the newborns how to walk?"

"No. That would have been impossible."

"And you would have hurt them to try. Now, imagine it's fifty years ago. Aviye's under the hand of the Hegemons, but things are looking better. More stable. Roads are being built, they're making money because the valley is rich and new, never mind the rebels in the rocks, some Hegemon bank has paid fifty families to settle here and chop wood.

Would you want to give up your prosperity for a fairer world? No. Because you've been raised to compete and exploit, you came to a place without people to compete against or stand in the way of your exploits. To you, fairness would be competition, not cooperation. You've been raised to think that it's for your benefit, instead of the person above you who will take what you have to give and sell it cheap, giving you far less for your time and effort than someone in the Hegemony would demand for the same labor.

Just like newborns, it took the village time to figure out their legs. For their abilities and desires to grow to the point that they could realize the inequality they had been subjected to, that they are now trapped by, the debts still hanging over this village despite being paid ten times over." She sipped the broth from her bowl. "Even if I had taught them, I'm far too patient for them to have found much hope in Mea's words. It takes fire, urgency, and action. Things the young have that I don't."

Zai thought over these words, watching Shenme as she continued to eat, as if she'd just been talking about the weather. "Thank you, Auntie, I feel I have learned a lot from you."

"Good," the doctor replied, serving herself more lotus root. "Your journey is just getting started, so eat as much as you want. Don't worry about being polite." She bit into the root. Around the mouthful she continued, "I would like to hear about how you batted a plane out of the sky. The villagers couldn't stop chattering about it once you were gone."

"It wasn't like that..." Zai blushed, before starting her tale.