Siinji - Or, Ankūro and the City of the Golden Boughs

18

18

Everywhere one goes,
Is but one destination,
Among many more.
- Rasakūn.

Giinshiro's singing continued with only few pauses. He controlled the little fishing boat with such ease that the rain and the fall and rise of winds did little to slow their journey down. As the day crawled to an end, they pulled in to a small cove, where Giinshiro dragged the little boat onto the beach. He refused help from both Ankūro and Yurivno, while Tuccé wandered away to the tree line.

The desert dweller returned, adjusting his breaches with one hand while carrying a few sticks of wood he had found along the way. In the intervening time, however, Ankūro had scurried away, returning with armfuls of wood of all sizes, from kindling to thick branches. Tuccé looked at his meagre contribution, shrugged and dropped them upon the pile.

Shooed away by Giinshiro, Ankūro left the lighting of the fire to the fisherman and pulled a few fish, they had caught along the way, from the boat, taking them to a nearby rock to begin preparation for the night's meal. With much waving of his hands and guttural words spoken in the Kaguta language, Giinshiro slapped Ankūro's hands away from the fish. It appeared the fisherman had decided that everything was his responsibility.

"Osh!" Throwing her hands up in the air, the old woman stood back, pointed a shaking finger at Giinshiro and then pursed her lips. "I go. Scout."

As Ankūro disappeared into the surrounding trees, carrying her new walking stick but not supporting herself with it, Giinshiro chuckled to himself and continued starting the fire before moving to finish preparing the fish. Tuccé shared a questioning look with Yurivno about the encounter.

Yurivno understood, however. Giinshiro considered it his responsibility because it was his boat. The three of them were, in effect, his guests and few people from Kaguta would allow their guests to perform any menial task. It would insult both the guest and the host. Once again, the formalities of the island, the customs and the intricate web of polite interaction fascinated Yurivno.

She wanted to write this down. All of these complicated relationships were a form of communication, an adjunct to the already complicated language of Kaguta, with its series of honorifics that changed dependant on class, age, gender, station. Often, those honorifics swapped and changed dependant upon the relationship between individuals.

Rummaging through her bag, however, her mind fell to other, more pressing matters. With Giinshiro taking everyone's bags from the boat, laying them side-by-side, from largest to smallest, after he had secured the craft, Yurivno had not noticed before. The tablets were not in her bag. Frantic, she began to pull everything out, dropping it all at her side, even though she knew she could not have missed the heavy stones.

"I have them." Tuccé crouched beside her, picking up her belongings and putting them back in her bag. At her suspicious look, he laughed. "I'm not stealing them! Why would I tell you? No, it's only because they are heavy, yes? I have one in my bag and I put one in White Eye's sack. The old woman is that strong, I doubt she would notice."

"I'm perfectly capable of carrying them myself!" She reached for Tuccé's bag, ready to tip the contents on the sand, stopped by his hand upon hers. "They're my responsibility, I'll carry them!"

"Of course you are capable!" He shook his head as though she had pained him. "I'm not a bad person. Well, not that bad. Well, I have my moments, but I've done it for the best intentions, I promise you."

"And those intentions are?" Her eyes flicked towards Giinshiro, but the fisherman seemed far too occupied in cooking the fish than to listen to their conversation. "You don't make it easy to like you, Gochin. Let alone trust you."