Blossom Of Tupek

Unleashed

Every home in Tupek had a dart rifle, a fire pit, and woolen blankets. Sei sat in silence by the fire, brushing the wool of her pet as Viv stirred a pot of boiling grain and spices. Viv had tried to start a conversation with her sister as she cooked, but Sei said nothing. The sun had set half an hour before and their brother, Dex, was still not home from work. Sei knew why, but stared at the orange flames licking the pot and said nothing to Viv as she poured a ladleful of spiced grain into three bowls and looked out the window, still waiting for Dex. She did not know about their fight.

***

That morning began like any other. Viv rose at dawn and left for the greenhouse and Dex took Sei to the counting house. He was manager there and it was his job to keep inventory of crops. Dex agreed to train Sei to keep inventories, since she was no longer allowed to work in the orchards. Most nymphs, or females, worked in the glee-bree orchards, picking fruit and keeping pests off the trees. After an argument over who pruned which tree escalated between Sei and one of her peers, the other nymph ended up getting pushed off the tree. She survived, but the village elders ruled that Sei would not be allowed to work in the orchards anymore.

Dex entered his office, a simple room with clay brick walls, and took his counter's tool down. It had a wooden bar at the top with strings hanging down, each representing a numerical place: ones, tens, hundreds, et cetera. For each applicable number was a bead tied into the strings, a cross between an abacus and a quipu. Sei followed and her pet, Fip, bounded along behind her. Dex looked at the golneel skeptically as he preened his thick wool. Sei had raised Fip from an egg and was in the process of training him to hunt but compared to most other golneels he knew of, Fip had a long way to go as far in obedience.
Sei assured Dex that nothing could go wrong. She would keep him on his leash in the office with a chew-toy until her shift at the counting house was done. Then, she'd take him hunting.
 
Sei wished she'd brought her poncho. The storeroom was cold, to preserve the grain. It was called kieviv, which in the Tutunian language means grain (ki) of life (viv). 

"Each bag in here weighs sixty kitre," said Dex, his voice echoing off the clay walls. "Along these walls," he gestured to a shelf filled with bags of grain, "is all of the grain harvested in the past week. Count each bag and note it," Dex instructed her, handing Sei a beaded counter. "Leave it in the office when you are finished."

Dex noticed that Sei was shivering and shrugged off his own poncho, handing it to her. "You need to come more prepared," he said as she slipped it on. It hung past her knees. 
Dex left Sei in the grain storeroom to make her tallies. It was dull work. Maybe Dex didn't mind it, but Sei knew this was where he and the rest of the village wanted her. Out of sight.
She completed her counting in two hours. There was a total of 2, 952 bags, that is 177,120 kitre of grain. She tied in the beads, recording the number and carried the counter back to the office. The door was open but Dex was not inside. Neither was Fip.
The golneel's leash was still there, but Fip was no longer attached to it. The thick woven cord was frayed and tufts of yellow fiber were scattered all over the floor. He'd chewed through another leash!

Sei looked underneath the desk and behind the cabinet. "Fip?" There was no growl or bark in reply. Sei rubbed her antennae together, making a whistle in the frequency only a golneel can hear. Still, no answer. 
Stepping into the hallway, Sei closed her eyes and spread her antennae. Then, she felt one twitch, trembling in the direction behind her. She followed the detected frequency until she heard it with her ridged ears. Coming from another storage room was the unmistakable sound of Fip gnawing on wood.

Sei stepped into the storeroom, one used to store dried gleebree, "sweetness berry", the fruit she was too familiar with from her days in the orchard. Only then, they were still in their hard outer rind and could fit in the palm of her hand. Now shelled and dried, they were much smaller. She found Fip on a shelf chewing on a wooden beam. He was two feet above her head. Sei dragged a ladder over to the shelf, now at eye-level with her golneel. She whistled to Fip again. His antennae perked up and he stopped gnawing, looking at Sei with his shiny bug-eyes, rough purple tongue protruding from his large mouth as he panted.