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I would have snatched the one Oxriel held from his claws for a better look, but I did not wish to tear it. Instead, I reached down and gathered the others from the stone floor. Like the one Oxriel held, each bit unfolded into that same oddly round and pointy shape. While I could not recognize the individual symbols of the new women’s writing, it did not take long to realize that some of the same symbols were in the same order, painted onto each one of the red and pink shapes. The symbols differed at the bottom, though. As if each one had started out written in the same way, and then changed into something unique at the very end.
One of them, I noticed, even had a small flower painted on it. Like the others, it had the same identical symbols at the top. At the bottom, it had four symbols arranged in a unique order, different from the others.
D A L K.
A true mystery. What could it possibly mean?
This particular piece, the one with the flower, smelled most strongly of Fiona. I raised it to my nose and inhaled hard.
“What are you doing?” Oxriel asked, giving me an odd look.
“Nothing.”
“You’re not doing nothing. You’re smelling it.”
“Shut up,” I snarled. “I am looking for clues.”
“You mean sniffing for clues.”
“What are you two doing out here?” came the scraping rumble of Zoren’s voice. “Why are you holding a bunch of pay-pur?”
“What is pay-pur?” I asked.
Zoren’s sight stars, so similar in colour to some of the pink pieces I now held, went to my claws.
“That is pay-pur,” Zoren replied.
“I see,” I said, feeling rather like a fool and not enjoying it one bit. “Do you know what pay-pur is for?”
Zoren slashed his hand through the air, indicating no.
“I rarely see the new women use it for anything. Though there is a fair amount of it on the shuttle.”
“Do you recognize this shape?” Oxriel asked, spreading open the folded symmetry of his pay-pur.
Zoren regarded the pay-pur for a long moment, then said, “It looks a little like the leaf of a Death Plains branata bush.”
Oxriel’s sight stars snapped back and forth with interest.
“And is that a good sort of plant?” he asked, his voice rising with what sounded like hope. “Is the leaf useful? Perhaps used for healing? Or eating? Is it tasty?”
“It is poisonous,” Zoren said flatly.
“Oh,” Oxriel said, looking down at his pay-pur branata leaf, mystified.
“Here. See what you can make of these,” I said, passing Zoren three of the pay-pur bits. I kept the one with the flower, though. I didn’t care what the symbols meant. I didn’t care if it was shaped like the most disastrously lethal thing to grow upon this world.
This one smelled like Fiona and it was mine.
By now, Bariok and Vaxilkai had also wandered out of our cave. Zoren passed out the pay-pur leaves and we all studied them, mostly in silence, but with the odd question or remark thrown at one another now and then as we tried to puzzle out the mystery before us.
“Well, it seems there is no other course of action than to simply ask the new women what it all means,” Vaxilkai said with a twitch of his tail.
Vaxilkai was so much like his own obnoxious Gahn Buroudei it made my fangs clench. Always thinking he had the right course of action, like he was the leader of us all. Gahn Buroudei was the first one to have been granted a mate from among the new women, and he’d had a specifically annoying arrogance ever since. It was Gahn Buroudei and his mate who decided to keep all the new women together, to take them from Gahn Fallo’s lands.
That feels so very long ago.
But I had noticed Fiona even then. When we had saved the new women from the zeelk attack and brought them back to Gahn Fallo, Fiona had been the one upon my irkdu.
