Scene #8118: People of the Valley-2

Owner	Pose
Vantablitz Remnants	After last time, Ahn did invite back those asking more questions to the valley they'd been before, so this is fine. Well, she implied they were welcome. Or, she suggested it. At least she didn't say they weren't. In as much as she technically never mention. Well she definitely did say that she isn't queen here or anything, so it's not like she should care about it. Okay, mostly she just sort of mentally shut down and then got distracted and forgot the question, which is like an invitation, from her. It is still a right pain in the ass to get there. It is difficult to tell whether the woman who could put a Warpgate there has wisely decided this would be a terrible idea, or if she thought about it every day since Unification and simply got distracted a lot. Probably the former, given the way the extant one is marked off as a spooky 'place of the spirits' to deter being touched. It is also, thankfully, eighteen celsius this time, instead of forty fucking two. Even in the middle of a mountain jungle, the seasonal flora have changed, and the soundscape has dimmed. The wetlands below are significantly more navigable, even if the boat is still preferable to navigate along the main river channels, despite the lack of seasonal flooding everywhere. During the pristine time spent navigating, you catch sight of fish heading back to the ocean during the time the water recedes, and migratory birds overhead. At least, you're pretty sure they're fish and birds. Probably. Like biiiig catfish and maybe herons? The village itself appears to be decorated for some kind of festivity. A nice time with a search engine is precisely zero help in figuring out what it could even be. There are banners, sculptures, daytime lanterns, engraved poles, masks, the mingled scents of fifty different things being burned at stone altars, and a metric ton of flower blossoms used in everything, looking as if they're just barely starting to wilt. It smells of food, sounds like children being menaces, and a central thoroughfare is being swept and prepared for something later, around the giant tree at the village's center and its temple. It would be generally wise to heed Ahn's prior advice and arrange acquiring the same flower as last time. Despite it being months, you are of course recognized on sight, and a posse of extremely excited children in various states of being dirty and grass-stained run off to foist carved wooden masks on you as soon as you get near the perimeter, helpfully informing them that they have to wear a 'disguise' for the rest of the week.
Ishirou	Ishirou has come through the terrible, but less terrible, jungle to visit the people of the valley once again. He was curious to learn more about the people, and also check in on those they worked tirelessly to save. Breaking through the last, the combined form of Ishirou and POD breaks so that he looks like he did before, so as to not cause confusion. He also made sure to find some of the flowers and placed one where he had it before. Ahn made a huge deal about trying to blend in as much as possible, so he'd respect her wishes. He smiles as the kids approach, getting a mask placed on him. "Huh..? Oh okay!" he says, more than willing to get into the spirit of their celebration. He tries to learn more as to why this was, asking questions about what was going on, and why they had to wear a disguise. However, he's very curious to learn about these people now, especially as they are not in any danger.
Kukuru	For Kukuru, something like an invitation is still good enough to be an invitation, especially if it involves gawking around at all sorts of strange stuff at someone's home. The fact that the fauna are all vaguely similar to, yet different enough from the animals she's seen at home just gives her more reasons to be intrigued in what they might taste like. For the time being, though, Kukuru is behaving well enough as she heads into the village, content to simply remember where she had seen some of those creatures in case there's an opportunity to go back and snag a few later. Right now, she's busy following the scent of food, sampling everything and anything she can while also remembering to slip a white lily into her hair. Although she couldn't quite remember what type of flower it was since her last visit had been so long ago, keeping the long-wilted flower in her pockets meant someone else could identify it for her! The kids are greeted with friendly hugs and ruffling of hair, and she even goes as far as giving them shoulder-rides to make it easier and more fun/dangerous to get that mask on her head and around her horns. "He-llo again~ It's been so long... Have you all been doing okay? Are you making sure to eat enough? And... Um... Oh. And your friends from the..." She can't remember where those sick people had been anymore. She just kinda of gestures vaguely in a direction, but it's probably the wrong one. "... Are they doing better now?"
Rita Ma	This is the fourth time Rita's had to traverse the unearthly jungle here, so she's able to spend a little less time gawking and a little more time walking, even if the wildlife sightings still spark wonder. There's no need for her to procure a flower; one simply forms itself in her hair. It's very distinctive: pure white petals, stark black center. If she'd worn it before, one would have remembered. Whether on the boat ride or elsewhere, she finds a moment to ask Ishirou: "What was it you were hoping to learn here? You've got to have something specific in mind, right?" Closer to the village, the sights and sounds of so much joyous bustling community-life bring a bittersweet smile to her face. Her pace slows. One gets the impression that she might just stop here, content to observe from a distance. She is, after all, doubly an outsider. It's the giddy approach of the children that reels her back in. They foist a mask into her hands, and by putting it on, she's made a part of things. "Oh!! Thank you so much! Is that part of the festival?" She gives the one who gifted it to her a little head-bow before following them back to the village. "What's all this about? Are you celebrating something? Or is it just for the spirits? I'm not supposed to give anyone a gift, am I?" Once she's followed them into the village proper, Rita tries to find the matriarch's home again. She seems like the most likely source of answers for the questions that are nagging her.
KNK	Rose and Violet return and, as one might expect, they have their namesake flowers. It could almost be the same exact flowers they wore last time, but those would have had to have wilted by now. They've instead acquired theirs from 'somewhere,' and though they look totally real, they're quite fake. Once they do show up, and are in the same room as real flowers, Rose looks carefully over the available selection, and gets Violet to duck her head so she can be fussed over, making some minute adjustments that are practically unnoticeable without having watched her do it. They opt for the river route down, despite having nothing to lug and probably having the ability to run cross-country at a significantly quicker pace, because... well, why bother putting in effort just to leave the group? Rose appears to relax, finding something to lean against -- or to get as close to relaxing as she seems capable of doing -- and Violet spends it reaching into the water, leaning dangerously way further over than she should, like she's trying to grab some fish with her bare hands. Lacking any prey to sate her hunger, she spends the ride flicking water at people like an annoying younger sibling on a long car ride, just waiting for the next distraction.
James Bond	Bond arrives on some sort of off-road bike, similar to the one he'd brought along for visiting 'Hell.' Crossing the river at its narrowest point had been accomplished by a single-use rocket affixed to the back of it, because the people that design his gadgets know how stubborn he can be. The vehicle seems appropriate for the location, but the clothes maybe not so much. He's wearing a striking two-piece suit in gunmetal grey, with a black necktie and a dress shirt the color of claret. For a boutonniere, he's chosen a pale pink flower resembling a hydrangea, pinned to the left side of his jacket. Funny how the suit has managed to stay clean despite the humidity, the ride here through the wetlands, and the oncoming tide of children. Bond doesn't really seem to know what to do around kids, but, with a good-natured and slightly overwhelmed smile, he accepts one of the masks foisted upon him. "Thank you," he says. his smile disappearing behind the colorful wooden visage a moment later. "When you're wearing a disguise, it's important to know who you're trying to fool," says Bond, knelt to keep eye contact with the younger kids in the excited little crowd. "I don't suppose one of you could give me some pointers?"
KNK	"Huh? How come? For who?" Violet accepts a mask, turning it over several times in her hands. Rose appears to already be wearing a half-mask, as is usual for her, but she hefts a wooden mask when it's insistently pushed onto her, anyway. Neither have come wearing their oni masks, as those are for a different and particular purpose "Guess it'd be a pain to stay 'disappeared' for the whole week. But what's this about? You do somethin' bad, and now you're on the run?"
Vantablitz Remnants	Kids are kids. Their desire for piggyback rides and making trouble is universal. They swarm around Kukuru and hassle for turns on her shoulders, all talking over each other to tell her irrelevant little stories about their recent lives that only they find exciting. Food is in abundance, and she has the opportunity to try everything for free (not that she knows what they use for money here anyways). The total lack of any kind of red meat feels somehow conspicuous, and she can only identify the others as 'seafood' and 'probably bird', but the exotic nu-vegetables and spices ground out of novel things, added to the familiar building blocks of East Asian cooking, are firmly in the realm of deeply pleasing. Humans simply find ways to make delicious food. Ishirou's questions get a brief bout of confused curiosity from the children, before they settle on the fact that he doesn't know because 'this is their first time off the mountain' and 'obviously they don't know about human things', at which point they become glad to instruct him, in the way recently taught children always are. As far as he can discern, this is a 'turning of the seasons' kind of archetypal festivity. It's a celebration of the impending winter, more or less, but rather than the usual notes of 'safety over the coming months and the swift return of spring' common to practically all other cultures, the perception is that winter is the time where the community will most thrive. Rita is made aware with him that the portion of the year where the waters retreat back to the sea, where the heat becomes less sweltering, and most saliently, when the 'others' (including, apparently, the 'demons' cited last time) are most quiet, hibernating, migrating, or restricting their territory, and going from 'relatively dormant' to 'completely dormant' at night. It is the time of year where humans can most easily travel, and when animals are actually most plentifully available. The masks, and the halloween roots-esque concept of 'disguise', as Bond is able to learn, comes from the idea that during this week, the most 'spirits' migrating, and most likely to get in their last bouts of mischief, with some scare stories about 'demons' being very active in the period just before they go dormant. Or in other words, the fucked up monsters with a predominant plant theme are least active and weakest during winter, and especially at night. But Rita draws, of all things, concern from the gaggle. One of them points at her head, and asks if she is okay, whilst the others show grave concern, as if she had lost a family member or been diagnosed with cancer. If quizzed on this with even the slightest bit of subtlety, she will learn that a human's flower only changes when they get 'very sick', and a 'celestial' is said to only change their flower when they have either suffered some terrible transformation to their 'site of embodiment', vaguely implied to be something like a sacred place, or in rare cases, if they have moved to a lower or higher state of being. Aside, the fish in the stream are not dumb enough to go near Violet's hand. Something large and slithering and chlorophyll green does, and wrestles viciously in her grip, frictionlessly slipping away after a few moments after failing to puncture her hand with something she felt as being sharp. The children don't really take the masks seriously as a matter of grave religious import, but have been told by the adults to do so, and think they're fun. Children love 'educating' people with what they've just recently been educated in, and fawn all over Rose and Violet both when they accept, saying they look 'super pretty'.
Ishirou	Ishirou turned to face Rita who asked him a question! He looks thoughtful for a bit before speaking, "To be honest, just to understand these people better. I /was/ honest about that, just...bad at expressing it and stressed out Ahn. So I do feel a little bad about that.." he admits, "Learning is something I am /very/ serious about...but sometimes I'm bad at boundaries and...stuff." He listens to the children and nods along with them. He does not, however, get a piggyback ride from Kukuru. Things start to make sense, as things turn from warmer to colder and things become easier for people to do. He wonders why Ahn wants to keep them out of the loop of multiverse stuff. Is it because of how they developed to fight anything not human-like? Fear of anything else not of their tribe? Then what about Ahn...hm. They did consider her something of a 'diva'. So either something frightening or something divine? Which...considering things, could open these people up for exploitation from less than savory multiversals. This crosses his face as a thoughtful expression, behind him as always is POD who floats. It is just a box with arms, but as always follows Ishirou. Also, when Violet catches the fish with her bare hands, he takes a moment to scan it. Something he was too chicken to do when they came down the river the first time.
James Bond	"More active... I see. Storing up energy for hibernation, is it?" says Bond. There's a glance to Kukuru, who seems like a natural with kids. Taking a page out of her book, the secret agent nods once, and with an affected, faux-grave tone, adds, "That's valuable information. I'll put it to good use." Rising from his kneel, he gestures towards the food that Kukuru's sampling. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to see to my own energy." He deploys the kickstand on the bike with a dress shoe, pausing on the way over to offer a glib joke for Rose. "Being on the run is a losing game," he quips. "Try defecting. Then you can act like you meant to do it all along." Continuing over to the food, he pores over the selection with quiet, reserved enthusiasm--easily detected despite the mask, by the way his index hovers as if taking an inventory. Don't suppose there's any bun cha.
Kukuru	If the kids are irritating Kukuru in any way, she certainly isn't showing it. If anything, she even seems to be enjoying her time with them, content to let them climb all over her. She even goes as far as holding her arms out to let them dangle off of her, letting them guide her to and fro while listening intently to all of their pointless little stories. Whether she'll actually remember any of them is another story entirely, but she'll at least be able to put the stories to the faces if it ever actually comes up again. Ishirou (and anyone else who asks) will absolutely get a piggyback ride from Kukuru if asked, too. Naturally, that won't stop her from sampling every kind of food she can. Although the lack of red meat is mildly disappointing, it's soon forgotten in favor of the flavors she's getting from everything that the locals have put together. Thankfully, she keeps noises down to a minimum around the kids, and she's actually pretty good at keeping herself clean while eating so she doesn't make an ass of herself. Depending on how close Bond is at the time, he might also be the unfortunate target of her trying to stick some food in his face, though, but at least she's doing it from a place of care rather than aggression. She can't quite keep the lack of red meat out of her mind, though, and she eventually does something vaguely resembling investigative work once she can get the kids to settle down. Kukuru seeks out one of the cooks that made something with the probably-bird, then nonchalantly starts chatting them up about preferred spices and recipes because '''subtly''' shifting the topic towards different kinds of meat, notably that coming from animals of the non-swimming and non-flying variety.
KNK	Violet's hands are surprisingly difficult to puncture, for as soft as they are. High-quality elbow gloves, from appearances. She loses the slippery thing, almost falls into the water, and then complains about the one that got away, as anglers are wont to do. Later... "If I'd known there'd be feasting, I would've..." "Aww, do you want me to eat your share, too?" Rose groans. "Not helping." "A rocket bike? Man, are you showing off?" "I want one." Rose stares a moment longer, after the quip. While looking over at Rita, Violet taps her head. "Ohh, right, you had taken the... what was it..." "Shh. Nobody really 'picks' theirs, right?" "Oops! Right, right." Violet shushes herself. Once the meaning of the masks is made clear, Rose and Violet both accept theirs, Rose brushing her sidelocks out of the way to get it secure. Violet's a bit messier, but the result isn't too different. Upon being praised, Violet strikes a series of poses that were very plausibly pulled from a animated magical ninja girl series. Rose's ability to pose like a model when viewed is, by contrast, fully natural and subconscious. "So, this is the time for travel, spirits included, huh?" "Hey, are we spirits? Or are we fairies?" "What's the difference?" "Dunno. But the Winter's better for us, right? 'Cause of, you know." "'Cause we're not plants. And not demons." "Humans make their own heat. But if you need some more, you can find another human." "That's one way to put it."
Rita Ma	Rita looks absolutely enthralled with Violet's hand-fishing, but then squeaks in abrupt terror when a green monster surfaces instead. Afterwards: "I'm sorry, Ms. Violet. Your form was really good! The first time I visited, even the water 'felt' bad. I guess I shouldn't be surprised bad things live in it, too. But even so..." She trails off, making a shuddery 'euuuuhh' noise. Even if she should have known, it's still gross. When the children show her that concern, Rita guiltily stumbles over herself, reaching up to touch her flower with a sudden self-consciousness. She flashes Violet a mortified look- a hopeless 'please help me'. Oh no. What did I have last time? It wasn't a lotus. Hibiscus? I should've asked Ms. Ahn. "I'm really sorry to make you worry," she says with a little apologetic bow. "Please don't! I promise I'm alright. It's..." Rita rummages as deeply as she can for something that is not, strictly, a lie. "My 'state of being' has definitely changed recently. It's taken a lot of getting used to, but I'm mostly okay. Some very good friends are already supporting me through it, so I'd rather not worry anyone else." She puts on a brave little smile, glancing at the rest of the party before looking back at the kids. "Does that make sense?" Entering the village proper, Rita tries to find any raw fish that she can partake of, and rummages around in her satchel to present a gift to whoever looks the most responsible for the food on display: a little pot with a nice traditional spice mix, fragrant and slightly nose-burny if one takes too close a sniff. "Here. I wanted you all to have this. It's spices that I don't think you can get in this world. It's pretty strong, so use it sparingly, okay? But it should last you a long time." While munching on whatever's Rita-edible, she looks over to Ishirou. "They really do live unique lives, don't they? I think it's amazing. Even in a world this harsh, people can still be so kind."
James Bond	"I remembered the drive being a little on the long side," James coyly answers Rose. So yes, probably showing off at least a little, in addition to whatever else is going on upstairs with him. At the festival spread, Bond is indeed within Kukuru's strike zone. This means that she's also within his. After accepting food foisted upon him, he fires back. "A white lily's said to symbolize purity," Bond begins, undoubtedly smirking beneath the mask. "Keep plying me with food like that and we might have to find you a new one," he 'warns.' Once he's had enough, he turns, so that his back is to the food, stepping slightly away from the spread so that others can help themselves. It also allows him to keep an eye on anyone else coming over to eat--a decent spot to mingle, for the moment. "Not just 'kind,'" notes Bond in agreement with Rita. It takes him a moment to find the words, pondering, elbow-upon-wrist, index tapping his temple. "Alive," he eventually says, with quiet conviction. "This is a place where life exists--not one where it's preserved or packaged or coerced into staying."
Ishirou	Ishirou turns towards Rita, nodding. He uncrosses his arms and speaks again, slowly and thoughtfully. "Actually, I don't find it as surprising as you might think. Society survived because humans figured out that working together was better for everyone than not. It's just that there are some in that system who abuse that for their own profit." Ishirou could mean many things at this point. His home, the monsters that run the corps on that one version of Mars, the people who used and tried to throw away Bond, or even the people who used to run Rita's home...before they all got eaten. He looks to Bond after a moment, "I honestly think that's just the side effect of what I just mentioned...those in humanity that wants to take everything and work for nothing."
Vantablitz Remnants	Scanning the thrashing One That Got Away tells Ishirou something that should be mostly predictable, and a little bit extra. The biology he detects is mostly that of a plant more than an animal, like the kind of symbiotic fusion where sea life and sugar-creating algae got wildly out of control and the two stopped being separate. It is also full of the exotic carbons he had detected in residue form, like microplastics, in the water and in normal Earth plants; almost entirely so. Almost shockingly, Bond stumbles across what looks almost exactly like what he's after. He's pretty sure just by taste that it isn't pork, yet it isn't some kind of soy substitute either. Some kind of 'dark meat' that tastes pretty similar. As far as Kukuru can glean, the distinction is logical. This really isn't the place to be raising cows or pigs, and they'd be incredibly vulnerable to external predation by whatever people carry 'sacred' rifles for. Nobody has even seen a cow or pig, in fact. They use literally none of the contemporary names for any animal by now, so it's hard to tell what they're talking about, but at least some of them have to be 'new'. As if they only came into existence some time in the past century or two, and now they're simply normalized, hunted, and edible. The children insist to him that they have no clue what hibernation has to do with storing energy, and insist that it has something to do with some ancient creation myth where a sun and moon deity settled on the division of day and night such that one would be the time for crops to grow, animals to forage, and spirits to roam, and one would be the time for humans to do as they please by moonlight so that they would be able to see. There is some poorly relayed epic about the way they change the ratio of night and day over the year. Kids are not great tellers of complex stories. hey also take Rose's and Violet's question slash argument as a theological quiz rather than genuine questioning. 'Others' includes all entites that come from 'the other places', which is 'not the terrestrial realm', and tangibly seems to mean every weird critter and monster as a blanket term. 'Demons' is the subsection of things that attack humans (Ahn called them 'recominants' and 'xenoforms' and Lotus called them 'siblings' and 'lesser versions'). 'Spirits' are the ones that don't. 'Celestials' refers to a class of being that used to be human and reincarnated or transcended on spiritual merit in a blatantly buddhist sense. They are denoted in role and hierarchy by flowers that regular people don't possess, in a sort of structured 'angelic choir' way. The lotus, on sheer cultural inertia, is considered the highest, and a black lotus the most so, above the blue and white. It's unclear whether they believed this first, or believed it because of Ahn and the creature she named 'Lotus'.
Vantablitz Remnants	The villagers naturally assume that the Elites are Celestials from the mountain that is sacred to them. Showing up with any of the flowers present in the village would probably saddle the Elites with cultural baggage of caste and lineage and expectation they wouldn't be able to fake. Showing up without one would probably have denoted them as not human; impostors at best. The reasoning for Ahn's insistence seems relatively sound. Which makes it weirder she wouldn't or couldn't explain. Raw fish isn't at all hard for Rita to find; fish would be the most readily available source of food outside a paddy or the fruiting trees, after all. The villagers accept her spice with reverent gratitude, taking 'can't be found in this world' more gravely and dramatically than the literal sense she meant. The children seem to be cautiously relieved by her reassurance, but she has to explain the same thing yet again to a few concerned adults. The matriarch's house hasn't moved, so she finds it easily. Thankfully, the temple by the gigantic tree of unknown species seems to have been emptied. With all the Elites that had been there helping, it's reasonable to believe the people there had fully recovered, rather than died. Or at least most of them. The woman herself is not home, but easily found nearby, discussing something with a number of women in highly decorated dresses, about some performance that will happen later. Of course, she asks Rita the same question yet again, but seems to have all the time in the world for her questions in turn.
Kukuru	"It is? Huh... So that's why it tastes like that." Kukuru exposes the depths of her unchained mind to Bond as he comments on the white lily, letting out a thoughtful hum as though there's some kind of logic to what she just said. To be fair, there is (in her mind), but she's certainly not explaining it to Bond in any way. If she notices that smirk or the meaning behind Bond's warning, meanwhile... No, no she doesn't. It's easy enough to see that it flies right past her as she gives him a clueless look at first, her mask still worn up and to the side from having consumed so much food earlier. "Eh? Oh, are you not eating enough? Here, here, this one's good. And these over here..." Once she's had enough fun doting on Bond, Kukuru turns her attention back to the topic of animal husbandry. The lack of a shared name for what she knows as common meat animals compared to whatever names are being used for just about everything has her puzzled, although the reasons why start to click together sooner rather than later. The animals that she'd normally consider farm animals can't exist here. There's something higher on the food chain to worry about, enough that the villagers here would need 'sacred' rifles to deal with them and possibly even the involvement of 'Celestials'. With that new thought fresh in her mind, Kukuru finally shifts gears to something other than food and games with the kids: "When was the last time El... Celestials came before we started coming here? Um... Before me and everyone here and Ahn?" Another thought comes to mind shortly after that. "And those things you need the fancy weapons for... Do you know where they're from? And have you tried eating them?"
Rita Ma	"Alive," Rita repeats. "A place where people take care of each other, right, Mr. Bond? Where their work matters. And they aren't just serving something that nobody cares about." She smiles at Ishirou, next: "You're right. It's natural for people to come together and help each other. But we aren't 'each other' to them, are we? We're outside of their community. But they're still generous to us, even though the world isn't generous to them. That's what I think is beautiful." At the matriarch's house, Rita lurks in the background, unwilling to interrupt whatever festival preparations they're making. But eventually she's noticed, or an opportunity arises. Then she, once again, is forced to try and prevent someone from committing a great evil: worrying about her. After successfully averting that disaster by telling the same not-quite-lie in a slight panic, she clears her throat and shifts to a more formal tone. "Thank you for receiving us with hospitality," she says, giving the matriarch a polite little bow. "I know you must be busy. I wanted to ask you something, if you have the time." "This isn't a test; there isn't any right or wrong. I just want to know how you remember it. How did the world begin?"
Ishirou	Ishirou motions to the flower behind his ear, "To them, we are human, just slightly different. More...divinity in a sense I think? It doesn't make us any better or worse, just different. The children were willing to teach us, even though we asked basic questions. They were all concerned for you because of your perceived illness. Humans...I think that is human, to care for others." Though he deflates a little, "I am just not sure where things went wrong when you move closer to modernity. Was it just easier for those people to sneak into power and wealth and wield it..?" He tries to brighten up a bit later, "Sorry, not the time for dreary things. We're at a party, right?" he says with a smile. When they reach the Matriarch, he gives a wave. "Hello! Sorry for just coming in unannounced, but we just wanted to check up on people after the thing.." a pause as Rita asks a question. He's curious to know this too!
James Bond	While he's no scholar of creation myths, nor of epics, Bond can spot places where this detail or that might have been misremembered, or excitedly exaggerated. it doesn't bother him in the slighest. Even if he's a little awkward around kids, he doesn't seem to mind them terribly much. I suppose children aren't the most accurate storytellers, but they can certainly be among the most endearing. He reaches for the pack of Strikes in his coat pocket, before he remembers, with his hand halfway there, that there's a mask on his face. With a soft grunt of mild annoyance, he then focuses instead on Ishirou. "Oh," he says, with a mocking air of faux-debate, "But it's a lot of work, 'creating jobs' and 'stimulating the economy.' The carrot doesn't chase itself, you know." He doesn't disagree--but he wasn't about to give up an opportunity to lambast the people whose ripples often rocked boats and influenced policy at his previous place of work. More seriously, "You ought to read Rousseau sometime, Ishirou." Whatever other thought he might have had, whatever agreement he might have had for Rita past the subdued nod in her direction, is interrupted by Kukuru, foisting more food on him. He puts it back with the rest of the food, chuckling. "I'm flattered that you're so concerned for my health, but I think we ought to leave some for the terrestrial beings. You can always fuss over me later, after all." And spreaking of 'terrestrial beings,' she's talking to one right now. "The food is just like I remember," he offers as a compliment. He's phrasing it as he imagines someone who 'reincarnated' or 'transcended' might, moreso than a multiversal traveler. "But a lot has changed. The animals look different, and so do the fish and the birds. How is it that you know which are safe to eat?"
Vantablitz Remnants	Of course, what Kukuru is told that 'demons' ('devils'? the term doesn't translate too well) are the reason for having weapons. They aren't regarded at all in the spiritual sense as any more than a matter of philosophy; they are real and not at all uncommon entities. The way the villagers describe them almost feels like 'monsters' would be a perfectly suitable generic term, were it not for the strong infection of mixed up reincarnation and layered universe theology. It's a bit odd that this world ended up with 'monsters' as well as a mixture of old and new human-apathetic creatures. The weapons are, of course, only 'sacred' because Ahn made them, who they regard as an enlightened Deva of unearthly knowledge and great age and strength, which is like, a third true at least. To the best of their knowledge, no one has come down from the mountain but Ahn, and she only did so for the first time within living memory. They credit the growing attention from the mountain to be a sign of the village's spiritual merit and diligence, which appears to have accidentally fostered a strongly cohesive community. Bond's new friends are over the moon with his approval of extremely traditional, even borderline 'ritual' cooking, and buy his cover hook line and sinker. The answer he gets, of course, is good old oral tradition. Nobody here was alive when all of this first happened, but some generations ago, plenty of people would have certainly been starving badly enough to try it. Besides the specific knowledge is the general rule of thumb that any 'higher beast', apparently creatures that also have something reminiscent of a flower, which they consider to be a human trait, must be exposed to open flame to burn away any 'lingering malice' of having been slain. Apparently, hot metal or water is not enough. The village matriarch is somehow even more pleased with Rita than the children, and even congratulates her(?) on something she seems to assume is a happy thing. She does, however, take Rita's question very seriously. What she gleans is relatively clear, if invisibly culturally muddled. In as far as the world ever 'began', it didn't really, but sort of always existed, however it is understood that the world as-it-is-known began when an immortal being built an enormous tower to push apart the sea and sky and then destroyed it so that the rubble created land. From there however, possession of the world passed down to their created children, and their children's child, and so on, built upon and iterated each time, and humans came about after twelve generations. From then on, the world is said to have been recreated and 'reborn' countless times, and will continue to be a million more. It's presented to her as a parallel fashion to how souls are reincarnated, how people are 'reborn' several times throughout their lives, how nature rebirths itself each year, the day and night with every cycle, and so on, just on a vastly slower time scale.
Vantablitz Remnants	They are, oddly, fairly cognizant that they are living in the early days of the newest 'iteration', and that there was a culture before theirs. The belief is that the people of the previous world imitated the first god by creating enormous towers to attempt to further divide reality and make other spiritual planes more accessible, but only briefly succeeded, due to a lack of spiritual knowledge (rather than hubris or impiety), and their towers collapsed and left their ruins behind. They also believe that the various 'other' beings were came through during the short time they had pried a gap into the other realms, and that is why they live alongside humans in the 'human plane', some of which were spirits originally from lower planes, made of base desire, that originally tormented human souls who fell lower in the stratification of reincarnation. At the same time, beings of higher planes were more easily able to enter the human world as well, and wish to teach humans correct spiritual knowledge, so that they might rebirth the world again into a more orderly state. They don't seem to conceive of the past as an 'apocalypse', but 'hard times', and don't blame their ancestors for any kind of sin or vice, but simply a gradual loss of knowledge. 'Forgetfulness' is a core theme, and they are vaguely aware of how much has been 'forgotten' since the last world too. They don't distinguish man-made ruins and technology as being any more than academically different from spiritual or divine works. Most of all, they simply accept that Ahn must be one of the beings friendly towards mankind, who came down from a higher plane, and she is sharing 'spiritual knowledge' with humans, but what the people of the last world had, and what they had forgotten. They believe in a sort of manifest purpose that many many generations later, they too will achieve some form of enlightenment, but they don't think of their village as 'chosen people'; they are either convinced, or aware, of others existing elsewhere in the world, the fortunate of whom are also being instructed by their own various 'Brahma'.