Chapter 2: The Deen Clan Chef
1
It was morning as Toor Deen hurried down a path at the forest’s edge.
Well, to be more precise, it was actually before dawn. The sun still hadn’t yet appeared from beyond the forest, and the world was awash in a dim bluish grey. She had actually wanted to take care of her business last night, but thanks to a strong rebuke from her clan member Jas Deen, she eagerly awaited daybreak to go flying out of the house.
As she ran along gasping for breath, her destination finally came into view. It was a small wooden house, isolated from the ones around it... The Fa house, home to Ai Fa the female hunter and the foreign chef Asuta.
While she wiped the sweat from her brow, Toor Deen stopped and stood in front of the door. Then just as she was about to knock, her natural timidness started showing itself.
Won’t I be causing trouble for them, showing up at this time of day...?
She had visited this place because there was something that she wanted to tell Asuta. But while the news was greatly important to Toor Deen herself, it was hard to say how significant it would be for the members of the Fa clan.
Thanks to her hesitation, Toor Deen instead ended up circling around to the side of the house.
Are they already awake...? As long as they aren’t asleep, then I shouldn’t be imposing too much... she thought as she cautiously peered in through the window. That was quite impolite in and of itself, but she figured it was much better than knocking without knowing what things were like inside.
Between the wooden lattice, she could spy the inside of the room, where it was even dimmer than it was outside. The giba pelt spread out on the floor, the stove, the pot, the water jug...and the pair of figures huddled close together as they slept.
When she saw that, Toor Deen hurriedly ducked her head and squatted down on the ground.
Huh...? Why are they sleeping in the main hall?
She had finally managed to get her heartbeat under control, but now it was starting to run wild again.
Asuta and Ai Fa had fallen asleep right in the middle of the house’s front room. And if Toor Deen hadn’t seen wrong, Ai Fa had been tightly hugging Asuta’s left arm and resting her head on his shoulder.
Th-They aren’t married, right? So why are they sleeping all huddled together like that...?
Suddenly, Toor Deen realized her cheeks had grown warm. She felt like she had seen something she wasn’t supposed to.
Did I just see wrong...? It is pretty dark inside... Toor Deen thought as she timidly stood back up and once again brought her face in close to the window.
And when she did so, she found blue eyes with a very firm light in them staring back from beyond the lattice.
“Aah!” Toor Deen shrieked as she fell on her bottom. And those blue eyes followed that unbecoming display without so much as blinking.
“You’re that girl from the Deen clan, are you not? What brings you here at this time of day?”
It was Ai Fa. Up until just a moment ago she had been peacefully sleeping away, but now she was staring directly at Toor Deen.
“What’s up? Is there someone outside the window?” a voice called out with a yawn, and before long Asuta appeared next to Ai Fa. “Oh, so it was you, Toor Deen. What’s going on?”
His voice was just as calm and kind as always. But even so, Toor Deen was unable to raise herself to her feet for a while yet.
◇
“I sensed a presence outside the window, so I went to look and found this girl peering inside the house,” Ai Fa matter-of-factly stated, sitting there cross-legged with one knee up in the air. “Well, I assumed it wasn’t anyone who meant us harm because she hadn’t been trying to hide her breathing, but still, it was a bit of a surprise.”
Ai Fa might have claimed as much, but Toor Deen had definitely been about a million times more shocked.
As he sat there beside Ai Fa, Asuta gave an astounded chuckle.
“You sure are one reliable clan head. I didn’t sense her in the slightest. And you must have been surprised too, right, Toor Deen?”
“N-No... I’m really sorry for so rudely peering inside your house...”
Currently, they were in the main hall of the Fa house. Since she seemed to have some sort of business with them, Ai Fa and Asuta had invited Toor Deen inside. And as she sensed the gaze of the totos balled up by the entrance on her back, the young girl could feel herself shrinking in on herself.
“So, what brings you here so early in the morning? Do you have some sort of urgent business with us?”
“Y-Yes... Y-You see, um...a Liddo woman will soon be marrying into the Jeen clan...” Toor Deen replied, her head hanging way down as she looked up at the pair between her bangs.
When she said that, Asuta tilted his head and responded, “The Jeen are one of the northern clans, aren’t they? And the Liddo and Deen are relatives, so both fall under the Zaza, huh?”
“T-That’s right. The Liddo and Deen are the southernmost clans under the Zaza... They were relatives even before exchanging blood ties with the Suun.”
“Yeah, I heard about that just a little while ago. Still, there’s quite a distance between here and the northern settlement.”
“That’s true... And it’s why up until now the Deen and Liddo only had ties with the Suun, hardly interacting at all with the other northern clans... Now that the Suun clan are gone, there are no blood ties left at all, which made it necessary to form new bonds with the north.”
“Ooh, so that’s why that Liddo woman is marrying into the Jeen?”
“Yes... The Jeen clan had dispatched a number of young men to instruct the branch families remaining at the Suun settlement on how to hunt...and apparently the Liddo woman was invited there too, which is how the matchmaking happened.”
“I see, so it was a result of matchmaking! If it led to a marriage proposal, then that sounds like a happy ending, right?” Asuta replied with a truly gentle smile, and then he tilted his head again. “Okay, so it’s definitely a joyful occasion for them, but why did you come to tell us about it?”
“Well, you see...” Toor Deen mumbled, shrinking further, “I was... No, we Deen women were asked to man the stove for the wedding banquet...”
“Hmm?” Asuta nodded along only for his eyes to suddenly shoot open wide. “Huh? But the Deen clan has been following my cooking instructions and using bloodlet giba meat, right? If they went and specifically asked the Deen to man the stove, then...”
“Yes. Gulaf Zaza, he said...that he was entrusting the Deen clan with manning the stove to determine just how much strength there was to be had from the cooking you brought to the forest’s edge, Asuta.”
“That’s amazing! They’ve given you such an important task!” Asuta exclaimed, his eyes sparkling as he leaned forward. When she saw that, the tension that had built up throughout Toor Deen’s body finally drained away.
“The news should also be delivered to the Ruu and Sauti clans today. I wanted to let you two know myself before that, and that’s why I ended up visiting at such an hour... I really am sorry.”
“You’ve got no need to apologize at all! That’s seriously amazing!” Asuta exclaimed, once again smiling. “And it really does make me happy that you thought to go out of your way to come visit us like this. Thanks, Toor Deen.”
“O-Oh, it was nothing...”
Those words alone were enough to make Toor Deen feel like her efforts had been worthwhile. They affected her so much that she found herself moved to tears, and so she hung her head even lower to hide that.
“Did you hear, Ai Fa? Gulaf Zaza of all people finally has that much of an interest in tasty food! This is seriously good news!”
“Indeed. That dinner to which Zuuro Suun and his former family were invited must have quite thoroughly displayed your strength to the man. That goes to show how impactful of a meal it really was,” Ai Fa calmly replied. Still, there was an obvious note of pride in Asuta mixed into her words. “Deen child, allow me to also offer my thanks for coming at the break of dawn to deliver the news.”
“A-Ah, it was nothing... There’s something I would also like to ask of you, Fa clan head Ai Fa...” Toor Deen said, placing a hand over the pounding left side of her chest. “We Deen women have been discussing just what sort of dish we should create, and, um...so that Asuta can judge if it seems like the proper one to go with...w-will you please allow me to cook dinner for the Fa clan tonight?!” she asked, her voice becoming unnecessarily loud at the end.
As the girl timidly raised her gaze...she found Ai Fa staring back with a far gentler look in her eyes than expected.
“I do not mind at all. In fact, I am terribly interested to see what sort of dish you Deen women will be making as well.”
◇
Toor Deen had come into this world as a member of a Suun branch house.
Her mother was the youngest sister of the Deen’s clan head, and she had married into the Suun clan.
At the time, the Suun had been the leading clan, so it should have been something to be proud of. However, the Suun had broken the taboos of the forest’s edge and become a clan bound by the sinister rules put in place by the former leading clan head Zattsu Suun.
Those rules had been established several years before the now ten-year-old Toor Deen was born. So for her, she had those secret demands driven into her for her whole life. The adults of the Suun settlement had constantly said that if other clans were to find out that secret, every last one of them would be scalped.
Why were the leading Suun clan the only ones forced to keep such a secret? It was to defeat the treacherous Ruu clan, and to gain the strength needed to keep the vicious northern clans firmly under control. Or at least, that was what Toor Deen had been told.
That was what was right. The Suun clan needed to lead the people of the forest’s edge down the proper path to the future. And so, for now they needed to keep that secret, no matter how painful it might be... The adults all said as much, with vacant looks in their eyes. Whenever the subordinate clans were invited to the settlement for a banquet or the like, they all looked so fierce and brimming with strength, while the members of the Suun clan seemed to have all spirit drained out of them.
But to Toor Deen, that was simply the way of the world. Her mother had been unable to bear such a life and passed away, leaving behind a young Toor Deen, but the girl wasn’t even permitted to grieve over that fact.
And then, Asuta and the Ruu women appeared.
On the night of the clan head meeting, the Suun clan’s secret was exposed. And with that, Toor Deen’s world came crumbling down.
Now, everyone would be scalped. Though that fact caused her to despair, Toor Deen still felt an indescribable sense of liberation even so.
She could go to her mother’s side, and she would no longer have to fear the gazes of other clans. With such thoughts in mind, Toor Deen was finally able to bawl her eyes out. She hadn’t had such an outburst of emotion since she was just a baby.
However, Toor Deen and her fellow clan members weren’t punished. The members of the main house were stripped of their clan names, but the members of the branch houses were permitted to join clans with which they had strong blood ties. And then, they were trusted to live proper lives as people of the forest’s edge in order to atone.
As a result, Toor Deen ended up joining the Deen clan along with her father. There, she began a new life, surrounded by a new family that was strict, yet kind.
Roughly two months had passed between then and now.
The Zaza clan who had taken over from the Suun as their parent clan now expressed doubts as to the Fa clan’s actions. However, though it took some doing, the Deen clan had gained permission to learn bloodletting and cooking techniques from Asuta. Would the Fa clan’s actions be medicine or a poison for the forest’s edge? The Deen were granted special permission to form ties with the Fa in order to determine just that.
And so, that led to the current state of things.
What had the Deen gained from the Fa clan? Gulaf Zaza, head of the Zaza who were now one of the new leading clans, had ordered them to show just that. If they screwed up, it could be like proving that the Fa clan was in the wrong. And so as she felt like she would be crushed by that pressure, Toor Deen resolved herself to prepare for the wedding banquet.
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