“Honestly, no, I can’t even imagine raising all of my children on my own. That would drive me mad for certain, if anything. There’s a reason we chose those who proved to be apt at handling children to raise them for the community and reward them amply for it.” - She-Who-Birthed-Two-Hundred, Elder Shaman of the Longear tribe of the Western Isles.

“You know, for all that you often call vegetables ‘rabbit food’ you’re sorta munching on precisely rabbit food right now,” teased Giselle during lunch the next day. As could be expected, most of the foods served in town were vegetarian since the vast majority of the populace were herbivorous, though the visitor districts had meats prepared precisely for visitors.

As such, one of the main dishes for lunch was a huge platter of various vegetables like celery, cucumbers, carrots, or large radishes cut into sticks, paired with dips, like one made from mashed eggplant and beans, mixed with a dash of squeezed lemon juice and a generous amount of a fruity oil, as well as another which was composed mostly of a sort of fruity vinegar, and a pungent, spicy garlic based one.

To her own surprise, Willa actually found the food quite palatable, especially with a copious amount of the dips applied, and happily munched on them while they drank a somewhat herby, grassy local ale and waited for the rest of their orders to arrive.

“Sometimes rabbit food could be good too, I guess,” admitted Willa as she gave the point to her friend. Cal’s students had pretty much turned into fast friends with one another over these years, even if they enjoyed ribbing and teasing each other a lot. “But seriously though, whatever these dips they made are from, I wouldn’t mind the recipe.”

“Fair point,” conceded Giselle as she munched on a stick of celery generously slathered in the rich, nutty vegetable dip herself. The seemingly simple dish - the vegetable sticks were raw and simply cut into stick shapes - was far tastier than she had expected as well, on account of the dips served with them. “These are good stuff”

“They’ve had millennia to get good with making food out of vegetables after all,” commented Vark from his seat while Krystal was watching over Ilena, who seemed to enjoy her food a lot. “After that long, people are bound to be good at it.”

“They must be good at passing on information as well,” said Tal with a nod. “Or at least training new people and all that, given how short their lives are.”

One thing the group had noticed instantly the moment they set foot in Longshore was just how many children were running around. With how the Long-ears give birth by the litter, there were far more children around in the city compared to most other cities.

Those children were always accompanied by a few adults, chosen caretakers who devoted their whole lives to raising and teaching children, a revered position in the Long-ear social hierarchy just below their shaman and chieftains. Every Long-ear child was passed on to these caretakers to raise as soon as they were weaned, which was as early as a week, and at the latest two weeks after their birth, and spent their first few years under their care and teaching.

The communal way to raise children was necessitated as forcing each parent to take care of their own children on their own would have meant little else gets done. The way they did it, the selected caretakers took care of all the child care and child raising, while the parents were freed to pursue whatever their occupations were.

It was an odd system, but one that worked for the tribe. Oddly, many of the caretakers themselves chose to be celibate after they were inducted into the order, with their reasoning being that they wish to show no bias to a child under their care, and having children of their own amongst them would unwittingly induce a bias to form.

For their service to the community, these caretakers received not just respect, but were also richly rewarded for their duties. They were some of the wealthiest members of the society, even if their wealth was spent on philanthropic pursuits more often than not, or to help fund the dreams of some of the children they used to care for.

Children of the Long-ear tribe respected their caretakers as much as they did their birth parents, which partly led to the esteemed status of the caretakers. To Cal the system seemed ripe for a bad egg to make a mess out of things, but perhaps such ideas were simply not in the simple, straightforward minds of the small folk, as the setup had run flawlessly for as long as they remembered.

Ilena had been all too happy to play along with a fluffle of such children, even under the watchful eyes of the caretakers. She was nearly twice as tall as those children, but then again most adult Long-ears were barely taller than the little girl anyway, not counting the ears.

Some of the caretaker matrons looked a bit worried when Ilena showed off Ida to her new friends, but breathed a sigh of relief when they saw just how tame and loving she was. Both of them were partially buried in the fluffy fur of the Long-ear children by the time Krystal called her back since it was close to dinnertime.

Since the tribe was herbivorous, the inns at the visitor districts usually had a hired chef from another tribe, who knew how to prepare and cook meats far better than them, so visitors to those inns always left satisfied and with full bellies. Not every inn had them available, while those that do serve meats kept an additional sign, of a stylized chunk of meat on the bone, hanging below their establishment’s sign for easy recognition.

Cal noticed how Kyara and Ashani kept their hoods up at all times unless they were in relative privacy however. Here in their homeland, the Western Isles, their tribe was far too infamous and feared by the locals, so they had not wanted to cause a commotion.