“What might be perceived as common sense by someone might well be an utterly alien concept to another.” - Old Tribal saying.

“So enlighten me,” Cal asked as Kyara gave them a short tour of the village after her little family reunion. Most of the villagers had gone back to whatever they were doing before the party came after Kyara shooed them off, but Cal noticed the peeking eyes still. “How do your people even track who’s who with how your families are setup?”

“Well… for us mothers it’s naturally easier. Not hard to remember who you gave birth to,” admitted Kyara with a shrug. “Most of our families only bothered to keep track of the children as those of the family head’s, which honestly made things simpler by a good bit, to be fair.”

“And how do you decide who gets to be the family head?” queried Cal once again with curiosity.

“Why, that one’s simple. Whoever is the best warrior or hunter gets to be the family head,” replied Kyara with a fang-bearing grin. “If your personal lineage became family heads consecutively over generations, they also become more valued. It’s one reason Koru’s got such a big family, really. He’s the fourth in line to become a family head himself.”

“So large families like those aren’t the norm then, huh?”

“Depends on the individuals I’d say. Some of our family groupings are as small as two to three people, and I’ve seen ones as large as twenty when I was still a kitten,” said Kyara with a shrug. “Speaking of which, allow me to introduce my husbands and co-wife.”

Three older therians - ones whose looks were more in line with Kyara’s actual age in the sixties - walked out from one of the houses, one of the older males with mostly brown fur using a cane for walking aid, while the older gray-furred female was helped by a middle aged female therian as they descended the sloping walkway from the house.

Compared to the two that clearly felt their age, the other male with mottled white and black fur looked far more fit and healthy, though his features still showed the ravages of old age, unlike Kyara who looked barely older than her own older grandchildren.

Cal and the group - just Vark and Tal by then as the rest had dispersed to take a look around, and she had her students split up to keep watch over them just in case - greeted the three politely, while Kyara translated for them. The older trio seemed to welcome them more warmly, likely partly due to Kyara’s introduction.

“That’s Itva, our other daughter,” said Kyara when Cal asked her about the middle aged female who helped the elders with their housework. From the female’s coloring - mostly gray and browns - Cal guessed that she was born from Kyara’s Co-wife. “She often came by to help out, especially when Koru came to visit with his family. That many kids is a bit hard for our old bones to handle.”

“I became a champion shortly before Nerun was conceived, got him pretty late,” added Kyara to Cal in a whisper. “My spouses know something was up since I stopped aging and even got a bit younger since then, but they’re aware enough not to pry about a good thing.”

“How old does your kind normally live to?” Cal asked back with an equally low voice. Judging from the effects of age on Kyara’s spouses, she had the inkling that the hidden tribes were not one of the longer-lived therian breeds, much less ancient monstrosities like Garrp’s tribe.

“Seventy, eighty, thereabouts,” replied Kyara with a shrug. “We’re not the longest-lived out there, though I guess we’re more virile than most, as you’ve seen from Koru’s little family. Honestly? It’s what allowed us to survive the purge back then. Our population was down to the hundreds of survivors or so at most, and they repopulated our tribes to the current state from that.”

They sat at the balcony of the small family’s house as Itva brought some snacks - slices of smoked fish and dried meat - and a hard fruit liquor for them to enjoy while they chatted. While it was a bit awkward to have to translate their words through Kyara or Itva, it couldn’t be helped, as most of the tribe had not learned common.

Some families learnt it, mostly those who hoped to one day venture out, but it remained uncommonly spoken in the village. The family Kyara had been born in had taught their children the language, as her father before her had traveled the lands too, and Kyara had in turn taught it to her children. Her spouses only understood rudimentary bits of the language, though.

A bit further away, Cal noticed how Ilena seemed to have an argument - children rarely needed to understand each other’s words to argue - with a local child roughly her age. Given how Vark and Krystal, as well as people she assumed to be the other child’s parents were nearby, she was not particularly worried and just watched out of curiosity.

The argument between the kids seemed to escalate, for a moment looking like it might come to blows, before Ida stalked behind the child Ilena argued with and picked them up, gently biting on the fold of skin by the nape of the child’s neck.

Cal almost laughed at the way the child became flummoxed then silent like a kitten being picked up by its mother while Ilena stood with her hands posed against her hips in front of him. From the looks of the child’s parents, they were also more amused than anything by the incident, as they could apparently tell that Ida meant no harm.

So far, the instinct Kyara and Kino had mentioned was not really noticeable, though Kyara had mentioned that it’s partly because the party had proven that they were not to be messed with. At most, Cal noticed how the youths of the tribe were highly competitive, with a bunch of them sparring with Giselle despite how she lightly threw them around.

Time will tell, Cal guessed.