“The honored scholar’s ramblings are clearly the product of a mind that had too little to worry about. To decry the cruelties of war is one thing, but to propose the disbandment of the military is a misguided fool’s idea, at best.

Say we do away with our military and seek peace, then someone who doesn’t give a shit about all that comes over with their army to take everything we hold dear, what then? Does honored scholar Balush believe he could dissuade them from doing so with just his words!?” - Rebuttal by Abu-Bakar bin Usman, General from the Hassid Caliphate, circa 552 VA.

“Why do they split up the work like that?” asked Kino curiously to Aideen.

The trio had spent the previous night resting in a village where the inhabitants were almost all from the same therian tribe, one that resembled spotted hyenas that could be found in the prairies of the Elmaiya Empire. The reason for Kino’s query was the way the village distributed their tasks, which was mainly done along gender lines.

In most places they had been to, both males and females did all sorts of work without any real segregation, but in the village, there were clear divisions of labor between the males and the females. The females went out to hunt, and also accounted for most of the village’s guards, who kept them safe from the ravages of the wild beasts of the region. On the other hand, the males did most of the housework, cared for the children, and other domestic tasks.

“Because it made more sense to them to do it that way,” explained Aideen to the naive girl in answer to her question. “You should have noticed it yourself. Other than a few exceptional ones, the females of this tribe are by far larger and stronger than the males. As such, it made sense for the more physically demanding tasks to be left to them while the weaker males tend to the other jobs.”

“Then why don’t the others do it that way too?” wondered Kino as she thought of the other people she had run across in her journey so far.

“Because this sort of physical difference between the genders is relatively rare, if you count every race and breed out there. Most only have minimal differences at most, with the main ones who had large differences between the males and females being certain therian breeds and humans. With humans, it’s the other way around, though. Other than an exceptional few, the males are the stronger ones in general.”

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Huh, so the human males are stronger than big sis Aideen and Celia?” asked Kino. She had not counted herself since she had mixed heritage, and in most cases the physical capabilities of mixed-heritage people tend to lean more to their stronger heritages.

“Most wouldn’t be. Celia and I pretty much already fell into the ‘exceptional’ category by this point, though there would be exceptional men who are stronger than us as well,” replied Aideen honestly. While she had never truly ceased training herself, there was only so much that a body of a certain size could do, and she already pushed it to the limit as it was.

Celia wasn’t quite at that point yet, but after nearly eight decades of training, she could manhandle the average man with ease as well. Aideen herself was capable of a good bit more, since she was taller and naturally broader in build. On top of that, she could push her body much further with the aid of her magic, forcibly holding strands of muscle fiber together even when they were subjected to forces that should have torn them apart.

While Aideen could do it, doesn’t mean that she would use the ability on the regular, though, as it was a difficult skill to use.

“It’s not really the case in places where various races formed a society together, but in my travels, physical differences like what you saw earlier can often form social norms that ended up being the building base of society in places and countries where one race is the greater majority or even formed the entire population on their own.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, been to a small country in the north that was practically all human. There women are treated as property. They belong to their fathers when they were unmarried, and later to their husbands after they do. Worst of all is that the women themselves who were born into such a society often continued to perpetrate the notion that they are property to their own children, as to them, that was the only ‘correct’ way to behave that they knew of.”

“How did they act when you went there then, big sis?” asked Kino with some incredulity.

“Oh, quite rudely, I assure you,” replied Aideen with a smirk on her face. “For most of my stay in that region I was traveling with a caravan, so they left me alone when I was with them. One time when I was wandering around town on my own some slimy bastard tried to kidnap me saying he’d teach me how a woman should behave, though.”

“What did you do to him?” came a question from Celia. The incident Aideen narrated happened before the two of them met, so she was unaware of the story.

“Oh, nothing too much,” replied Aideen nonchalantly. “I just rendered the bastard forever unable to have children or get intimate with another. Gave him a severe case of incontinence too, for that matter,” she added. “I mean, I guess a really good healer might be able to fix what I did to him, but that's likely going to bankrupt the asshole anyway, so that also works.”

“Remind me never to get on your bad side, big sister Aideen,” said Kino with some trepidation in her voice. Beside her, Celia nodded in affirmation of what the younger girl had just said, and gave Aideen a slightly wary look. She knew that Aideen could be cruel and ruthless at times, but most remembered her mostly as a healer. People often forget that knowing how to heal also means knowing how to kill… or worse.