----
Asta wished it was raining. She was in the mood to curl up on the couch with Molaki and a good book, or several good books, though she barely knew what that feeling meant. She hadn't been lying, of course, with the truth serum and the interrogation. They had books, and could read, in her village, but they only had stories, and many of them were short. She was amazed at how thick these books were that were all over Molaki's house.
This one she had picked up was a fiction story, not unlike the ones she had at home, but longer, and far more detailed. She knew most of the words, but some of the more descriptive ones slipped away from her, and the doe wasn't ready to admit she needed help with them. It was a story about two star crossed lovers, wolves, of course, and one of them was stolen away by a giant eagle. She wasn't going to read the whole thing in one sitting; she got herself lost in thought trying to remember if the bird shifters she had met as a teen had been so large that they could scoop up a person.
She also wasn't quite sure if she totally believed that Molaki was a warrior. His house had nothing in it that proved this. As a predator, she didn't expect spears or bows or anything like that, because he didn't need anything but his own body, but nothing about this house screamed.... rough. She wondered just how much his sister had to triage to get the place to look like this, if he was like the bachelor males she knew from her homeland.
"So you had all this stuff before I got here, right? This is your aesthetic?"
Molaki looked around the house himself, craning his neck to see what she was considering, but didn't see a thing out of place.
"Yes?" he said, confused. "I mean it was far messier than this. Clothes on the floor, dishes, unwashed, you know.....do you not like it? I can change it. I know I'm not really a homemaker. We should go out and pick out some new clothes for you anyway, we can find some vases for flowers, or wreaths, whatever you want."
Asta laughed, shaking her head. "I like it, it wasn't that, I just mean all the reading, the maps. You're a warrior, I thought? A.... hunter. I didn't expect you to be interested in...."
She didn't know how to phrase it in a way that didn't seem like she was judging, or unattracted to the fact that Molaki was secretly an intellectual. It was actually quite the opposite, but she also wasn't ready to fall all over him and whisper all the things she liked about him.
"Oh, the maps? Yeah, well, my father and half the pack thinks that too, but I don't know. I'm built to be a protector and a hunter, but... that's not the only thing I want to do. There's a lot of time in the day, especially with peace right now. I hope you don't mind - "
"I don't mind," Asta cut him off, not wanting to hear him put himself down about it. "I like it. Maybe I can help you with it. Since you don't know where you are without that toy over there."
Molaki paused his chewing, smiling out of the corner of his lips, seeing a sparkle in Asta's eye when she joked about his compass.
"Come on, lets get dressed. We have to get you clothes that aren't hand me downs that are about to drag on the ground."
----
It was another bright, breezy day in Talia, Asta making note of how different that was from the normal overcast, wet autumns. She allowed herself to briefly bask in the warming sun before she silently worried to herself for her - her former - village. They at least could have banked on picking and preserving autumn mushrooms to store for the winter, even if they were not calorie dense. But if there wasn't any rain, soon, before the earth started to freeze overnight, then that too would be a lost food source. She could sense that it wasn't going to rain anytime soon. The winds were saying that at least for the next several days, it would be sunny and light. Perhaps rain was on the horizon during the next moon...
"You okay?" Molaki squeezed her hand, sensing Asta's mind was drifting again. She smiled sweetly back, nodding, pushing the worries down for now. There wasn't anything she could do right now, possibly ever. And they were going off to the town to get her new clothes.
This, she was very excited about. Asta wasn't exactly overly materialistic, but she also had never had the chance to *be* that way, not ever seeing the riches that were in Lyko. She had a few dresses, and a pants and blouse set, that she kept meticulous when she was at her former life. She herself had added the small seed beads and lacing with needle and thread, as there wasn't much else to do in the dead of winter while hunkering down and conserving energy. The idea that people would just have an entire market of dyed fabrics and garments was foreign until she had laid her eyes on it the day before. It was even more amazing that the crafters would GIVE these garments away.
"That's not what they're doing," both Molaki, and Saba, who had caught up to them on the trail, insisted.
"Everyone does their part here. Everyone has a purpose. Molaki is a Second, a defender, and a hunter. He brings down the prey," Saba explained, then gave an apologetic glance at the doe for mentioning the hunt, "that we... most of us consume at the public meals and kitchen. He's a provider. If we were ever attacked by another pack, he would be on the front lines. There are farmers who tend to the root vegetables, and..." The farmed animals were not mentioned with the mountain lion's voice. "The weavers and tailors make clothes. Of course many of us know how to knit and sew, just like we all can hunt, but it would be impractical to spend all our time making our clothing, when others do it better."
"What other jobs are there?" Asta asked, wondering where she would eventually fit into what seemed like a well oiled system.
Saba bounced in her steps, ecstatic to tell her new friend all about the possibilities. "We don't try and tell people what to do! Whatever people are best at. We also have artists, of sorts - jewelers and the like. Leatherworkers, though I'm betting that's not your thing," Molaki snorted, Saba pinning her ears at him. "There's one old woman who specifically only grows and dries herbs and spices, and makes the best apple cider. We literally have a SOUP maker. We have a cobbler for shoes, though most of us don't need them except in the winter. Hmmm," the girl hopped again, twisting some of her sandy hair around her finger. "What did you do at the deer village?"
Asta was quiet for a moment, but Molaki had finally realized she did this not because she was uncomfortable, but because she was gathering her thoughts in the best way. The doe didn't stumble over words, stutter, or add little noises to convert her feelings. She stayed quiet until she knew what she meant to say.
"They aren't as advanced as Lyko," she concluded simply. "We all did everything for ourselves. I can sew whole garments. I can farm. But I was the best forager. Do you forage? Look for non-meat foods outside the city walls?"
The lion squinted her eyes, trying to think. "Not really? Not for the village. NO WAIT, I'm wrong. We do go out for mushrooms, and wild berries. But we farm apple trees and whatnot, we don't need to go out hunting for fruits and vegetables."
Asta nodded, assuming as such, though she knew these predators had no idea how to find morels, chantarelles, and boletes like she did. It probably wasn't a skill that could be considered a job.
"I have two things I know how to do that other deer don't necessarily know, though. So I suppose those were my jobs. I can move without anyone knowing I'm there - except for scent, which was my mistake this time."
Molaki snorted. It did seem like a large hole in the entire 'shadow' situation, though he also didn't want to admit she was so quiet that she accidentally snuck up on him in the house twice already.
"The other thing I can do is predict the weather. Can anyone here do that?"
The two predators stopped dead in their tracks.
"Asta, I asked you what abilities you had this morning," Molaki laughed nervously.
"And I said that it's hard to figure out what's a weird ability and what isn't if you've always been able to do it!" Asta laughed back, throwing her hands up.