Living in a city as large as Jatine was both a blessing and a curse when it came to wordliness. A bustling city right on the ocean mean endless opportunities to meet people of other tribes - travelers came and went like the tide, here one day and gone the next. In her roughly seventeen years of life, Iro had seen and encountered countless people from tribes not her own, usually from a distance but with increasing familiarity. But a city the size of Jatine also had its ways of keeping its residents in place, as it were. There was so much happening here at home that there seemed little reason to look beyond the city's borders. What more could anybody want? Busy, bustling Jatine was an entire ecosystem all on its own.
Still, Iro thought as she lounged back in her hammock, breathing in the briny sea air as she watched the sun dip toward the horizon, things had certainly changed. She was young, still, and the memories of an older, more conservative Tendaji were but vague snippets in her head, but they were there nonetheless. She couldn't remember crossing paths with many visitors in her childhood - especially not within the fishing family in which she'd grown up. They had lived their lives the same every day, waking with the sun to set sail and returning as dusk blanketed the ocean.
It wasn't until a handful of years ago that that had changed. The first travelers appeared and Iro could still remember her cautious curiosity. Seeing them and being around them had seemed to be something of a taboo at first, but as more and more visitors arrived in Jatine, many of them sharing the ports that residents used to launch their fishing craft, it became increasingly routine. Iro could still remember the first time she'd interacted someone not of Oban or Matori descent. An adult who had landed recently in port had stopped to ask her the way to the nearest tavern. Iro had been twelve or thirteen at the time. She had been so flustered that her usually unstoppable trap had clammed right up, she had stammered something rather unintelligible, and scurried away before the stranger could question her any further.
Since then, she had learned to find a sense of balance and calm while speaking to these travelers. Although the adults in her clan had advised caution, Iro chalked their attitude up to a generational difference. They had all grown up in an Oba that was largely centered on itself and the presence of visitors had been rare at best. For Iro, encounters with these visitors meant more opportunities to hear stories and learn about the goings-on outside of Jatine, and those stories and rumors, she learned, were worth throwing a little caution to the wind. She slowly began to interact with them - not quite seeking them out on her own, but forcing herself to stay and speak with them whenever she came across them at the docks. She took the dice games she'd learned from her family and challenged strangers to play in return for their stories, and as she grew accustomed to being around them, she began to feel more comfortable and much more welcoming of these strange faces. After all, she realized, they were all roughly the same.
Now, Iro swung herself gently from side to side with a foot that hung lazily out of her hammock, pushing off the ground on tiptoes. She watched the ships that were filing back to the docks now that the skies had turned shades of pink and orange with the setting sun. The familiar shouts and cries of fishermen mooring their crafts echoed across the docks to her ears, and the young prentice felt torn. Never had she thought to leave their little fishing community and the lovely city of Jatine. She didn't want to - her feet didn't itch to travel, nor did her mind particularly seek expansion. It all sounded like a lot of work. But she couldn't deny the curiosity that lingered in her head. All those stories that she'd heard... Iro wondered if they were true. A small part of her that she tried not to acknowledge kept asking her how she would ever know if she spent her life lounging out here in this hammock, watching the ships go by.
What if there was more?
Iro sighed. Mostly, she didn't want to think that way, and she didn't want to believe it. But some days, like this day, watching the sun go down and watching the ships pile into the harbor, she thought about all the travelers she had met and all the games she had played, and she wondered if one day, it would be her turn to be one of those visitors landing elsewhere in the world.
((wc 806))
