My name is Yabari. I grew up in a tribe called the Yato, in the jungles of the island we call Manzuhi. The jungles were teeming with life and lush vegetation, plants and animals were abundant. We honoured a great bird god, Quetzalian, we bore its symbols on our shields, decorated our houses with paintings of it, and our priests wore its feathers on their necklaces and headdresses. Quetzalian was a giant bird, with a wingspan the size of 5 grown men, a sharp beak with razorlike teeth, and beautiful blue-green feathers, that would change their colour depending on the amount of sunlight they reflected. This great bird was the mightiest hunter known on our island. It would come most often after the end of the summer, signifying the start of the rainy period, and it would catch anything it could get its large claws on, although it had a clear preference for sizable prey. Throughout the rest of the year it would arrive sporadically, occasionally showing us its greatness as it moved between its hunting grounds. It hunted other large birds and animals, and in a way, protected us from them. Yet we feared Quetzalian, as there were rumours that there had been times where it had caught some of our men and children, but by honouring the great bird we hoped to appease it.
I was raised as a hunter in my village, much like my father before me, and his father, and so on. We hunted using bamboo spears with metal or stone heads affixed to their top, and we'd throw these lightweight spears most effectively. Additionally we used bows and arrows, decorated beautifully with feathers, as was our attire. Once the hunting season ended, right after the summer and before the rainy season, we'd feast and throw large festivals. Food was in abundance at this time, and we lived in peace. The neighbouring tribes respected our territorial borders, and we respected theirs. However, hunting and foraging was not without risk, as outside of the safety of our village walls and our well kept farms, there was dangerous wildlife. Big cats, large birds, and flesh eating plants would occasionally attack and at times kill one of our own. I remember my first encounter with a flesh eating plant, known to us as the Raczar. I was a young child, no older than 10 years of age, and my grandfather showed me a Raczar plant, it was no taller than my legs. It had a large magenta red mouth, a light green main stem, and darker green leaves extending from its arms, and some small tentacles near the base of its stem. My grandfather explained that to get rid of the Raczar plant, you have to cut off or otherwise destroy its mouth, then safely dig up the roots and cut them to pieces, so it can't regrow itself. Despite being such a small plant, its roots extended deep into the ground, and it took them a while to remove it. It hunted insects as a baby, then later it would catch rodents and other small animals, and in rare cases, if they grew extremely well, they would even eat people.
My family taught me to be a successful hunter, and at the end of the summer during the harvest season, when hunting wasn't a priority, I'd play games with the other children, and we'd craft weapons to prepare for the next one. One faithful year, during the spring season, me and several of the other hunters' kids were playing hide and seek at the outskirts of the farms, in the jungle. Our parents had forbidden us from doing this, but we were young and naive. That day a friend of ours, Rezuko, had not returned. We couldn't find him anywhere no matter how hard we tried. We had no other choice but to inform the adults, who scolded us, and we were punished severely. When I think about it I can still feel how my mother beat me with a stick for disobeying her. Rezuko didn't return that night either, and his mother and sisters wept. They feared he had been eaten by a big cat, but hoped he had simply gotten lost and was out there somewhere.
The following day my father had decided we should forage around that area, and in the meantime we would look for Rezuko, to see if we could find him. The other children and their parents joined in, as we formed a massive search party. Unfortunately, children are difficult to track, leaving less tracks than most adults with their heavier bodies and larger stature. We gave up after a while, but had a fruitful foraging run, as we filled our baskets and sacks with fruits from the area, however no sign of Rezuko was to be seen. On the way home we took a different path and we came across a particularly large Raczar plant. Its mouth was sealed, and filled with its dissolving acids. The plants were unaggressive in this state. One of the hunters cut open the mouth and out of it fell the partly dissolved body of a young child. It was Rezuko, still recognisable despite the damage that had been done to him. This sight scarred me forever, and it haunted my dreams for many years. Unfortunately, nature can be incredibly cruel, Rezuko had done nothing to deserve such a fate. Our parents uprooted and destroyed the plant, and we buried Rezuko in the graveyard near our village. This was my first encounter with death, and it left quite an impact on me and the other kids. From then on we didn't play hide and seek anymore, without Rezuko it wasn't the same anyway.
Despite this incident, my childhood was mostly safe and at peace, I never felt scared, and we enjoyed many festivals, growing up in the safety of our village. During the end of summer we'd dance at the Quetzalian festival, as we met with neighbouring tribes, exchanging gifts, foods, crafted jewellery, we even exchanged some of our young men and women to be welcomed into new tribes, and to keep up friendly relations. We were all one big family, and we were treated as such. We lived in peace and safety, considering the jungles of Manzuhi a paradise. Sure there were bad things, but we didn’t have to dwell on those.
