h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Day 5

N 43.699136°, E 42.758233° (Paste to Maps if you want to know where we start from today)

Today, the amount of trees in the gorge is slightly thinning. At several points, they go slowly because the terrain gets rougher. Passing some waterfalls proves difficult with the horses, but they eventually manage.

On the easier bits, speech lessons continue, like yesterday. Pato is relieved that some of the more modern words are the same, since his Clan introduced them, like the words for a wheel and for woollen fabric. He realises that he may encounter more cultural differences than just the words used. The Western traders may have more impact on the Clan than he anticipated so far, which doesn’t mean it is a bad thing, it just complicates matters. Pato asks Bora what she thinks about this. She answers that this may be the reason for the whole exercise in the first place. To even things out over time and not become complete strangers over the generations. What she does not say out loud is that she wonders why exactly it should be her.

Bora notices some birds she hasn’t seen on the previous days, especially one raspberry coloured bird with a pronounced beak, about the size of her hand, which has a quite distinctive birdsong. They have an easy gliding mode of flying. Bora secretly envies the apparent carelessness that radiates from these creatures.

Finally, on a relatively flat area just below another split in the river, they stop for the night. Pato is not sure which of the two rivers he needs to follow upstream, so he will scout a bit on foot, maybe catch something. It is still quite light, so using a small net Bora catches small fish in the river, to save on their precious supplies. They will need those later on. The fishing does not go as well as near the village. Probably even the fish find the journey a bit tiring.

As Pato returns, he tells that he has found out which branch of the river they will follow tomorrow. Given the number of bear tracks, he proposes to alternately keep watch and build a somewhat bigger fire than usual. He didn’t catch anything substantial but found some nuts and berries to go with the fish Bora managed to catch.

I think I'm looking forward to this journey reaching its goal as much as the characters.

enjoying this.

Now we know why Pato is learning a language. The prospect of meeting people from another background sets up lots of possible conflicts. Excellent!

Sound linguistics, too! Words for new inventions, like wheels and woollen fabrics, did indeed cross language barriers.

In Russian, the word for bread is 'chleb'. This is the same word as German 'Leib', which meant 'loaf'. Showing that they learned bread-making from the German speakers.

Just shout a lot and put O on the end of everything! (or expect them to speak English anyway) How the Hell did we get so dumb?

I blame Berlitz. (And I've worked for them!)

I suppose they were not yet around in the Bronze age though…

I'm not sure, but you're probably right.