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The jungle is silent.
To the east, the land plunges down into the green, and to the west the mountains rise high above, but here there is foliage all around, and a game track, and a conspicuous lack of small mammals and birds.
You might even say it's too silent.
That's okay, she can observe how many clouds there are and stuff, it's just annoying to keep up for long.
Well, they have steel axes to cut wood with, tents of oilcloth that do a good job of keeping off the constant jungle drizzle, small metal devices that produce sparks for fire, metal pots and dishes to cook with, and nice bottles to keep water in while they walk.
She sings it away without bothering to translate what the words mean and without even touching her notes.
The cultivators greatly appreciate the improved comfort and are able to hike more easily.
She can keep that up while they walk, too, though she will slip and fall slightly more often when she's not solely focused on her feet.
The cultivators don't really know how to deal with someone who is that clumsy, though none of them are rude about it.
She seems used to it, anyway. Her toe claws make funny noises when they're walking on rocks.
Are they there yet?
Eventually they are; the mountains grow steeper and the ground grows steeper, going from a switchbacked path to stairs running up the hill to a final passage of steep and narrow stairs that runs up a cliff. At the top of the cliff, a small watchtower with a red tiled roof guards the stairway, and beyond it a little river valley where a river winds through cornfields before plunging into the jungle below. Not far beyond the watchtower is a village where a few dozen simple peasant homes and half a dozen nicer pavillions cluster behind a low wall of unmortared stone.
The guards look nervous about bringing an unknown into the town, but the ones on duty don't seem interested in contradicting a cultivator about it.
Okay then. She'll... make faces back at them, maybe this is the face-making ritual, how would she know.
Not right now! They're more obviously cowed by the cultivators (who are doing some paperwork over here for the sale of jaguar parts.) than anything else. She can, at least for now, aggrieve random soldiers with impunity.
Well, it seems like she guessed wrong about it being making faces at each other time so she'll just stick by the cultivators and keep quiet.
The cultivators are going to exchanging various jaguar corpse items for a small handful of jade coins, and then go find a pavilion to stay at; it's a stone building large enough to give each of them a private room.
The pavilion is! It's not abjectly wasteful when it comes to space but it's also not cramped, and the beds (with nice sheets and mattresses stuffed with wool) are clearly intended to be large enough for two people to share if that comes up.
The others are going to go do their training some more and then have an evening meal together to celebrate. Does she want to join them for that?
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