If I had taken Terenei up on the suggestion of switching back to my human form and joining the others in the wagon, so we could let the ornithians go all-out, we would apparently have reached the school that day, easily.
I didn’t have the heart to disappoint Nurea, and I saw no traces in anyone else of anything except indulgence, so I stayed centaur-form and we alternated walking with runs that I found brisk but were only mild exercise for the ornithians.
Serru and Aryennos had both picked up enough from Terenei yesterday that he didn’t have to be the one holding the reins all day, and the ornithians seemed amenable to that. Even that clearly didn’t require undivided attention—they were inclined to just follow the road and weren’t going to veer off it into a tree. There wasn’t really much to do except talk, particurly on the slower stretches.
That meant Terenei telling us about his experiences at the school we were going to, Nurea revealing what she was hoping for and her worries that she wouldn’t make any friends, Aryennos spinning histories for us chosen via very loose associations of concepts, and Serru encouraging the others and sometimes transting concepts for me since she’d absorbed the most about my alien perspective. They were curious about my experiences with education, too, and were, inevitably, bewildered by multiple aspects of it.
Yesterday, Serru and Aryennos had given me the general principles of what was considered fundamental education here. The quick description hadn’t really given me a clear impression, I discovered. A core job of teachers was to help their students seek out whatever it was that gave them joy—the thing or things that resonated with meaning for them, challenging enough to hold their interest but not so much so that it became discouraging. It sounded like a lot of work, but then, they had significantly smaller css sizes and significantly more freedom. The teachers in a given school were expected to work together to make sure that the young adults they released on the world had essential practical and social and academic skills and had made steps towards knowing what they wanted to do. How they made the best use of their own skills to reach that goal was up to them.
Taxes existed, as it turned out—bank accounts paid it automatically, in fact, although you could turn that off and use other methods. The money went to the capital, and was then distributed. Bank accounts existed that were for organizations like schools, or a local medical network, or a municipal council, or the wardens of a settlement who straddled social work and first response and what passed for w enforcement, and funds were then distributed from there for operating costs and pay and maintenance.
Since it was possible to turn off the auto-pay setting, I asked them what would happen if someone simply chose not to pay at all.
“Why would anyone do that?” Nurea asked.
“Is anyone ever so poor they actually can’t? I mean, do they ever not have enough money?” I knew there was no one going hungry or cking medical care, and I thought Serru had said she didn’t know the word ‘poverty,’ but that wasn’t the same as having money.
“No,” Serru said, as Terenei gnced sideways at me with a puzzled expression. “Money isn’t difficult to get and taxes aren’t unreasonably high. You and I have made enough, casually gathering, to cover all normal expenses and then some. Virtually anyone has enough tucked away in the bank to help with unexpected events—not enough to live idly for an entire lifetime, but enough to make certain one can get securely established next time around. For those born with empty bank accounts, parents and family will contribute to help with a solid start. If something does happen to make it a hardship to pay, the local council would be able to make arrangements based on circumstances. That sort of thing is part of their job.”
“What would happen if someone didn’t pay their taxes despite that? No arrangements, just decided they weren’t going to.”
“It would be... odd,” Serru said. “Aryennos? Have you heard of that happening?”
“Once,” he said. “It was in a book trying to understand anomalous behaviour. That individual was essentially shunned by the entire community, on the grounds that if they were unwilling to meet their obligations to the community, they forfeited any obligations from the rest of the community towards them. If you really want to fill your bank account, well, go to it I guess, although there are probably more interesting and satisfying things to do with your life, but do it after you meet your responsibilities. I think they tried moving to a different region but wardens stay in contact with each other and with the clerks who handle all the administrative tasks for a settlement or province. Wardens and clerks each have specific abilities the rest of us don’t have, like clerks making sure the nearest wardens and clerks are notified if a particur bank account is accessed from any bank, so you can’t really just do a bad thing and run away and have no consequences. Anywhere they went, they were refused community services and frequently private ones too.”
“What happened to them?” Nurea asked.
“It would have been pretty miserable, with people mostly not willing to buy anything from you and a lot of people not willing to sell anything to you even if you had money. Eventually they gave up and talked to a settlement council and started paying taxes again.”
“Any penalty?” I asked. “Having to catch up, or anything?”
“No. That might have made it harder for them to just re-integrate. Probably local clerks kept an eye out for a while that they didn’t skip again, but once they were back to paying their share, there was no reason to pursue it any further.”
So the goal wasn’t punishment or deterrence, just to get the person who had strayed safely back onto a constructive path, and they were willing to compromise to increase the odds of achieving that. Future wellbeing mattered more than demanding back taxes. That was fascinating in itself.
“The ideal thing for everyone to do,” Serru said, “is to be yourself and express that. Explore yourself and the world and add to it in your own way. But that means it’s the ideal for everyone else, too, and that’s something to keep in mind at all times. Actions have consequences and not bothering to consider them is not a valid excuse. For everyone to be able to reach that ideal, basic support structures have to exist that everyone can access at need. Which means that it is everyone’s responsibility to contribute towards maintaining those support structures, in your own self-interest so they exist when needed, and in the interest of helping others, who will directly and indirectly affect your life. The effects may ripple into your own next life, even.”
“I never really thought about it in those words,” Terenei said. “Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever really bothered to think about it at all. All of that is just... obviously how things are supposed to go.”
Serru ughed. “I’ve had enough conversations with Nathan that I’ve found myself repeatedly trying to verbalize concepts I always took for granted and trying to see them from a different perspective. It’s been interesting, not only hearing about another world but learning a new way of seeing ours.”
“It certainly sounds like an education.”
So you could make accumuting fabulous wealth a goal, if you really wanted to. This culture saw no value in money being hoarded instead of circuted, and therefore would not give you any particur respect or status or special privileges for being rich. In fact, if they considered the means you used in the service of those ends to be socially disruptive, you might get the opposite result. But there were no social or legal or technical barriers to stop you and you could do it—after your responsibilities to community stability had been met.
I liked this world. I really did.
My education on the local educational system, with further excursions into reted systems, continued through the morning, with a couple of pauses to go faster for a while.
Just past a pce where this road met another, we paused for lunch. I saw Serru twitch a bit, looking out at the forest; Terenei saw it too, and teased her about taking a day or so off. We had plenty of food with us, in the form of fresh bread, butter and cheese, vegetables, and a thick pate-like spread with a surprisingly intense and satisfying umami fvour, which was apparently a specific mixture of mushrooms and leafy things and salt. Honestly, I thought that even as a felid I would probably have liked it. We didn’t bother starting a fire for tea, since we had several gourds of fruit juices with us and there was a spring to refresh our water supplies. The pastries I’d been given as a gift had been shared the night before, but there were still cookies that hadn’t been eaten at lunch yesterday. All in all, it was an excellent picnic to enjoy with friends.
We were still eating when Serru nodded towards the road. “We have company.” She raised her voice. “There’s a spring here, and you’re welcome to join us. Do you have food with you?”
Since the pair in question consisted of one adult and one that I estimated to be around Nurea’s age, it struck me as fairly likely that they had the same school as a destination.
Both were the local version of human, which I was actually getting used to so the variable ears and exotic hair colours just felt normal, although in this case, the adult in question was so slender other than her substantial breasts and moderate hips that I couldn’t entirely process how she was also strong enough to be walking along this road. I don’t mean just the kind of build that happens when someone has a fast metabolism and can’t gain weight, I mean something you’d see in a comic book or cartoon. Her skin was a soft medium tan, and her abundant, barely-controlled hair was a vivid magenta. The boy with her had pale aquamarine hair, skin that was both darker and more coppery in tone, and a sturdier build.
“We have food,” the elder of the pair assured us. “But company would be welcome. I’m Kylien. This is Zephys.”
Terenei offered introductions to our group, while the two newcomers found seats on the grass with us.
Sure enough, Zephys was going to the same school, having exhausted information sources closer to home on his favourite subject: trees. It had not occurred to me that there could be so much to know about the limited species and size phases here, but clearly there was: not only identifying them and all their attributes, but also knowing what trees could be found where, what wildlife and secondary pnts were attracted to them or avoided them, how to encourage them to grow, and everything that a given tree could be used for. There was a school closer to home he could have gone to, but the one we were headed towards was home to a well-known expert who was part of an enormous shared greenhouse project, housing not only exotic trees but smaller pnts and birds and pollinating insects. That Terenei had been there, and had in fact been in the greenhouse because it offered artistic subjects, led to a deluge of questions; Terenei just ughed and tried his best to answer.
I wasn’t surprised in the least that our two new friends were invited to hop in the wagon. We couldn’t just leave them to walk, when there was plenty of room for them to ride.
It did lead to a little reshuffling, though. Nurea wavered, visibly torn between her fascination with centaurs and the potential for a new friend, and decided she needed to be in the wagon so she could talk to Zephys.
Before Serru could hop in the wagon, I id a hand on her shoulder. “Going to leave me all alone? We could find a few things to gather and still catch up, as long as the wagon doesn’t go too fast.”
“We won’t be going past the next fork without you,” Terenei said lightly, rubbing the throats of both ornithians. “And you might feel better if you can scratch that particur itch.”
“I am not that obsessed,” Serru grumbled. “There just happen to be some very useful pnts around here that are in high demand. We’re moving downhill again but still in the Forest, there are specific pnts that like the damp soil before we reach outright swamp.”
Terenei caught my eye, and fshed me a quick smile, before his attention went back to Serru. “Then go collect some. We’ll be fine.”
She hesitated, then capituted. “Stay left at the next branch, and a short way past that you’ll reach a stream that crosses under the road. It would be a good pce to stop for the night. Don’t leave the road. We’ll reach the school tomorrow morning from there, no question.”
“Stay left, camp at the first stream past that. Keep the road in sight. Got it. We’ll see you two in a little while.”
Aryennos, in the back of the wagon, handed Serru her green-and-brown personal bag. I already had my saddlebags, of course.
With Serru simply walking beside me, we were quickly outdistanced by the wagon, the ornithians happily moving into a lope.
“Whatever the reasoning for that,” Serru said, “Thank you.”
“Two reasons,” I said. “You decided you’re okay with me, you’re tolerating Aryennos, Terenei’s your friend, and Nurea’s his family, but I could see your expression at the thought of adding more people even for the rest of today and the early part of tomorrow. From the way Terenei was watching you, he knew it too, and wasn’t sure what to do that wouldn’t be appallingly rude.”
“Mm. And the other?”
“How long do you think it would take for me to say something that would lead to yet more people discovering that I’m not from here? Look at my record so far.”
She chuckled. “There is certainly that. They’re going to reach the stream a lot faster than we are.”
“Oh well. As long as we get there for supper, I don’t care.” I surveyed the road ahead of us, which had curved enough that the wagon was out of sight, and gestured for my HUD.
In my felid form, I shook myself, slung the saddlebags over my shoulder, and grinned at her. “So, what’s around here that’s the most useful to gather? And just how wet are my feet going to get, if we’re headed down a slope towards wetnd?”
