The Culture Column
They are organized into tribes of twenty to thirty members, but these are more like loose cooperatives. The members operate on their own more often than not, sharing a common area where they will go if they want to be assured of meeting another member of the tribe (on any given day there will be at least one hijaw sleeping there), and they band together for activities which would benefit from numbers. While any hijaw can make basic tools, those who are especially skilled can provide higher-quality goods than the others in the cooperative would otherwise have, in exchange for other things, such as food, or tools which that hijaw doesn't know how to make as well.
As noted before, hijawel tribes are very mobile, sometimes taking a specific path around a wide region, swinging back around and completing the circle every few years, while others wander more or less aimlessly and just go where the hunting is good, especially if the entire region back home is suffering a decline in prey.
Tools
Hijawel change forms frequently and the obvious solution to the resulting problem of carrying any tools they possess, using a pack, is embraced whole-heartedly by the shapeshifters. It doesn't quite enter ìingenious designî territory, but any hijaw can be counted on to be in possession of a pack with adjustable straps and extra pockets on the outside. A well-made, durable pack is one of the most prized possessions which a hijaw can have, and usually one member of the cooperative is responsible for making packs for the others.
Other tools which can be counted on to be in a hijaw's possession are knives (principally for preparing food) and hand axes (for attacks in human form). The hijawel of some tribes make several axes each, specially designed for throwing, while others make throwing sticks, sometimes inserting a lining of edged bone or stone, or sharpening the wood itself.
The emphasis in hijaw culture is on small objects in order to maximize how much can be fit into a pack.
Communication
While it is very simple, having only some three hundred symbols, each representing a different concept, the hijawel have a written language (scratched out with claws or knives) and as any hijaw would be happy to state, if it were in a mind to discuss language rather than eat the questioner, those three hundred symbols are exactly as many as they need to express anything which they would need to write down. Being often on the move as they are, they have no use for records or books. They also possess two spoken languages, called kal and kakesh, which are used in the human and jaguar forms respectively. Kal is far more complex, while kakesh has about eight hundred words and to an untrained observer it is indistinguishable from growling. A hijaw can try to use kakesh in human form but it will sound slurred and he will have to pay be especially slow and clear in order to make sure that he is understood.
A final form of language demonstrated by the hijawel is entirely musical in nature. Thigh-bones are the most common material for the tukubol, a sort of flute which is used not simply for the purpose of music-making but also for the telling of stories. The first language which a young hijaw learns is kakesh, but after this is okeebil, the language of the tukubol flute, so that the child can understand the stories of her tribe. The production of tukubolel is generally done by a single hijaw, who makes not simply an instrument but a work of art, with unique etchings covering every square inch of the object. Those who are the most well-versed in the tukubol stories are called kojomenilel (or kojomenil, in the singular), and occupy a unique place in the otherwise nonexistent hierarchy of the cooperative (which is by its nature usually an anarchic gathering of individuals who, as the term suggests, cooperate when the need arises and otherwise simply try to not get in each other's way). They have no official standing but they have the authority of one who is greatly respected.
As pointed out elsewhere, learning several languages is no problem for the hijawel (indeed, it's not really a problem for human children, either), and one might suspect that they developed so many languages simply because their brain was screaming to be exerted even more than it already was. Certainly, this section doesn't even begin to go into the codes shared between siblings, or between twins, or between children and their mothers, or between the members of a cooperative. All through their lives, they devour languages like a particularly well-seasoned piece of meat, and the ease with which they learn new languages causes them to treat the matter almost as a game. Indeed, for some hijaw cooperatives, it truly is a game, and members of the cooperative compete to create the most complex or unique language, after which it is abandoned entirely, to be replaced by the next attempt.
Hunting, Diet, and Parasite-Spirits
Principally meat-eaters who will consume anything if it's large enough, hijawel have a special taste for those species closest to them: humans and jaguars. This is partly literal, as the hijawel genuinely consider these two to taste better than any other prey animal, but these are also their chief competitors for food, and so killing one not only gets a meal now, but reduces the amount of non-hijawel on the hunt.
Hijawel hunt primarily around dawn and dusk. They prefer to stalk and ambush their prey, and are able to follow their chosen target for days without being detected if necessary. Both forms are used throughout the hunt depending on which would be most suitable, making the carrying packs quite useful in this case. Whether they attack as jaguars, using their powerful jaws to crush bone, or humans, using axes or one of the other weapons in their possession, they go for the head, aiming to break through the skull. Hijawel strike from above when the environment allows them to do so (as it often does, since they are most commonly encountered in jungles or forests), knocking their victim to the ground and then immediately striking the head.
After a successful kill, the victim is brought to a secluded area and begin to butcher the corpse, rendering it down to many pieces. Unless the situation does not allow it for reasons of either limited time or an inability to make a fire, the hijaw will cook most of the meat, leaving only however much can fit into the pack which it carries. Additional meat might be left over, if the hijaw is already well-fed and is comfortable with preserving and hiding the leftovers in the general area of its current location.
Once the hijaw is finished with these matters, all that is left will be bones, cracked open and emptied of their marrow, and the heart and lungs of the shapeshifter's victim. While the hijawel do not have a complex system of faith, many tribes believe in spirits called chikinoyel, which latch on invisibly to other living things and drain them of their vitality. It is this process, called chikob yibil, which causes the infirmities associated with old age. In an attempt to sate any chikinoyel which may be attached to oneself, the heart and lungs are left uneaten, so that the chikinoy can grow full on that instead. The hijawel grow old and weak anyways, but no hijaw is able to hunt with enough regular success that he is able to keep his chikinoyel fed entirely on hearts and lungs.
While they do not often eat plants, they are intensely familiar with the properties of the plants in their territory if they have inhabited the area for long enough, and there are tribes which add poison to their repertoire of weapons. Many hijawel develop a liking for certain seasonings and carry some with them in their packs (another benefit coming from the cooperatives is that word of new sources of favored seasonings is spread faster), and plants which are unusually high in nutrients will also be consumed, especially in lean times. If a plant can be easily preserved, all the better.
Food is preserved through several different methods. Meat and blood is jugged in earthenware containers and then placed underground to avoid so that others will not steal it. Plant matter can also be dealt with similarly, but storage clamps, where a heap of plant matter is covered with a two-to-three-inch layer of dirt, are also very common. If made well, the plants should last for months, and storage clamps are usually located in the cooperative's common area, so that there will always be at least one person on hand if something go about disturbing the stored food.
Breeding and Life Cycle
While the hijawel generally breed amongst themselves, they are capable of intermixing with humans and jaguars. The hijawel themselves have a sort of passive awareness that there is a danger in not bringing in new blood from time to time, and any region which has had a hijaw population for at least a decade will have stories of wild strangers with eyes the color of fresh leaves, who seduce and move on. Those who have had local populations for longer will also note that when the stranger is male, he will often return for the child.
Most communities recognize the connection between these strangers and the hijawel who often prey on humans, but to deal unkindly (to say nothing of violently) with them is to call down the wrath of the rest of the tribal cooperative, and oftentimes a community which has been favored with a visit once will be favored again, and there is a noticeable link between regular visitations and a lack of predation. There is only a sixty-percent chance of the child being a hijaw, however, and in the case of children born to human or jaguar mothers, the only sign of their shifty heritage will be their eyes until they become true hijawel, which will happen at any point from early childhood to middle-age. In hijaw mothers, if the child is not also a hijaw, it will be miscarried within the first month.
Should mother and child both be hijawel, the pregnancy will last just short of five months, during most of which the mother can change form freely. For the last three weeks, however, she must remain in her jaguar form, and at the end of this will give birth a pair of cubs, which will usually be done in the common area of the cooperative. For some time following this, there will be several other females in the common area at any one time, and males (who can have a tendency toward infanticide) are denied the right to be anywhere close to the area. The cubs are blind for the first two weeks, and are able to change shape after their sixth week. They initially look to be about six or seven years old in their human form, and their appearance could be judged to be twelve or thirteen years old by the sixth month, at which point the physical development of their human form progresses more on par with an actual human's. It is at this point, too, that they will begin to accompany their mother on hunts, and they will continue to work with her for the next year or two, after which they will find their relationship a tad more strained, and be treated like any other member of the cooperative.
They grow old quickly as well, and a forty-year-old hijaw is no fitter than a human in his seventies. While damage to the teeth and claws is not as serious for hijawel as it is for jaguars, given their ability to use tools instead, the overall degradation of abilities which they suffer causes most hijawel to die in their mid-thirties.
Despite their short lives, however, they are not to be underestimated mentally. While a hijaw which looks to be twenty years old is only seven or eight at most, and is only a few years older than that, at best, on an emotional level, they learn extremely rapidly. Even at the end of their lives, hijawel pick up new skills and languages at an astonishing pace, and a hijaw which is placed in an entirely new area can become totally fluent in the local tongue in a matter of months. They have keen minds for technology as well, and anyone who would seek to trick a hijaw would do well to remember that they notice very, very much, and the general simplicity of their tools is a result of their mobile lifestyle, rather than an inability to learn how to make more complex tools.
Next Month: The gairriru bring you warfare as an art form, ritual kidnapping, and group marriages. Also, plum beer and pancakes filled with eel meat.
