I was led back to Ushem’s house in awkward silence. No one really knew what to say to each other, me included. It was an uncomfortable start to a living situation, but that was more or less expected.It might have just been easier if I spent my nights in some kind of prison, but between a lack of metal and the existence of Blood techniques, prison wasn’t really feasible. Sheowon society was also probably fairly low crime in the first place, since the Blood Bond produced a prosocial culture, and the usual drivers of crime weren’t really present. Uli culture was also fairly low crime, if you ignored all the killing, since the tribe as a whole was taken care of. Any conflict that escalated far enough just turned into a challenge, and that solved most issues quite decisively.Ushem’s home wasn’t all that different from the elders’, though it was a little messier. I lowered my head to step through the doorway, and watched as the quartet naturally eased into various chores and tasks now that they were home. Ushem, Pliwa, and Keo all started doing things like rebuilding the fire and starting to prepare some food, leaving me with their fourth family member, who was watching me from the corner of his eye.“I never caught your name,” I finally said.“…Lowar,” he grunted.I waited a moment to see if he would ask anything of me, but he just glowered, so I continued uncomfortably watching the others.“This is probably going to make me sound pretty stupid,” I said to Lowar after a little while. “But what’s that?”Lowar glanced at what I was pointing to. “The… fire?”“The stuff burning, I mean. Is it dung?”“No, that’s turf.”“Turf?” I repeated, wondering if my translation blessing was acting up. It certainly didn’t look like dried grass. As I thought on it, some word association seemed to click and I realized he was talking about peat.My recollections of my life on Earth were pretty fractured and hazy, (...)