Dark Edge Village

Yuki was surrounded by fluff, and she was happy. Even the yaks, though stinky, were cute in their own way. But the bleeting of the sheeps and goats made the young Phoenix maiden more than a little giddy. If she was going to raise horses with Butaj, she was going to have to learn about handling animals, and what better place to start than right here.

"Here, little one, come here... no, you hold still..." A Unicorn girl in a brightly embroidered wool dress, her hair in a long plain braid down her back, tugs along a small fluffy black lamb by a simple rope halter. Not far away, a white goat tethered to a fence post gives the girl a vaguely skeptical look, chewing thoughtfully on a dandelion that dangles from its mouth at an angle vaguely reminiscent of a courtesan's kiseru.

Yuki turned and approached the other samurai. "Ano, Do you need help? Samurai-san?" She asked once she got closer.

"Oh, thank you--would you just watch that Tiny does not slip her rope?" Saksaha responds in the same language without thinking, waving a hand at the white goat.

If Yuki's Mekhem is the common dialect of the Burning Sands she might find the Iuchi girl's speech odd and a little challenging, though not impenetrable--her accent is heavy with the guttural sounds and peculiar vocabulary of the steppe nomads.

Yuki turned towards the goat and approached. "Hello, good goat, yes?" She held out a hand towards the goat, thinking to treat him like most animals.

The goat stretches out her nose--it's clearly a doe goat, if Yuki knows how to recognize such things--toward the Phoenix's hand, curious whether this newcomer has brought any tribute to her greatness. Meanwhile Saksaha finishes bringing the black lamb closer and, with head scratches and various burblings that don't really belong to any language, coaxes the sheep baby to start nursing from the goat mother. The white goat sighs a little but doesn't seem to mind the interspecies contact, turning her head to nose curiously at the lamb's back.

"Thank you," Saksaha says to Yuki, brushing her hands off on her wool skirts as she crouches in the grass. "This one's dam has some problem with her milk and the herders could not get one of the other ewes to take her." Now that her mind is no longer half-full of livestock problems, she switches back to thinking in Rokugani--but then gives the other girl a double-take. "Wait. You know Mekhem?"

Yuki doesn't seem to have any notion as she smiles, though she quirks her head a bit at the creature's strange eyes. Still entranced by the goat eyes, she doesn't even seem to notice that Saksaha is talking at first, but jolts a little as she realizes she is being spoken to.

"Oh! Ah, hai. A little. It's not very good yet." She smiled sheepishly, which seemed fitting. "I am Asako Yuki" She said, bowing to the woman.

"No, it is good. I understood everything. Where did you learn it?" Saksaha stands up and begins to stick out her hand to clasp Yuki's by way of greeting, but the other girl's bow reminds her of the bit of basic local etiquette she's most prone to forget, and she bows instead. "And I am Iuchi Saksaha."

"My father got his hands on a merchant from the Burning Sands, he taught me enough of their alphabet to get a start, and I was given a book." She shrugged. "The rest has been piecing it together."

She looked around at all the animals. "So do you regularly deal with the animals here? What's wrong with that one's eyes?" She pointed to the goat that was currently being nursed from.

"If you learned to speak so much from a book, that is very good indeed." Saksaha raises her eyebrows. "Yes, on the trail all who can must help with the herds, and here in this camp I have this little one with me." She scritches the goat between its horns. "But there is nothing wrong with her eyes--is there?" Gently, she tilts the animal's chin up with her hand so as to get a look at the eyes in question, but they look fine to her.

Yuki smiled at the compliment then blinked. "The pupils... they're rectangular." Yuki pointed out.

Saksaha's brows draw together and she gives Yuki a look of mild disbelief. "Well... so they are. They are supposed to be. Like sheeps' and horses' and yaks' eyes, and all the other hoofed beasts."

Yuki paused at that and blushed. "I guess, maybe I'd just never looked before. Not that I've seen many of those creatures up close before."

"Yes, I have heard they are not much kept in this country," Saksaha accepts this explanation rather magnanimously. "Except by the Dragon. Maybe you would like to take a pair home and start a herd, Asako-san?" she suggests with a cheerful smile.

Yuki smiled a little and shook her head. "Arigato, but no. We wouldn't really get much use out of them, I'm afraid. I don't know how to make cheese, though I hear it's made from milk and I'm not sure I could convince my family to drink that." She paused then. "Though, if my marriage goes as I hope, my future spouse was talking of raising horses." She played with her hair a little in thought.