Nobody really cared to hear about how barbaric everybody else was. If they'd survived childhood then by adulthood they either they knew or they didn't.
She began whistling, the sort of continuous meandering music that birds didn't bother to make because it served no purpose. Zea didn't really feel like getting an arrow or a dart through her eye as thanks for bringing company back with her.
The first leg of the climb was the tallest, with a starting platform easily spotted from up in the trees but shielded from view by the branches below. The path itself was made from bamboo and woven hemp, light enough to sway a little as they walked on it but sturdy enough to only need replacing once or twice a year.
They passed one ring of the path that circled a tree and held stacked firewood beneath oiled canvas.
Around a couple more trees and across three more forks in the path--which presumably led somewhere else--Zea and Oblirin reached a more strongly-reinforced scaffolding over which an open-sided oiled canvas tent had been stretched. There was a woman inside it grinding something granular on a flat stone, and she stood up at the sight of Zea returning with company.
This woman was, if possible, even more small and fragile-seeming than Zea. Unlike Zea, she had rough and thorny vines wrapped in her hair which shifted and twisted to keep themselves from slipping down around her cheeks. Her smooth brown skin made her age difficult to determine.
"Oblirin, this is Granma Jenny. Gran, this is Oblirin. We ran into each other while I was harvesting and we have something we've got to work on. Do you mind if he stays?"
Jenny's bright green eyes flashed between Zea and this stranger, and without a word she turned to walk away.
"That means yes. Grab a patch of floor, Oblirin. At least here you won't get rained on. Or eaten, probably. Gran's mostly reformed."
A slightly louder than necessary thump from Jenny's grinding indicated that she'd heard Zea and wanted the priestess to know it.
"Almost completely."