"I want someone with a clever tongue, someone who can communicate with the spirits of the Sky God and speak five and a half sentences! I lure him with food, and he falls from the sky, as graceful as a spirit! He is a water ouzel, able to fly up into the sky and land in the water, able to communicate with every kamuy! As long as I feed him well—with venison and mountain-vegetable soup, with salmon and chewed wine—and make him cry out happily... haaha, chirp chirp chirp!..."
The cheerful sound of the harp rose once more, between the tribe's hearths, beneath the moonlit night by the sea, and in everyone's hearts. As a large coastal tribe, the Cold Swamp Tribe had prepared abundant food to entertain the brother tribe of the same inheritance. The aroma of food and the laughter of the people, like moonlight and tidewater, filled the entire seaside village.
Wind-dried and smoked venison, mountain-vegetable soup boiled with Allium victorialis, fermented salmon, and uniquely prepared chewed Fruit Wine were all packed into clay jars and wooden vessels and brought before Zuwaro.
Chewed wine, in particular, required the selection of pure Ainu maidens. After bathing and praying, brushing their teeth with salt and twigs, they would place the brewing ingredients into their mouths and chew them, filling the jar bit by bit before fermenting it. In truth, this was an ancient custom commonly found from the Ainu to Ryukyu, and it also carried the meaning of offering sacrifice to the gods. The girl holding the jar smiled sweetly, and after pouring Zuwaro a cup of wine she had brewed herself, her face inexplicably flushed red. She bowed her head like a fawn, gave him a salute, then withdrew to one side and continued singing the song of