A Laughing Matter

By Silvertie

The sun blazed down over the shifting sands, azure sky shimmering on the horizon around a lone, dark figure that trudged through the broad expanse.

Luna. Princess Luna of Equestria, if you wanted to be fancy, but that wasn’t her. Not really. Luna was still getting used to the fact that she was supposed to be one of the new rulers of Equestria. The medium-sized alicorn was clad in a tidy, functional shirt of beige cloth overlaid with a harness that held a sheath containing her blade, Umbra, as well as a pair of saddlebags, which held the supplies needed for an odyssey, as well as Luna’s most precious cargo. Midnight-blue coat rippled with toned muscle as she walked, and a pastel-blue, short-cut mane drooped over a brow that was creased in concentration.

The problem was, that out here in the desert, Luna ironically attracted sunlight like a magnet, thanks to her dark coat. That also meant she got more than her fair share of warmth as well, and it wasn’t like deserts were known for being temperate.

Luckily, Luna was no normal princess - she was a practical one, and much like her sister, capable of an unusually large range of magic. Magic of a magnitude few could muster, she could move boulders, budge mountains, perhaps. She could slice a tomato perfectly in half with Umbra as easily as she could smash a tree in two with a magically-strengthened hoof.

And she could summon the powers of darkest night to waft air of the coldest, most unforgiving nights over her sweating body as she walked. It felt like an insult to godhood, really, but Luna was out here all alone -- who was going to judge her?

Luna wiped a brow, reflexively checked that Umbra was secure in it’s sheath (force of habit from travelling through chaos-thick areas), took a sip of water from her canteen that was strapped to her breast, thanks to the harness, and kept on walking.

This was a pattern that repeated itself often; it had done ever since Luna had left the chaos-stricken lands of Equestria three days prior, which she was frankly beginning to miss, thaumic instability or no. Compared to the desert, it was paradise; for one, the air here felt like it hated her. The sooner Luna got out of this desert, the better. Without her air-cooling magic, she was quite sure she’d just keel over in seconds thanks to dehydration and heatstroke.

The second draw was that there were things to look at. Luna didn’t handle boredom well, and out here, there wasn’t much to look at save for sun, sand dunes, and the odd tumbleweed.

Luna’s eyes drooped despondently as she saw something dark moving on the horizon ahead of her, shimmering and wavering. The mirages were getting old as well. While she didn’t fall for the “oasis” illusion (only a foal would, really) she still hated them for taunting her with the semblance of a glassy-surfaced lake, which she imagined to be cold like glacial runoff.

She lost herself in thought for a moment as she mentally chalked up what she’d do if she got out of the desert (flash-freeze a river and use that to cool off), she didn’t notice that the mirage ahead of her was growing larger, more distinct. Creatures with four limbs, running hard through the desert, a small path of dust billowing in their wake.

Luna finally stopped daydreaming and startled when she realized that the mirage was anything but, and with alarming speed, they were upon her.

Slender, low to the ground, and fast, the grey-mottled, feral-looking creatures charged, dust billowing behind them as they began to surround her, numbering a round dozen. Luna tried to track them, but realized her folly and stopped trying when it served to only make her dizzy. The non-stop laughter coming out of her assailants didn’t help, either. Whooping, hollering and loud whistles filled the air, doing it’s best to break Luna’s concentration as she stood still, eyes closed and listening for a cue that signified a change.

She’d heard tales of these creatures in the past, when she’d been little. Sand-devils, that laughed as they ran circles around helpless prey, there one moment and gone the next. Almost a myth, few in Equestria had ever seen them.

Hyenas.

The patter of paws on sand was all she focused on, trying to drown out the laughter which began to grate on her already raw nerves. There was a misstep, a scrape of sand that shouldn’t have been, and Luna moved like quicksilver, her magic reaching for her blade and freeing it in a heartbeat, eyes snapping open. She swung her blade towards her five o’clock position, where she sensed a large shape entering her personal space.

Rather than Umbra cleaving the hyena in two like she expected, she felt only the barest resistance, like the target had been barely nicked. Her suspicion was confirmed when the mottled creature landed on the sand and shot past her in a heartbeat, whooping and laughing as it returned to the circle of it’s fellows and the cover of the sandstorm that was being whipped up.

She brought her blade to bear in front of her, spinning it slowly, as she used the reflection in the frozen moonlight blade to see behind herself, a thin rime of red blood gracing the otherwise flawless edge of Umbra. The drop reached a sharp-pointed, crescent-shaped serration in the lower half of the blade, and fell towards the sand.

It landed with the lightest of impacts. Pins dropping had nothing on it, and hearing it was a super-equine feat.

And it was like a signal. Instantly, the circle became alive, going from a loud, harmless circle of laughter to a loud circle of laughter that spewed more hyenas inwards, yelping and cackling as they charged Luna, a full half of the force that started the fight.

Luna flexed thaumic muscles, and stabbing hooves into the sand, drew on the power of darkest night to send a line of solid ice shooting along the sand towards one of the oncoming predators. It moved faster than blinking, infirm sand turning to smooth, hardened ice with a cracking sound.

The intended target just laughed as he pounced into the air, easily avoiding the ground-based assault. A move that would have worked on a lesser target, but Luna countered with a telekinetic grab, and throwing the still-laughing hyena at speeds that weren’t quite as fast as she’d have liked, used him to take out another of his brethren. The two impacted hard, rolling to their paws and whooping in excitement as they rejoined the circle.

Meanwhile, another hyena laughed as it ducked under an absent-minded swing of Umbra, and charged in, seeking to succeed where his fellows had failed thus far. He didn’t, thanks to a twist of a hoof, and a sheet of frozen sand shooting upwards to block his path with frosty, uncompromising firmness. The hyena smacked into it, laughing as he stumbled away, and laughing harder as a second hyena repeated his mistake, and got up. The two retreated to the circle, laughing at each other.

By this time, the last two hyenas were too close for any walls of ice, and Umbra, as quick as it was, wasn’t fast enough to intercept them. So Luna turned her head, and eyes glowing with power to match her horn, unleashed her power.

The first hyena got a face full of vibrant moonlight, a beam of power that threw him away at speed. The second one ducked the beam, and darted around it, jaws wide open and ready to take a chunk out of a toned, fat-free flank.

Luna had something to say about that, and spinning around, she caught the hyena in the chest with a hoof, and in a textbook earth-pony throw, used the hyena’s momentum to pick him up and throw him through the air to land on the sand just beyond the circle.

Luna exhaled in a huff as she straightened up, and readied her blade once more, blinking as a bead of sweat trickled into her eye, and gauged her opponents.

Despite going six-on-one and losing unquestionably, the hyenas were still laughing. The circle didn’t relent as they just kept running; some of the runners were bruised or scratched, but they kept running and laughing nonetheless; laughing at each other, laughing at her.

Luna’s frayed temper snapped, and she brought Umbra to bear. Her horn pulsed, and channeling power through both her horn and her blade, sent beams of moonlight in many directions, shooting into the circle of hyenas. Before, she’d been nice, trying to scare them off with a display of power. But now, she’d given up on that. Clearly, the only way these gibbering hyenas would learn is through The Hard Way.

Much to Luna’s chagrin, though, the hyenas didn’t seem to care about what she had to teach, and just kept laughing as they slid under, jumped over and laughed at a magical assault which only grew in intensity, an onslaught that had defeated entire millitias of discordant soldiers in the past.

Eventually, even Luna couldn’t keep it up, and sank to one knee, a hoof resting on the hilt of Umbra, buried point-first in the sand. The sun beat down on the moon princess, and she breathed hard as she watched drips of sweat fall from the end of her snout and onto the damp sand. She wished it were colder, and in that moment, realized her folly.

In her fury, she’d cast aside her cooling spell in favor of having more power to blast hyenas with. And now, at the end of her tether, she didn’t have the strength to bring it back up, much less maintain it. And now the heat was sapping her of all her strength.

She looked up at the circle, which had slowed. As they came to a halt, and the sand dissipated, Luna fell onto her side and counted them. A few bruises here and there, but there were still twelve of them. She hadn’t even managed to put one out of the fight.

The hyenas laughed on, and Luna just gave up, letting her head fall to the sand and giving in to exhaustion.

======

Luna awoke in a dark building, resting on what felt like a thin sleeping mat, on her side. Well, less a building, and more of a tent. The heat was still oppressive here, but thanks to the shade, much better than being out in the sun, like when she-

Luna sat up with a jolt. The hyenas! She checked her body, and found no signs of injury; her coat was still matted with dried sweat (ick), and someone had divested her of her jerkin, saddlebags and Umbra’s sheath, but she was alive and unharmed.

“Ah, yes, you are, how you say, awake?” a voice asked, in broken Equestrian.

She looked around at the sound, and saw a hyena sitting on another mat on the other side of the tent. Between them, just in front of the hyena, Umbra lay on it’s side.

“What is going on?” Luna asked warily, eyes darting between the hyena and her blade.

“You suffered from the ri’ kukachi,” the hyena explained carefully, “The “heat brush”, I think is how you say.”

“Why am I here?” Luna asked. “Why did you save me?”

The hyena just laughed. “Why you here? Why any of us here? Is one of life’s greatest tamota!” The hyena kept laughing, mouth stretched wide in a grin as he struggled to bring his laughter at his own joke under control. As he did that, Luna got a good look at the hyena.

A mottled, dusty grey coat covered the creature from head to paw, dark patches of fur around his snout and eyes. Two ears curled upwards, broad and pointed like horns of a bull.

Or a demon, Luna thought.

The hyena wiped an eye with his paw, and looked at Luna, the wattage of his yellowed, fanged smile dropping a little as he saw how she wasn’t laughing nearly as hard as he was.

“Oh, come on. Was good joke,” he complained. “You are a, how you say, the grumpy guts.”

“You still didn’t answer my question,” challenged Luna. “You attacked me, then saved me. Why not just leave me be?”

“Ah, yes,” the hyena nodded, still smiling. “Is funny thing. Hunting party thinks you were prey, hunts you like we hunt anything else. You lucky party decides to bring you back here before kill, or else nobody recognize Queen of the Night. There would be kujiji on our faces then, I tell you.”

“I’m not the Queen,” Luna muttered. “I’m just the pony that got picked to take her place when she died.”

“That unfortunate,” the hyena admitted, before grinning at full intensity again. “Good thing we don’t kill you, then, or else maybe Zumozu become Queen of Night!”

Luna still wasn’t impressed.

“You definitely hard nut to crack,” the hyena muttered, before brightening again. “No worry, we deal. What is name?”

“My name is Luna,” Luna said, surprised by the change of tack.

“And I am Kikato,” the hyena nodded, and nosed Umbra back towards Luna. “On behalf of Tribe Rinkurinku, I, uh, how you say... apologize for attempting to hunt you like common prey.”

Luna rolled over onto her hooves, and with a groan, got up, shaking out her legs, and nodded as she picked up her blade once more. “No harm done, I guess. Apology accepted.”

Kikato laughed loudly at that, and Luna fixed him with a look, causing his laughter to peter out much faster than before. The hyena frowned, and waved a paw at Luna.

“Do they not have the rikarika in the Equestria lands?” he asked, confused.

“Rikarika?” Luna repeated, stumbling over the unfamiliar word, as she returned Umbra to it’s home in her harness, noting that someone had polished and cleaned the blade.

“It is the, how you say, the life laughing,” Kikato explained. “Do you not laugh?”

“We laugh plenty in Equestria,” snorted Luna. “But there has not been much to laugh about lately, and I keep feeling you’re laughing at me.”

“No, no,” Kikatu waved his paws. “Rikarika not laughing at you, rikarika laughing for you. Rikarika is celebration of life, of all good things.” Kikato got up, and padded over the packed sand floor of the tent to the entrance, and beckoned. “Come, you see,” he invited.

Luna made to pick up her equipment, and Kikato waved a paw at her.

“You no need,” he assured. “Luna things safe here, no Rinkurinku touch Night Queen things, now they know truth.”

“I’m sure,” Luna nodded, dropping the shirt and harness, but keeping the saddlebags. “But I cannot take a chance, this bag must stay with me. It carries the hope of Equestria.”

Kikato looked at her, and nodded. “In that case, you bring. But you must rikarika with us, okay? No grump guts.”

======

The two stepped out into the sun, and Luna grunted as the wave of heat hit her like a sledgehammer. The heat here was worse than it had been back when she’d first stepped into the desert lands, and she found herself wondering why Kikato wasn’t doubled over in exhaustion, even with his longer coat. She worked her magic once more, and felt the soothing chill of night wash over her.

“Behold,” Kikato declared, gesturing at the small sea of tents, “the Rinkurinku village!”

Luna did as she was bade, and beheld. It was a large group of conical tents, formed by sheets of canvas wrapped around and draped over a support of sticks. There were somewhere in the range of thirty five tents, and they stretched out across the sand towards the west, where a tall mesa of stone cast a shadow that grew with every passing moment. Luna and Kikato stood on a slightly elevated dune of sand on the southern edge of the tribe’s village, fully visible to the hyenas walking around between tents, as the hyenas were to Luna.

There were some faint whoops as the hyenas noticed Luna’s presence, and like a wave of sound, the hyenas laughed as one, each one grinning wide and gleefully. Even the little hyena cubs joined in, and Luna felt herself begin to blush.

“This is rikarika,” Kikato explained. “You are well, and healthy, and so they laugh for you.”

“Why do they laugh?” Luna asked.

“Well, clearly you incapable of laughing for self,” snorted Kikato, “So we must laugh for you.”

Luna looked at Kikato.

“Miri shi’ kiari chi,” Kikato muttered. “You are the hard work. We laugh because there is nothing not to be laughed at. I mean...” Kikato laughed briefly. “My Equestrian too bad to explain. Come, see.”

Kikato set off at a quick trot for the village proper, and Luna followed. Everywhere, the hyenas stopped looking at her and went back to what they had been doing before; some were sleeping inside open tents, others were sitting in circles as they wove cloth and chittered amongst themselves, laughing. Small cubs ran to and fro, chasing each other and rolling around in the sand. One particularly daring cub took the opportunity in Luna’s passing to dart underneath her, and around her walking legs, causing her to quickly dance for balance, and to avoid stepping on the child by reflex.

The daring action had it’s intended goal, and caused the cub’s pursuers to skid to a halt as they laughed at the opportunistic delaying tactic, and tried to work out the fastest way around Luna, while their target ran off between the tents, laughing the whole way.

Even Luna couldn’t not-laugh at that, and giggled as the cubs grinned at her, darted around her legs, and gave chase. Kikato watched them go, and Luna’s lingering smile, with pride.

“Ah ha,” he said triumphantly, grinning. “You can smile after all. We will get a rikarika out of you yet.”

“Is that all that rikarika is?” Luna asked, as Kikato continued on and she followed. “Just finding the happy things in life?”

Kikato laughed. “That is right! Rikarika good for the spirit, good for the heart! Rikarika make the world brighter place, make you smile, be happy. Happy temoji is prosperous temoji!”

“I see...” Luna nodded. “It makes sense. But what about when I was attacked by the hunting party? Was that rikarika?”

“Ah, it was not,” Kikato admitted. “Rikarika is for social, for us. In combat, it becomes rimorimo, because the rimorimo is just not to enliven our hearts, but to seed rinkate in the foe’s heart.”

“Oh?” Luna asked. “What’s rinkate?”

“You were the subject of rimorimo,” Kikato pointed out. “You should be able to guess what rinkate is.”

Luna thought back to the events that had happened not so long ago, and nodded. “Anger.”

“Blinding anger,” clarified Kikato. “To laugh at everything, to laugh at the foe as they try to silence your laughter...” Kikato’s smile dropped a notch. “Laughter can be keener than any blade. Rikarika can be used for great good, to help, but it can also be used for bad, to harm.” Kikato held up two paws and wiggled them. “This is why we have rikarika and rimorimo. The good, and the bad. To rimorimo is to be... how you say, aggressive?”

Luna nodded. “I see.”

“Using rimorimo, we blind the foe with their own anger,” Kikato continued. “No matter how great the foe, if they give in to rinkate, they make mistakes. Temoji not the strongest or the mightiest race in world,” Kikato smiled again. “But even we can win when the foe exhausts themselves in their rage.”

“Baiting.” Luna nodded grimly, recalling how her anger had led her to forget about the heat until it was too late. “Clever.”

The pair passed by a tent, where a female hyena was busy working, stirring a stick in some sort of thick paste over a fire. The hyena laughed, and nodded to Luna as she looked at Kikato and spoke a rapid stream of Hyenese.

Kikato nodded as he interpreted the stream, and jabbered something back, just as quick, grinning. The female hyena smiled, laughed once at Luna and went back to her work.

Luna leaned over so her mouth was next to Kikato’s head for her next question.

“What did she want?”

“Rinkafu ask if I teach you the way of rikarika,” Kikato translated. “I tell her this is so, because you are curious and interested to learn our way.”

“Why didn’t she just ask me?” Luna asked, hurt.

“Because no temoji apart from myself know the Equestrian,” Kikato pointed out. “The Rinkurinku have tales of a Sun King and Moon Queen, and rumors of other rulers far and away, but few have ever seen Equestrian before.” Kikato coughed. “When I was a young temoji, I went wandering, curious about the world beyond Chiriku Teshifu. I saw many things, and met a small band of travellers. ‘Equestrians’, they say. ‘Solarion’, ‘Galacia’, they say. I follow them, help. I learn the Equestrian. One day...” Kikato grinned. “One day, I meet Solarion and Galacia.”

“What happened to the people you followed?” Luna asked.

“I follow them to home,” Kikato said. “I live in... how you say, the Baltimare village, for a time, before I move on. The family... Pie, I think... learn rikarika from me, promise to treasure it.”

Luna nodded. “I take it that you have travelled far, then?”

“I have seen many things,” Kikato agreed. “Many takuji I walk. Equestria, Argenite, Zebraha. Good people, I see. But I come back, to enrichen the rinkurinku with what I have learned.”

There was a commotion nearby, laughter growing louder with every moment, but Kikato looked towards it with concern, his ever-present smile dipping once more. Even Luna could tell this this rikarika was... wrong.

Kikato’s ears twitched as he heard Hyenese on the wind, and motioned to Luna.

“Come,” he implored.

Luna didn’t waste time, following Kikato at speed as the smaller hyena cut a learned path through the village, until the tents ran out, and Luna saw what could only be described as “tragedy”.

A smaller squad of hyenas approached the village, moving oddly. Much smaller than the party that had encountered Luna, three of them walked, dragging and carrying three more behind them.

A trail of red followed where they’d been, and the wounded and weakened party arrived to forced, desparate laughter. Luna watched the villagers rush out to help the wounded, and looked to Kikato, who had a forced smile on his face.

“Why do they laugh?” Luna asked. “This is nothing to be happy about! This is not a time for rikarika!”

“No,” Kikato said. “Now is when we need rikarika most. Defeat, sorrow... all lead to loss of zumofu, of hope. Without zumofu... we will die.”

Luna understood, and in that moment, she saw the truth. An uninhabitable desert, inhabited by a race that still eked a living from the sands with nothing but sheer determination and all of it balanced on a pillar of morale. If the hyenas would pass on, it wouldn’t be beause someone like Discord broke their village, it would be because someone like Discord broke their spirit, their hope that everything would turn out okay. A race of eggshells.

Luna squared her shoulders, and nodded. “Let us help, then.”

The pair ran over to the growing crowd, and the hyenas parted as Kikato approached. It wasn’t long before they stood in the inner circle, where six hyenas lay. Three of them gasped for breath, exhausted, as they weakly relayed their tale to Kikato. The other three were in dire straits, sporting grievious wounds as they slowly bled out.

“Bad hunt,” Kikato explained to Luna. “These young temoji sought glory for their coming of age... tried to hunt the Zukate Meimoshirin.”

The hyenas within earshot all coughed as one, and spat on the sands. Luna didn’t like the sound of that.

“Zukate Meimoshirin?” she whispered.

“It is, how you say,” Kikato waved a paw as he searched for the words. “The Demon Worm. None have ever slain one, for it is immune to rimorimo. It is the bane of all temoji tribes and villages. These young temoji forgot that, and now they will not live to see the moon again, for we cannot treat wounds this severe.”

Luna frowned. “No. No, I will not let that happen.” She turned around, and pulled her saddlebags off, dumping them on the ground so she could search them. “Kikato, do you know if the Zukate Meimoshirin has venom or anything?”

“The Meimoshirin has no need of venoms,” Kikato said. “It can eat a tent whole. That these young temoji survived is a blessing.”

“Good,” Luna said, around a mouthful of glass as she brought out two bottles filled with a radiant purple fluid. “Bring me to them.”

Kikato’s eyes lingered on the bottles, and he nodded, bringing Luna to the first victim, a poor hyena with vicious gashes along his side, and what looked like four broken ribs and a shattered leg.

Luna put one of the bottles down, and uncorked the other with her magic, holding it aloft. “Tell him he needs to drink this,” she said to Kikato.

Kikato nodded, and repeated the message to the hyena, who nodded weakly and opened his mouth. Luna, with all the care she could muster, poured a measure of the solution down the hyena’s throat, where it was swallowed until there was no more.

“What is it?” Kikato asked, curious.

“Healing potion,” Luna replied. “Magic.”

As they watched, the hyena’s wounds began to glow, and with a purple haze, began to pull themselves together. Particles of dust fell out of the wounds, and the hyena yelped as his leg began to click and shift back to how it should be. Red, raw flesh fused together, leaving nothing but pink skin that was gradually grown over by hair once more.

The hyena lay there, covered in his own blood, but alive and with greatly reduced injuries. He began to rise, but Luna held out a hoof.

“He must rest,” she said. Kikato echoed her words in Hyenese and the patient nodded, relaxing. The hyenas in the crowd that could see began to smile a bit more, a few more yips of joy echoing through the assembled village as the news got out.

Luna moved on to the next pair, and her face fell. Both were in equally severe states, missing limbs altogether and with mangled bodies and faces. Too much damage to be healed with just one and a bit measures of healing potions.

“I cannot save them both,” Luna admitted quietly to Kikato. “I have only enough for one.”

Kikato closed his eyes, and nodded. “Such is the way of things. That even one may live is good fortune for us.” He turned to the two crippled hyenas, on the brink of death, barely clinging to conciousness, and asked something in a somber voice. One gasped feebly, indicating the other, who remained silent until his fellow finished speaking.

Kikato looked to the silent one, and just asked a short question. The silent one broke his silence to simply point a mangled paw at the other, and say something in a wavering, but firm voice. Luna didn’t understand much, but she heard one familar word.

Galacia.

“What did you ask?” Luna queried.

“I asked who they thought should live,” Kikato explained, pointing to the hyenas. “Rinkana says Arikarin should get the potion, for Rinkana is closer to death.”

“What about Arikarin?”

“Arikarin begged me to ask that you save Rinkana no matter what, because this was all Arikarin’s idea,” Kikato said sadly. “All he asks is that you, the Moon Queen Galacia, be the one to deliver his takaarichi rika for him.”

Luna nodded. “Very well. I will do this.” Luna unsealed the last bottle, and floated it over to Rinkana, whose eyes widened when he saw the bottle, and he began to struggle, refusing the potion.

“No matter what,” repeated Luna quietly, using her telekinesis to pry Rinkana’s mouth open, and administer the potion. The hyena struggled, and yelped weakly, but eventually gave in, and weeping tears from one good eye, drank the whole bottle, and what remained of the first one.

There was a cracking sound, and the tribe watched on in awe as the power of magic was made manifest. Ribs reset themselves, wounds sealed, and Rinkana screamed as his eye was made whole once more, and his legs extruded bones, flesh snaking out to cover them and hold the bones together.

When the potion finally wore off, Rinkana didn’t move. He just lay there, on his side, weakly wriggling paws that he never thought he’d have again, as he stared at his mortally-wounded friend.

The two managed to exchange last words, before all too quickly, Arikarin went still, his eyes going dim.

Luna didn’t ask for a translation. Kikato nodded, and threw his head back, barking one short laugh into the air. As one, the tribe responded with a unified laugh, before going silent.

The crowd parted once more, and made way for a grizzled hyena that looked almost identical to the dead Arikarin, only bigger and older, easily the most solidly-built hyena Luna had seen so far.

The big hyena had a single piece of jewlery around his neck, a translucent crystal on a thin string, and Luna felt strong magic emanating from the object. He turned to Kikato, and spat out a quick sentence. Kikato turned to Luna, and translated.

“The Zukiji Temoji Zukute wants to know why you felt his son had to die,” Kikato said.

“Because his son asked for it,” Luna replied simply. “All he asked was that I give his takaarichi rika for him, something I would be honored to do.”

Kikato nodded, and translated. As Zukute listened, his eyes went wide, and the hyena began to smile, tears welling in his wrinkled eyes.

“What did I say?” Luna asked Kikato quickly. “Or what did you say?”

“I said what you said,” Kikato explained. “And you just offered Zukute’s son the greatest honor imaginable -- it is an honor for any temoji to have their akaarichi rika given by a leader; even if I, an aririnkashichi kaariari, were to give it, it would be a sign of favor. And you are the Moon Queen, a creature of mythic power and legend.”

“Princess.”

“Close enough. You do Arikarin nigh-legendary honor by giving his takaarichi rika.”

“It’s the least I could do.”

“No,” Kikato said. “The least you could do was to have watched them all die. You intervene, and for the one you could not save from certain death, you honor personally, and say that you are the honored one, not him.” Kikato smiled. “I think the only way you could ensconce yourself in Rinkurinku and temoji folklore is to slay a Zukate Meimoshirin.”

Luna blinked. “What did I just agree to, exactly?”

“The takaarichi rika,” Kikato said. “The last laugh. Every temoji makes one when they come of age -- either one already made or one of their own making, there is no shame in using one used before.” Kikato gestured to a thick, hand-made tome being borne towards them by a pair of elderly hyenas. “Before we bury the dead, we deliver their final gift to the tribe, the gift of good rikarika.”

The tome reached Kikato, and was placed on the ground before him, so that he could open it, and look upon the words within. Luna looked over Kikato’s shoulder, and saw lines and lines of esoteric, indecipherable script.

But Kikato knew what he was looking for, and flicked to the right page, where relatively fresh ink lay.

“Luna,” Kikato said, pointing with a claw. “This is Arikarin’s takaarichi rika. You may read it when ready.”

Luna frowned. “I’m sorry, I can’t read Hyenese.”

“Of course,” Kikato laughed once, quietly. “I translate. Repeat after me.”

======

The temoji gathered around for the event; it was uncommon for a Zukiji to give a takaarichi rika, much less a fabled god. The moon queen they’d heard only legends about in the past stood tall, holding the tome of takaarichi rika past and future aloft in a haze of starlight, and in halting, but comprehensible Hyenese, gave the deceased Arikarin’s takaarichi rika.

“Chiriku, kedokimime zushimomeito,” Luna said loudly, subtly using her magic so that her voice was heard over the crowd. “Lumona, zudorinnokute morukushi?” The Moon Queen paused for a moment, as if having trouble not jumping the aririkashime, then continued. “Chiriku takazifu temoji!”

The Rinkurinku let it sink in for a moment, then as one...

They rikarika’d.

I guess you had to be there.