Van and Tohma’s first meeting begins with a call for help that Van has every reason to distrust, but ends with a handshake and an invitation to share the Oki clan’s uncertain hospitality. The encounter joins two immediate needs: Tohma needs his escaped pyuika, Tsupi, and Van needs work and a way forward. What starts as a wary rescue becomes the opening of Van and Tohma’s partnership, grounded not in grand declarations but in the return of an animal and an offer of shelter.

The Call from the Forest

Van hears a faint voice beyond the trees and recognizes that the speaker is using Aquafaese, not Zolian, with the accent of the border clans. The northern lilt tells him the caller is not one of his former comrades. At first he continues on, even when the voice turns from a question into a desperate plea for help: the stranger says he has twisted his leg and cannot walk. Van knows that an apparent injury could be a trap; the woods are dangerous, and he has reason to expect thugs to exploit a passerby’s compassion.

He stops because a vivid impression unsettles his suspicion. Van becomes certain that the person is alone and is only a youth, although he cannot explain how he knows. The image that had come to him when he smelled smoke seems almost like something he had witnessed directly. Rather than treat the call as proof of danger or innocence, he decides to look for the hollow among the mossy rocks beyond the trees. The meeting therefore grows out of a tension between self-protection and an intuition that Van cannot dismiss.

Tohma and the Missing Tsupi

In the hollow beneath a huge spruce, Van finds a pale, exhausted young man seated against one of three rocks, with one leg stretched out before him. A reindeer cart stands nearby, but the reindeer that should be harnessed to it is gone. The youth is roasting meat over a campfire and wears the hides of the northern nomads. His face combines features Van cannot readily place: narrow eyes and a flat nose that look Zolian alongside the marks of northern Aquafaese identity. The visible difference makes Van curious, but not hostile; he removes his hand from his weapon and asks how the youth hurt his leg.

The youth identifies the cause in a single word: ossam. He explains that he had been taking hides to sell in Kazan when fallen trees blocked his usual route. After choosing another way, he found himself far from where he expected and had to camp for the night. A pack of ossam came out of the darkness like a black wave. He hid in his cart, and the animals flowed around it and vanished, but the frightened pyuika, Tsupi, had wound herself around a tree and nearly strangled herself on her tether. When Tohma freed her, she pulled the rope, knocked him down, and ran into the forest. His ankle was so badly twisted that he could not walk.

Tohma had waited at the campsite for three days, expecting somebody traveling to or from the salt mine to pass through. By the time Van arrives, the delay has left him frightened and convinced he may not survive there. His plight is specific and precarious: he is not merely separated from his mount but stranded, injured, and dependent on the chance that a traveler will choose to investigate an unfamiliar voice. Van’s decision to stop turns that long wait into the first step toward recovering both Tohma’s animal and his prospects.

A Rescue Becomes an Exchange

The return of Tsupi changes the balance between the two strangers. Van finds her and leads her back to the campfire; Tohma’s mouth drops open, and he asks how Van managed it. Tsupi presses her nose against Van’s armpit while he strokes her and makes a clucking sound as he tethers her in the trees’ shade. She answers with a cluck and a shake of her head. Van asks whether Tohma knew that a pyuika would come to that sound. Tohma did not: the person who sold them Tsupi had said she would come when called by name, so that was what he had tried.

The rescue does not end with the animal’s return. Van asks whether, in return for bringing Tsupi back, Tohma will introduce him to a fur trader in Kazan. He explains that he can live by hunting, but circumstances prevent him from returning to his homeland, and he has come to Kazan looking for work. A trader could tell him about hunting rights and local regulations, information he needs before trying to earn a living in the area. Yet strangers have little chance of getting such help from traders protective of their own territory. Van’s request is thus a practical answer to his displacement, not a casual favor sought from a new acquaintance.

Tohma accepts the obligation created by Van’s help and first says he will introduce him to a trader. Then he goes further: he thinks he may be able to find Van a job himself. He cannot guarantee it, because the decision belongs to his father, but he wants Van to come with him and says his small, not wealthy clan will find a way to feed Van and the child traveling with him. Tohma’s offer makes the exchange reciprocal. Van has returned something essential to Tohma; Tohma offers a possible livelihood and a place to stay, though both depend on circumstances beyond his control.

The Beginning of an Alliance

Tohma’s invitation is also tied to Tsupi’s future. He believes she may be carrying a young one, and worries that the birth could be difficult if she has mated with an elk. No one in the clan has seen a pyuika give birth, and Tohma recognizes that Van’s knowledge could help them keep the animal safe. The request to come live with the clan is therefore not only payment for the rescue or kindness to a stranger: it answers a concrete need within Tohma’s community.

Tohma urges Van to come, offers his hand, and gives his full introduction: he is Tohma yu Oki, Tohma of the Oki clan. Van accepts the handshake and gives his name in return. The gesture marks a change from guarded assessment to an agreement between people who have reason to help one another. Van arrived as a stranger looking for work; Tohma, stranded and afraid, had waited three days for assistance. Their exchange produces a possible place for Van and the child, while giving Tohma’s clan access to help with Tsupi.

The scene closes with late-afternoon sunlight cutting through rain-drenched trees. As Van looks at the light, he recalls a stream in his homeland and a leaf swept away by rushing water. The image links this new invitation to Van’s separation from home without resolving the circumstances that keep him from returning. The meeting does not erase his displacement; it opens a route through it, by way of a rescued pyuika, an offered hand, and a community willing to consider making room for him.