She grimaced in confusion ''What is a tundra?''

That was unexpected, but should not have been.

"Imagine walking on ice. Deadly cold air. No heat," he says, in a not very good explanation.

"Here, water is life, heat is everywhere. There, heat is life, water is everywhere."

She tilted her head slightly

''Ice everywhere? I have heard of ice...hard water?'' she thought for a moment ''Are there Tundra worms?''

"No. No spice either. It's different. Bears biggest predators."

''Bears? What do they look like?''

"Eight feet, half ton, fur, big mouth and teeth, claws on paws, very strong, hunters, scavengers," he explained.

He draws one in the sand with his finger.

The description left Ahmina somewhat unimpressed...and disappointed

That's really the most dangerous thing?

''I am sure they are ferocious'' she said politely

He could sense the disappointment in her politeness and he chuckled. "Nowhere has sandworms. Closest size is whales."

''Whales?''

It made sense that she did not know what a whale was, after all

He things for a minute, then draws a pictograph of a person next to the bear for scale, then a pictograph of a whale next to the bear, which he has to get up to be able to fully draw.

"Lives in water. Submerged completely," he says of the giant mammals. "Eat small animals in water."

Ahmina fixed the picture of the whale for a good minute

''It lives in water?'' she had a hard time to imagine enough water to fit the creature

He nods at that, then points to the bear. "Often swims in water," he says.

He thinks for a moment. "Moves through water, like sandworm in sand. Both of them. Whale only in water."

Ahmina could not compute

''...okay...'' she just replied

Then a thought crosses his mind. "You hunt. You collect water. Like in sietch?"

''Water is life'' she stated first, not sure how she should approach the subject of sietches ''Sietches are our homes. You were granted a great honor in coming in one...keep what you have seen and heard to yourself.''

"So... means of draining water from corpse. Like stillsuit, or sietch," he says. "Drinking too much blood makes sick."

''No water is wasted'' she confirm somewhat cryptically ''The dead as no need for it, the living do''

"True," he says. It wasn't confirmation of his thought but it was suggestive of his feeling. They had some means of harvesting water from a corpse. It made sense with talk of keeping water as part of the sietch.

"Water limits size of sietch. Getting person's water is future strength."

''Water is life, life for the children, the adults and the elders. Not mere strength: persistance''

Strength was really his catch all for such things, because it used a single syllable. So he just nodded.

"Eat meat mostly? Keep herds?" he hadn't seen any sign of such, but if they had so many people as he guessed from the size of the sietch, they couldn't survive on hunting the tiny animals of the desert alone. Plus, he had been given homemade cheese earlier. That came from something. Also... it was wrapped in a leaf...

It all made sense, that there would be some sort of small cultivation and animal husbandry to support the population. But each animal or plant they raised came with a cost in water that limited their human population. It must have been either a very precarious balancing act or they must have had significant water reserves hidden away.