the crossroads
Between the two largest villages along the river, migratory boys have established an area to rest in their travels. It is as close to a boys' village as exists, but it is not intended for long-term shelter. It is laid out along a stream as a map of the women's river from north to south, with a pipe tree hut representing each village. When a pack of boys reaches the crossroads they usually stay until the next pack arrives. After exchanging news, the earlier pack leaves trail signs in the shelters to inform following packs about their intentions or observations regarding the villages, and then continue on their way. Although packs may sometimes meet each other in villages, the crossroads is the only place where boys can speak freely to each other.
Purpose / Function
Since boy packs do not predictably cross paths, the crossroads serves as a way for them to leave vital information for each other. This can include their plans for where to stay during the rainy season, who in a village is friendly, what hazards to be aware of on the trail. Each pack will try to visit the crossroads at least twice during the dry season, both early and late, to stay up to date.
Alterations
Structures in the crossroads tend not to be permanent. Since boys travel mostly during the dry winter months, the area is uninhabited during most of the rainy season. The first boys to reach the crossroads often find the village huts washed out or knocked over. They will rebuild the hut corresponding to the village where they spent the rainy season--usually the middle village, which is closest--but leave care of the other huts to whichever pack was most recently there.
After the incident at Moon Wish village, the boy packs came to the conclusion that no village could be trusted with young boys in their second growth. They built more permanent shelters at the crossroads and left the youngest boys there in care of the oldest, to wait to join packs until reaching their maturity.
Architecture
The structures representing each village are not fully built houses. They are square, three-sided huts assembled from pipe tree sticks lashed into sheets. Broad leaves woven between the sticks provide additional windbreak. Each hut contains four or five large flat stones for the purpose of displaying messages.
Related Ethnicities
View from the future
When the uprising occurred at Moon Wish Village and the radical faction was banished, the boys destroyed the corresponding hut and declared the village itself off-limits to boys.Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Pretty interesting - exchanging news, trail signs (and how the boy packs communicate) and the crossroads as a rest centre. I appreciate the tooltips. What is the second growth of boys? I am also curious as to what the boys would write with on the message display stones and how permanent it is.
Shroom People
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I have more information about the trail signs at their article here Basically, the messages are rocks and other small objects laid out on the slabs in specific configurations. They're not permanent, and the shelters exist mainly to protect them from weather and animals. If a message is important enough the boys will make several copies.
"Second growth" means puberty, and I should have either said so or tooltipped it. I'll fix that after the badges are up. (By the way, those other tooltips are actually article excerpts. I've fallen in love with excerpts because they're like tooltips that pop up automatically whenever I add a link.)