They bury their dead.

It seems terribly messy and unhygienic to me, leaving their bodies to be eaten by burrowing animals and worms, but they dressed Storm Cloud in all her shamanic regalia, wrapped her in a tanned antelope skin, and lowered her body into the pit they had dug. Then each of her descendants filed by the pit to add some small offering—mostly foodstuffs—before they filled in the pit with earth. I gave her the shell I had found by the sea.

By their beliefs, they are honoring her, just as we honor our dead by teleporting their bodies into our sun. It seems very strange to me, but our ways would clearly be impossible for them, and they must dispose of bodies in some way.

I teleported back to the shelter when the funeral was over, both to update this journal and to think. Does it make sense to stay here? I know now that this is beyond the range over which the People normally wander, even in good years. Would it not make more sense to move the solar panels and the computer to the vicinity of the lake? It is not quite as stable as here; the lake is in a rift valley. But I can perceive magma rising, and surely I could avoid eruptions.

Rain Cloud has told me that while they very the exact site of the gather, it is always somewhere along the shores of the lake, and if I chose to have a place there, they would find it much easier to locate me. He even suggested that Meerkat, who no longer has a group and cannot live by herself, could serve me. I am not so sure about that.