Her tongue rambled aimlessly between cheek pouches. It was a bad business, this. Though the Sakuntala were accustomed to warfare, war always brought suffering. As for her personal feelings toward the Deyzara, she was ambivalent. She neither liked nor hated them, as so many of her fellows did.
If only the Deyzara had made a greater effort to blend in with the Sakuntala! To gain knowledge of the ways of mula, to participate in the various complex but learnable katola ceremonies. To mute their own gaudy tastes and incessant activity. True, it had made them successful in ways only a few Sakuntala were now starting to match. From the beginning, the Deyzara had grasped the intricacies of Commonwealth commerce, passed on to the first immigrants to Fluva by their Tharcian progenitors. These the Sakuntala were forced to learn from scratch. Many of her kind were making great progress in mastering such matters. The estimable Jemunu-jah, for example. But it took time—and the Deyzara had arrived already familiar with many of the intricacies.
It had to be admitted that a few of the Deyzara had made the transition. Without entirely abandoning their own ways, they had learned well those of the Sakuntala and willingly deferred to them as the original inhabitants of Fluva. But all too many Deyzara still remained isolated from their neighbors, keeping strictly to their own customs and dealing with those of the Sakuntala only when necessary. These Deyzara had no mula, none. One way or another, she knew, this would have to change.