"Why do you fear them so?" he asked. "It seems more than any
ordinary fear of the harm they can do you."
She tried to explain; but the nearest he could gather was that
she looked upon the Wieroo almost as supernatural beings.
"There is a legend current among my people that once the Wieroo
were unlike us only in that they possessed rudimentary wings.
They lived in villages in the Galu country, and while the two peoples
often warred, they held no hatred for one another. In those days
each race came up from the beginning and there was great rivalry
as to which was the higher in the scale of evolution. The Wieroo
developed the first cos-ata-lu but they were always male--
never could they reproduce woman. Slowly they commenced to
develop certain attributes of the mind which, they considered,
placed them upon a still higher level and which gave them many
advantages over us, seeing which they thought only of mental
development--their minds became like stars and the rivers, moving
always in the same manner, never varying. They called this
tas-ad, which means doing everything the right way, or, in
other words, the Wieroo way. If foe or friend, right or wrong,
stood in the way of tas-ad, then it must be crushed.
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