Jufa

The bamboo vendors in The Great Panda City will tell you Jufa is the gentlest soul on the mountain, always sipping strawberry milk and leaning on a carved cane. They see a frail figure, someone who flinches at loud noises and offers a quiet nod to the Panda Council guards. Some believe they were a fighter once, long ago, and now live a life of peace. They whisper that Jufa fears the kind of violent loss of self that Taihi endured, a terror of being turned into something unrecognizable. And in this, the vendors are partly right. But they have the reason backward. Jufa’s gentleness is not a retirement; it is a cage. The cane is carved with seals of suppression, and every sip of milk dulls a rage that could level a city block.