by Ruby Dixon
TIFFANY
Well…that went over like a lead balloon.
I watch as Salukh stalks away, heading back to the tribal cave. I’m a little surprised at his reaction, because I thought we were friends. I trust Salukh more than anyone else in the tribe, because he’s been so darn nice to me. He’s easy to be around, undemanding, and always ready to help with one of my craft projects, no matter how weird. He doesn’t pressure like Vaza, or cling like Taushen. He doesn’t insist that I choose a mate, like Hassen.
I like Salukh.
Maybe that’s why his reaction being something other than “whee, yes, let’s go make out” hurts my feelings. Asking him felt safe. Unburdening my worries to him felt…good. Now I just feel like a jerk. I made him uncomfortable, and I worry I’ve lost our friendship. Now how am I going to live in the same cave as the guy and see him every day and know what happened between us?
Way to go, Tiff. You just made a bad situation even worse.
I put my digging tools back in the bag and clean my hands with snow. I kind of thought Salukh might take me up on things. The guy stripped down to dig holes for me and I have to admit, even though I try not to think about the sa-khui in a sexual way, I was certainly noticing the way his shoulders moved and the way the sweat trickled down his slate-blue abdomen. The way his hair moved like a black curtain when he bent over. I noticed the sweep of his large horns and the way his leggings hugged thick, muscular thighs. I sure noticed his eyes and the elegant strength of his heavy brow. He’s damn good looking – all of the sa-khui are – but there’s an intensity to Salukh that calls to me. He looks like the type that doesn’t do anything halfway.
Oh well. I guess I can’t dwell on the fact that he’s rejected me. It stings, but maybe it’s for the best. Maybe ‘conquering’ my fears isn’t the right answer at the moment. I’ll let them sit for a while longer and hopefully, with more time, the nightmares will slow and I can entertain the thought of someone touching me without losing my cool.
Time heals all wounds and all that. Come on time, I’m ready for you.
I clean up around the little area I’ve designated as my ‘field’ and then head back in to the caves. There’s so much to be done. I have furs soaking in my tanning cave like Kashrem showed me. There’s food to be prepped and clothing to be sewn and I want to try my wool-carding again if there’s enough light left at the end of the day. Work is good. Work keeps my brain busy and I don’t stop to think about other things.
The moment I get inside, though, my temper starts to fray. There on the doorstep of my cave is a fresh kill. Two hoppers. Someone’s gone hunting on my behalf. Probably Hassen. I mentioned once that I liked the way the little hoppers had such tender meat, and now I seem to get them daily. Ugh. And because it’s meat, I feel like I can’t waste it. I pick up the small, rat-like creatures by their tufted tails and bring them in to prepare. Maybe Josie will want some stew. She’s not in the cave, which means she’s probably helping Kira and her new baby. I sit down and pull up my favorite skinning rock and start to prepare the critters for eating.
“Ti-fa-ni?” A voice calls from the front of the cave.
I cringe mentally. “Yes?”
“I dug some of the roots that you like.” Taushen hovers in the doorway, and I mentally curse myself for not putting up the privacy screen. He holds them out to me like trophies. “Shall I clean and cook them for you?”
I give him a polite smile. He’s young and hasn’t been around a lot of single girls. I keep reminding myself of that. “Thank you, Taushen, but I’m good on roots.”
His expression sinks, and then brightens a moment later. “Shall I help you clean those?”
“I’m good, truly.” I gesture out at the central cave with my small bone knife. “Maybe see if Kira wants them? She has a new kit and would probably love for someone to bring her some food.” Come to think of it, I’ll probably just bring the stew I’m going to make to her cave. I still have left-over food from yesterday’s meals.
Taushen looks disappointed. “You do not want them?”
If I take them, he’ll be encouraged. Then again, I have Hassen’s kills here, so what’s a few more roots? “Sure, go ahead and give them to me.”
He surges forward and hands me the roots. Instead of leaving after I thank him, he sits down next to me and hovers, watching me skin the tiny hoppers. I grit my teeth.
“Tafnee?” Vaza’s voice bellows through the cavern, alerting me and everyone in the area of his intentions. “Come and see the fine dvisti Bek and I have hunted for you.”
Dear God. I have got to get away from here.
• • •
That night as I lie in my furs, I contemplate my escape route.
I need to get away for a while. The men are utterly smothering me with their attentions. What started out as thoughtful has turned into an endurance test. I can’t take it any longer. All day long, the men hovered. All day long, they drove me utterly crazy with their attentions until I was ready to scream. Or cry. One or the other. And no matter how many times I gently suggest that they turn their attentions elsewhere, it’s ignored. I don’t know if they want me as much as they just don’t want one of the other hunters to win me.
I feel like a carnival prize.
The urge to leave is strong, even though I know it’s a cowardly thing to do. It’s a bad time to leave, too. Kira’s got her new baby and needs help, my leathers need to soak for a few more days, and I just planted my crops. But I can’t take another day like today. I’ll go stark raving mad.
“Josie,” I whisper, and turn over in my furs, facing her side of the cave. It feels weirdly lonely with just the two of us in here. Once upon a time, there were a bunch of human girls piled together in the cave and it felt more like a slumber party than anything. Now it’s just us two and it feels sad. “Jo. Wake up.”
She snorts and rolls over in her bed. “Mmm, what is it?”
“I think…” I lick my dry lips. “I think I want to leave.”
Josie bolts upright in her bed. “No, Tiff, you can’t. Don’t leave me here by myself!”
“You’re not by yourself,” I say, sitting up. “There’s a whole cave full of people—“
“And one human reject!” In the sparse light given off by the fire’s coals, I can see the distressed look on her round face. “What happened that makes you want to leave? Why now?”
“You saw how they were acting today! The whole cave did.” I rub my forehead in frustration. “I can’t take much more of their attention, Josie. They’re driving me crazy.”
“So tell them all to go fuck themselves!”
My mouth feels glued shut. That’s the easiest answer, and yet…I feel like I can’t. Because if I do and one gets upset? I worry someone will try to ‘convince’ me with force. Just the other day Vaza joked that he needed to spirit me away until I resonated to him. He thought it was funny.
I thought it was terrifying.
“I can’t tell them that, Josie. It’ll just be better if I leave. They’ll get over me and focus their attention somewhere else.”
“And what will you do?” She sounds heartbroken.
“Set up camp in another cave somewhere, I guess. Hunt for myself and make my own clothes and everything. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be alone.” She sniffles. “And what are you going to do when they come after you? You know they will.”
I freeze, because someone coming after me never crossed my mind. The moment she says it, I know she’s right. I’m the most eligible female in their eyes. They won’t just let me leave. Someone will come after me.
And I’ll be all alone. The thought is abhorrent. I imagine Vaza and his laughing comment about getting me alone. I feel trapped all over again. “I don’t know what to do, Josie.”
“Let me fix it. Don’t leave, okay? Give me a chance to fix everything.”
“How?” I ask wearily.
“I’ll think of something to keep them occupied. Just give me a chanc
e, okay?”
What choices do I have left? I nod and lie back down in my furs, utterly depressed.
• • •
When I wake up, the cave is silent. Josie’s not in her furs. I dress and peek out the privacy screen. No suitors hovering at the doorstep. No fresh kills waiting for me. No presents left on my doorstep in the hopes of currying favor. This is…a welcome change. I feel like I can breathe. I don’t know what Josie did, but she’s a stinking genius.
I emerge from the cave and there are people out and about, but my suitors are nowhere to be seen. Salukh is nearby, sharpening the point of a spear. He nods in greeting and watches me as I move toward the central fire. Josie’s seated there with Kira. I sit down next to Josie and grab her hand, startling her. “What did you do and how can I thank you?”
She laughs. “I don’t know if you’re going to be too happy once you hear what I told them.”
The baby fusses and Josie hands her back to Kira. The new mother tugs a cord at the neck of her tunic and opens it, deftly sliding the baby against her breast. Kira looks so utterly peaceful and content, and it’s easy to see the wistfulness on Josie’s face.
I nudge Josie with my knee. “What did you tell them?” I ask.
“Well, I tried to think of a way to get them out of your hair without hurting their feelings. And so when I woke up…I told them about the Miss America pageant.”
Huh?
My confusion must show on my face. Josie grins. “A competition,” she says. “They’re going to compete against each other to show you who is the strongest and most clever of the lot. Right now, they’re competing to see who can down the snow-cat with the nicest pelt since we’re low on those.”
Snow-cats are soft and good for baby blankets. I look at Kira’s little Kae and realize that must be what inspired this particular contest. “And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, it will be all about who can refill the dung chip baskets the fastest.” She nods solemnly and pulls something out of her pocket. It’s a bright red seed, painted and dried out, probably from the holidays. “I kept a bunch of these because they were so pretty, and now each day that someone wins, they’re going to receive one. And each task is going to keep them very busy, keep the cave replenished, and keep them out of your hair.”
I grip Josie’s hand. “I think you’re a genius…except I want to know what they win at the end of this.” Because my terrified mind can’t focus on anything else.
“Oh. Didn’t I say? You and I are going to the Elder’s Cave in a few weeks for the language dump, and they’re fighting for the honor of escorting us. It’ll mean lots of alone time together.” She grimaces slightly. “It was the only thing I could think to offer them, short of marrying you off to the victor. It had to be a prize worth the struggle.”
A few days with one ardent suitor instead of all of them? I’m game for that. I squeeze her hand tightly. “Thank you so much, Josie.” I feel like I can breathe. It’s wonderful. They’re going to be gone all day and I can just relax.
“I’m surprised you got them to agree to this, Josie,” Kira murmurs.
She wiggles her eyebrows. “I went to each one and played it up as an Earth custom…which it is. Sort of. And I told them each that the others were doing it, and if it was good enough for them…” she spreads her hands.
“I didn’t hear any of that,” Kira murmurs. “Aehako won’t like deceiving them. He understands their point of view a little too much, I think.”
I’m a little less eager to hear her quiet rebuke. Her mate Aehako is the nicest guy, but he’s also the interim leader of the South cave and takes his job very seriously. Plus, I think of the months that he chased after Kira. Yeah, he would not be a fan of a bogus competition.
“Then you most definitely did not hear any of that,” Josie says brightly. “Besides, what’s it going to hurt? They volunteered of their own free will. It helps the cave out — and don’t tell me that they weren’t spending too much time lazing about looking for Tiff when they could have been hunting.”
Kira just shakes her head.
“And it’s not like they won’t win a prize. Tiff and I do need to go get the language dump. We’ll need an escort. The way I see it, it’s a win-win situation.” Her gaze flicks back to me and Josie looks for my approval.
She’s done all this for me. How can I not be appreciative? I lean in and hug my friend. “You have saved my sanity, Josie.”
She pats my back as she hugs me. “You just leave it all up to me. I’m going to keep them so busy you won’t see their faces much for the next few weeks. After all, it’s part of the competition that they interact with your go-between instead of you.” She winks as she pulls back.
Goodness, Josie’s thought of everything. She’s awesome. This is either the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of, or the smartest.
Chapter Four
SALUKH
I was not invited to compete for Tee-fah-nee’s attentions. I’m displeased by this, especially when Tee-fah-nee looks so very pleased to hear that the others are out, hunting to show their worth. Is this what some human women want? Jealousy curls in my stomach but I remind myself that all of the games do not matter when resonance happens.
And Tee-fah-nee is going to resonate to me.
I remind my khui of this fact over and over as the object of my attentions moves about the cavern, a faint smile on her face. She looks so very happy. I am pleased that the misery lurking behind her eyes is gone for a few short hours, but I’m less pleased that her suitors are fighting to win her and I’m not included. She’s mine, and my jealousy is hard to reason away.
I think of her invitation from yesterday – to mate with her with no khui involved. To ‘practice’. It goes against everything I have ever wanted for myself…but what do I want more than Tee-fah-nee in my furs, yielding to me? I contemplate this, and with the gnawing envy in my belly, I watch her possessively as she gets a basket and heads out of the cave.
I follow after her. We shall discuss her suggestion more in private.
She walks a short way, following the cliff walls, and then stops in front of the tanning cave to light a tallow candle resting on a plate of bone. When she ducks into the small tanning cave, I move forward.
“Ho, Tee-fah-nee,” I call out a moment before I enter the cave.
She looks surprised to see me. Her eyes are wide in the flickering candlelight, and then she sets the candle down on one of the rocky ledges. “How are you today?” She picks up a big bone – probably from a sa-kohtsk – and begins to stir the vat of stagnant water, urine, and leathers in the center of the cave.
I squat on my heels as I usually do when relaxing, but that puts me that much closer to the cesspool of water in the center of the cave, and I quickly stand again, my eyes burning. She has taken up the same hobby as Kashrem, and the stink of urine and herbs in the water is overpowering. I take a step backward for fresh air, coughing.
“That good?” she teases, and I hear her throaty laugh echo in the small cave. “Don’t stick your face so close next time.”
“The smell is unbearable.”
“It’ll make the leather so soft, though,” she says, and her voice is cheerful. There’s a happy note in it I have not heard in many days.
“There’s leather in there?” It looks like a sludge that I saw once when a dead scythe-beak fell into a pool of water and rotted there.
“Dvisti leather,” she tells me. “I scraped the fur off and now I’m treating it. If this works, there’s gonna be a run on dvisti.”
I do not grasp her words. “We eat many dvisti. Why would we run them?”
“It’s a saying. And I wish we didn’t eat dvisti.” The look on her face grows far away. “I had a pony growing up and he was real shaggy. Reminds me of him a little. Makes the meat hard to choke down.”
A poh-nee. I mentally store this information away. “I shall do my best to hunt more snow-cats, then.”
She smiles. “What brings you over here? Not
hunting?”
“I came to talk to you,” I tell her, wiping my still-watering eyes. “About your suggestion.”
All the smiles in her fade away. “Oh?” She tries to look casual but I can see the worry on her face. “Did you decide?”
“I am still thinking.”
“I see.”
“I wish to tell you why I need to think about it.”
She stirs the watery mess in the cave pit with the bone. “We’re friends, Salukh. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
“I want to take you up on your offer,” I tell her bluntly. When she looks up in surprise, I go on. “But there are things that make me hesitate.”
She pauses and studies me. “That’s fair. What kinds of things?”
“I was waiting for resonance. I wanted to share my first time with my mate.”
“Oh.” Her face softens. “Oh, that’s sweet, Salukh. I understand.”
She is beautiful in the candlelight, her eyes glowing bright, her hair like a cloud around her face. I do not tell her that it is her I wish to resonate to. Tee-fah-nee is skittish. “Your suggestion has merit, though. I do not wish to go to my mate clueless.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself, really. It was just a suggestion.”
“I am still considering.” I study her, imagining her body beneath mine. My hand in her curly hair, my fingers touching that oddly smooth human skin. And then I imagine her cringing away from my touch. The thought is an unpleasant one. “I wish to know more. What is it we would practice?”
“Oh.” Her mouth forms a small, plump circle. “I…don’t suppose I thought it through. Well, we could practice kissing.”
The mouth matings that humans are so fond of? My cock grows hard immediately, and it takes everything I have not to spill there on the floor in front of my future mate at the thought of my mouth on hers, my tongue fucking her. “Sa-khui do not kiss.”
“But you might want to learn,” she points out, and averts her face, stirring her mess once more. “What if you mate a human?”