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“Maybe,” Zion smiles. “I will be on patrol today. You will need something to occupy yourself with. The crops need tending. I volunteered you for the task.”
“Oh, you did?”
“Mhm. You have to choose a task to perform. A female can be a huntress, a gatherer, a farmer, or a garment maker. I don’t think you are interested in garment making, and I doubt you’re interested in being a huntress, so…”
“Why wouldn’t I be interested in being a huntress?”
“You cried the first time I fed you meat?”
“Oh. Right.”
“So, farmer or gatherer. I want you close to the village. Farmer it is.”
“Digging around in the dirt to force crops to grow,” I sigh. “Do I have to?”
“Yes, you have to,” Zion insists. “Everyone must be productive.”
I sigh to myself. It’s not worth earning a punishment over. This simple society does need productive members. I have to be one of them if I want to live here.
“Farming,” I say. “Fine. Just, uhm. One thing I need to show you first.”
“Oh?”
* * *
Zion
What has she been up to? It can’t be anything too terrible. Usually when she’s done wrong she does her absolute best to hide it. She leaves the hut and shuffles around behind it.
“Okay, now you have to be honest.” There’s a tone in her voice I haven’t heard before. Hopeful. Perhaps a little frightened.
“What is it?”
She enters the hut wearing a garment unlike I have ever seen before. It takes me a moment to realize what it is. She has made her mate’s skirt. It is not a skirt as the others wear, it does not follow the same shape, it does not quite fit, but it is the most beautiful piece of clothing I have ever seen on any woman.
“I sewed this. It’s not good. Is it.” Her beautiful features are full of doubt. She expects rejection. She does not understand how my heart swells to see her acknowledge not only our mate-hood, but the effort she put forth to show it to all who may look at her.
The stitches are uneven. The skirt is at a strange angle. It is not good, by tribal standards. But it is the most beautiful garment I have ever seen, even hanging loose off one hip as she holds it up to stop it from falling down completely.
“It’s perfect.”
She shakes her head. “I know it isn’t. You don’t have to lie to me. It was… some of the others… this was hard to get made.”
I know the other women have not made her life easy, and I know what an achievement this garment represents. She has struggled against her own fears, her ego, her reluctance. She has overcome the resistance of the tribe, and she has made something that will show forth our love for a long time to come, generations hence.
“It is,” I reassure her. “It’s everything a mate’s garment should be.”
“Really?” A small smile creeps across her face. “You think it’s good?”
“I think it’s perfect.”
“Huh.” She looks down at herself. “I don’t know what it’s like to please someone. I don’t think I’ve ever done this before. I don’t know if I like it.”
“I will make you like it, star girl.”
I have had very few opportunities to reward her. I will not let this one pass. I draw her to me. I kiss her deeply. I let that skirt fall, appreciating the design that means she is naked within moments of coming to me.
We make love; slow, gentle, deep love. The kind of love that is not forced on either side. She opens herself to me. She wraps herself around me. She takes me deep inside her and we are joined in flesh and fluid, true mates for all time.
“I love you, Tselia,” I murmur against her lips as my hard flesh spreads her tender sex. “I love you with all I am, and all I will be. You are mine.”
“I love you too,” she whispers, tears glimmering in her eyes, her lower lip quivering as we share in the joy of love that does not know space or time, that cannot be destroyed by petty jealousy, or the hatred of others. We are bonded completely. My flesh is her flesh. Her flesh is mine. In this private mate bed, we cement our love, and spark the life yet to come.
Chapter Fourteen
Two weeks later…
Tselia
Farming sucks.
It is tiresome, boring, physical labor and it is dirty. The other farmers are nice ladies, simple and very interested in village gossip. They set me to work pulling weeds from the vegetable beds and talk above my head while I crawl in the dirt, trying to differentiate between what should be there and what is there.
This is the job I have been given, and it is one I try to do well. It is an important task for the survival of the village, and I am told it is as honored as any other job, though it doesn’t seem to be.
