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My head is full, and I need time to think. I see R’slind playing on the beach with R’khar and Pak, picking up shells. She is easy to spot, because I know the yellow of her mane, the small movements of her hand when she pushes it back from her face, the gentle curve of her shoulder, the slope of her large teats. I have memorized her, and I watch from afar, pleased that she is coming out of the hut on her own. I know she has struggled, but I did not know the words to say to make things better for her. All I can do is love her and be here, waiting, when she is ready to step forward.
I think of Gren’s words, but more than that, I think of Gren with his son, and the easy affection between the two of them. I think of Gren and his resolute determination to do whatever it takes for his mate. I am the same.
Whatever R’slind needs, I will be. I just…do not yet know what she needs.
Whenever my head is troubled, I head down the beach to my thinking rock. It is a large boulder that is easily climbable and allows me to stare out at the great salt sea. The waves roll in endlessly and crash against the stone, and it sets my mind at peace, letting me sift through my thoughts. There was a spot like this back on the island, and my father would take me there from time to time, but I also remembered that he liked to go alone. I remember jogging down the beach and seeing him, in his thinking spot and wanting such a spot of my own in the future.
Funny that I have not thought of my father in a very long time. There has always been so much to do, or some new sadness to mope over. Now that R’slind is here, along with the troubles that the ancestors bring, there is more to consider than ever…and yet I find myself thinking of my father instead.
I think he would have liked R’slind. I imagine them having a conversation, and my mate’s bright laughter pealing at something clever that my father would have said. They would have gotten along well, even though R’slind frets that she is not fierce or a huntress. My father believed that not every path was that of a hunter or a fisher. He believed that your path would be revealed if you listened to the signs that the spirits gave you. I remember M’tok’s mother and her pottery pits. I remember my mother was an excellent tracker, and her mother before her watched the stars and could always find her way home on a raft, regardless of how far out she drifted.
R’slind does not have to be a huntress, or a tanner. She can just be my mate. Whatever she needs to be happy, I do not care. I think of D’see and O’jek. O’jek has been in love with the useless female for turns of the season, and D’see has never cared for anything other than her appearance. Recently she has shown interest in cooking and fishing, but it has never mattered to O’jek. She has always had his heart.
Perhaps I should introduce R’slind to them so she will not fret over being this “cloan.”
“Hey, is there room for one more?” A cheerful voice calls out below. “I’d knock, but I’d bust my knuckles on the rock.”
F’lor.
I’rec’s mate and my friend. The female I thought would be mine for so long. It is not surprising that she would seek me out. She has often come to sit with me up here. I turn and gaze down at her. She stands at the bottom of the rock, her hands on her waist and a smile of greeting on her face.
“This a bad time?” she asks. “I can come back later.”
I shake my head and kneel down, offering a hand up. “Now is fine. I am not busy.”
She puts her palm against mine and I haul her up on the rock at my side, and she gives my arm a friendly pat and then sits down, facing the water. I sit down a short distance away, gazing out as well. It is strange, because none of the uncomfortable tension between us is there any longer. Instead, it is just…a friend sitting with another friend.
“Been an eventful month, huh?”
I snort at that. Trying to think of all the changes in the last turn of the moon is precisely why my head aches. “Much has gone on.”
“Right? Nothing for years and then all of a sudden, Daisy resonates, then I resonate, then you resonate, then we have strangers show up, and there are people living underground, and…” She shakes her head. “It’s bananas.”
