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The mated new women were spread out all over the mountain. Tok, a Bitter Sea male used to sleeping in caves of stone, had a private allocation to share with Taylor. The same was the case for Abby, Kohka, and their human son, Keir. Priya stayed in Lerokan’s quarters, and the mountain Gahnala Zuh-Tephanie slept beside Gahn Errok. Valeria and Grim were the only ones who spent any consistent time overnight at the settlement beneath the Vrika’s peak. The three remaining, unmated new women, Nasrin, Tilly, and the dark-eyed, flower-skinned Fiona shared one large cave all together beneath the stone.
It was very close to ours.
Ours, as in, the cave housing the five Sea Sand men who had travelled here to protect them.
I was the first to awaken this morning. At least, I’d thought I was. But as I shifted and rose from the oddly fuzzy mountain furs, I saw the glint of Zoren’s pale pinkish-purple sight stars in the pre-dawn gloom.
I still found it very odd to sleep beside the men of other tribes. Zoren, one of Gahn Razek’s warriors watched me, no doubt feeling the same way. He had the typical Death Plains look about him. His face all hard angles, everything drawn just a little too tight, his sight stars pale like the plains he’d come from.
I gave Zoren a low grunt of greeting as I went past him into the very strange bathing area.
I eyed the set-up with distaste. There was too much water here. Water for pissing into, water for washing one’s skin and claws, not a stalk of fragrant talka gel in sight. Instead, there was odd, clinging moss that sudsed up in a slightly similar way, but it was not quite the same.
I missed the territory I had come from. The great red plains and cliffs that Gahn Fallo ruled. The hills studded with rindla blooms and axrekal berries. The place I was born. The place I’d always assumed my heart would one day burn upon my funeral pyre.
I missed it.
But I did not miss it anywhere near enough to leave her.
Them, I reminded myself.
To leave them.
Blast.
I pissed and then washed my hands and claws, hissing at the shivery feeling of water on my hide. How these mountain males could stand water enough to not only wash with it, but submerge their entire bodies and bathe in it, was entirely beyond me.
The new women liked water, too. They’d chirruped and cheered for the large, natural spring in their cave, heated warm enough to bathe in. Fiona’s face had practically glowed, her little cheeks pinkening and bunching with a smile.
Perhaps I should learn to like the water.
Bah. I would leave that for another day. I’d already forced myself into a vastly alien sleeping arrangement alongside men of other territories. I could leave at least a little of myself unchanged for the time being.
I’d never been particularly good at changing.
But then again, I’d never really needed to do it until now.
Making sure my loincloth was well-tied, I headed back out into the main sleeping cave. The others were all awake now. Zoren was still up, of course. He leaned against the clear stone of the outer wall which allowed us to see out beyond the mountain and into the valley below. The pink and purple streaks of the sunrise were the exact same shade as his own sight stars as he stared out there.
“Greetings, Dalk!” called Oxriel. Oxriel was of Gahn Taliok’s tribe, and he was the youngest of us all. He was well into his adult years, but had somehow managed to latch on to a youthful sort of cheer that I found somewhat tolerable at the best of times and absolutely grating at the worst.
As I had only just woken, and my skin still prickled with the echo of water’s slither, this was not one of the tolerable times.
I ignored his greeting, striding past him as well as Bariok (of Gahn Baldor’s tribe) and Vaxilkai (of Gahn Buroudei’s). When I reached my furs, I hoisted up the weapons I’d lain down beside them, strapping them to my back and chest.
This cave was a large one. Plenty of room for us to spread out along the floor with the very strange, fluffy furs. There was a tall, raised bed at one side of the cave, but we all refused to use it, preferring to sleep upon the ground as we had always done. The five of us may have been from different tribes, but at the very least we were all Sea Sand men. We slept on the sand and the plains. We cleaned ourselves in smoke tents, not with putrid water. And we fought like real warriors, with blades and spears, not pinging tiny projectiles back and forth at each other from feathery mounts in the sky. It was much easier to regard these other four as my allies when we stood together in contrast against the purple-hided, flying mountain males.
It shocked and disturbed me that any of the undeserving Deep Sky men had been awarded mates from among the new women at all. Priya and Zuh-Tephanie were mated to a swaggering pair of brothers, Lerokan and Gahn Errok. There were three unmated new women left here – Tilly, Nasrin, and Fiona – and I brooded on the idea that they, too, might end up with Deep Sky mates. Gahn Thaleo’s tribe had no unmated females left among them, so perhaps one or more of those females might end up mated into that tribe. The other Deep Sky Gahn had always seemed unnaturally fixated on Nasrin.
Though, I supposed I could not exactly fault him, when my own sight stars strayed all too often to Fiona’s face.
Not for the first time, I wondered what would happen, what I’d do, if she were mated to someone else. What if, one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe even today, some feather-brained fool from Gahn Thaleo’s tribe showed up here, claiming to have seen Fiona’s face in their Vrika’s pools. Or rather, not pools, I had heard, but an egg. Yes, a literal egg. The Deep Sky men got their most sacred visions by cracking open a big, white egg and staring at it instead of eating it.
Absolutely absurd.
But if it happened...
What would I do?
