When I open them again, I’m met with my mate’s gaze. Though I’m disoriented for a moment, the warmth of her body in the furs is welcoming in the cool morning air. One of my arms is still around her middle, and I pull her a little closer to me as I touch the top of her shoulder with my nose. She smiles, and my morning is perfect.
Beh only eats a small amount of the dried antelope meat and drinks a sip of water for her breakfast. I’m worried that she does not eat enough food to give her strength and wonder if she is already concerned that we will not have enough for the winter. I decide she must begin collecting food, so I bring her the reeds so she can start making collecting baskets. As I approach her, she tilts her head to one side and looks from me to the reeds.
She doesn’t start weaving. Instead, she gets some of the mint leaves she gathered the day before and rubs them against her teeth, much like she had with the end of her clothing back at the lake. When she’s done, she chews up another leaf and then goes just outside the cave to rinse her mouth with water from the water skin.
I follow her to keep her safe.
When she’s done, she hands me some of the mint leaves. Unlike Beh, I did eat enough for breakfast, and I’m no longer hungry. When I don’t do anything with the leaves, Beh sighs and takes them from me. Then she makes me open my mouth and rubs my teeth like she did with hers. Afterwards, my mouth tastes cool, and my teeth are smooth again.
I look to my mate and blink a few times, licking my teeth and lips with my tongue. Beh chuckles and reaches up to wipe a bit of mint from my mouth. She hands me the water skin, and I rinse my mouth with the water like she did before we go back into the cave.
Beh goes to the edge of the fire and calls out my name-sound. I sit down next to her and look over the reeds I gathered. I hope she’s ready to start weaving, but she isn’t. Instead, she pokes her finger into the dirt and swirls it around. She uses my name-sound, points at the swirls in the dirt, and then points at other things. Considering how insistent she was about bathing, I’m surprised she wants to play in the dirt.
After a while, I grow tired of it all. I have no idea what she’s doing, and I see no reason for it. Trying to direct her toward something useful, I pick up the reeds again and present them to Beh as she sits on the floor. She doesn’t do anything, so I reach out and push the reeds at her a little more. Beh continues to just look at me in confusion, and I wish I had a basket to show her so she would know it is baskets we need, not mats or something else. I’m not even sure what else could be made out of reeds, but Beh should know.
Despite my prompting, Beh does not weave any baskets. In fact, once I sit down and try to tie a few of them together—just to show her what I want—she does start to intertwine the leaves, but she does not make baskets. She just ties them up in knots, which I take from her and untie. I try to hold the reeds in such a way that they look like a basket, but when Beh tries, she is no better at it than I am!
In fact, she’s worse!
Frustrated, I toss the reeds to the floor of the cave and stomp out through the crack. I huff through my nose and try to figure out just what I should do next. We have already wasted a lot of time we should be using to gather food, and we still don’t have any baskets. Beh needs to make baskets, and I need to hunt. That’s how it works.
Apparently, Beh doesn’t know this.
I don’t know what to do. The bright sun reminds me that spring will provide us with much of the food we will need to survive the winter. Though the cold is never too bad inside of the cave, we will need food if we are both to survive. Meat will still be available though not plentiful. I realize Beh will need furs for clothing as well, or she won’t be warm enough. I will need to hunt more and kill larger animals to give her what she needs.
Though summer has yet to come, my mind conjures up images of what could happen to Beh if she isn’t warm enough or doesn’t have enough food during the winter. She’s so small, she won’t fare well.
I must keep her warm.
I have to make sure she has enough food, too. Beh is my mate, and I have to provide for her, even if she doesn’t make a basket to collect food.
I march back into the cave, take her by the hand, and head out to the steppes. Beh watches as I follow the line of trees on the other side to a grassy field where the grains stand on long, green stalks. They wave in the cool breeze as I walk into the center of them, look around and sigh. I have nothing else to carry them in, so I will have use my fur.
I take the wrap from around my shoulders and lay it on the ground, shivering a little in the wind. I grab the first stalk and try to pull the grains off the top one at a time. After collecting a few in my hand, I get frustrated and try to pull them all off at once. The grains scatter in the wet earth.