She looks over at me, her chin begins to quiver, and she starts crying again.
I move closer, and she wraps her arms around me. We stay inside the cave where I keep the fire going and feed her pieces of dried meat as she lays on the old fur and rubs her stomach. When the piece of leather strap and grass are filled with blood, Beh replaces it with another one. I go to the ravine to throw the dry grass away and wash the leather even though the water there has a foul odor and isn’t really any good for cleaning or drinking. I will have to go to the lake for that, but I don’t want to go too far away from Beh.
I place the somewhat washed leather up high in a tree with the hope that no predators will be attracted to the scent and steal it. I make her several more from an old hide, and she cries when I give them to her.
Thankfully, Beh feels better the second day, and she follows me to the lake to wash out the leather pieces in the clean water. After a few days, Beh stops bleeding and crying, and my head stops hurting.
There is nothing—nothing in my entire existence—that compares to waking up with my mate curled tightly against my chest. Though I had not realized it at the time, the loneliness had weighed heavily on me during my time of isolation, and now I’m beginning to wonder if I would have survived much longer on my own. I could hunt and protect myself, but the lack of companionship had been slowly destroying my will to live.
Before Beh, I hadn’t thought about the loneliness in such a way. Maybe I just ignored how I felt when I would lie awake and look out into the darkness of my cave, listening to nothing except the crackling of the fire and the wind outside. I only remember feeling empty inside.
Now that Beh is beside me, like she has been for the first part of the spring season, I feel warm and full.
Tensing my muscles, I pull her closer to me and nuzzle my nose against the top of her head. Beh sighs in her sleep but does not move as I hold her close, watch the burning coals, and doze off again with my mate’s body pressed close against mine.
The next day, we head out toward the lake again. I bring along the antelope fur so I can wash it and finish it for Beh. Along the way, I collect three rabbits, which means Beh will have good fur for mittens and foot coverings for winter, too. She still doesn’t seem impressed by the rabbits, I notice, and like the last time, she won’t even look at them when I try to show them to her.
Once we reach the lake, Beh goes immediately to the place where she found the clay before. I swallow hard, wondering if she is still upset with me, but she doesn’t appear to be angry. She seems excited to find the clay again. Before I start on the fur, I follow her to the little stream and find a nice, flat digging rock. I pull the clay together in a pile and then watch her form some of it into smooth balls. I make a couple of them for her, and she smiles at me with sparkling eyes as I work. When I’m done, Beh smiles and places her lips against my cheek. My heart begins to beat a little faster as I wait and hope she will bring her lips to my mouth as well.
She doesn’t, and after a moment, I frown and grunt to get her attention. Beh looks over at me with questioning eyes, and I reach out and place my fingers on her lips. After a moment, I remove them and press them over my own mouth.
Beh’s lips press together as she holds back a grin. I lean forward a little, still hopeful, and she narrows the distance between us until her mouth is on mine. I close my eyes and revel in the warmth of the sun, her lips, and her presence. Her fingers creep up around my neck and dig into the back of my head, holding me closer as her mouth opens to mine and our tongues touch.
If I weren’t already on my knees, I would have fallen to them.
I reach my arms around her shoulders and bring her body closer to me. There’s a rock digging into my knee, and I don’t care. I can feel myself getting hard, and I don’t care about that either. Just this—just her lips against mine—that is a wondrous thing to me.
Beh pulls away from me, breathing hard and leaning her forehead against mine. I lock eyes with her, silently pleading for more when Beh makes that sound again—the one that sounds like a snake.
“Kiss.”
I tilt my head looking first to her mouth and then back to her eyes.
“Kiss, Ehd.”
“Beh…” My fingers stroke up her arm and down again as my eyes focus on her mouth.
She moves forward and presses her lips firmly against mine, then backs off again.
“Kiss.”
I wish she would stop making noises and just keep our mouths together, but she keeps doing the same thing over and over again. She touches my mouth with hers, makes that snake sound, then does it again. I don’t understand what she is doing, and it is frustrating.