Glad she’s finally decided to let me protect her, I relax my grip a little and pull my arm out from underneath her. I place my hand on the side of my head to prop myself up and look down at the woman who will now share my bed.
Even in the dim glow of the firelight, I can see how stunningly beautiful she is. Maybe it’s because it has been so long since I’ve seen another person, but I don’t think so. I wish I could see more of her body, but her strange coverings obscure most of her skin; only her hands and face are visible.
I inhale deeply through my nose, and her scent is unique. She smells sweet, like overripe fruit, and I realize the scent comes from her hair, but not her skin. I lean a little closer and sniff at the base of her neck.
Everything about her is unusual; her clothing, her hair, the color around her eyes, which is now mostly smudged away. I find it enticing and exciting.
She turns over to look up at me, and her eyes are red-rimmed from crying. My chest clenches to know she has been so sad, and I again wonder what I can do to make her feel safe. She stares at me with apprehension, and I decide to try to comfort her the way my father had comforted my mother in the past.
With my arm still around her waist, I slowly move my hand up and down her side. I hope the sensation of touch will calm her, but her body tenses instead. She wraps her arms around herself, and I think she might be cold; her clothing doesn’t seem thick enough to keep her warm. I reach down and pull one of the furs up around her, but she still doesn’t relax.
I have no idea what she needs, and I wonder what might have happened to her to make her so sad.
I suddenly realize that she must have lost her tribe just as I have. Though I don’t know how she got where she is, I do know there are no people anywhere near here except for me. I haven’t seen another person since the fire drove me from the forest. Though I had looked for many days through the blackened tree stumps for signs of other survivors, I had found nothing but the bones of my people.
Now that I comprehend, my heart aches for her. I know what it is like to feel alone though I have grown so used to it, I try not to think about it now. I wonder if she has been alone for a long time and decide she must not have been. If she had, she would have been more receptive to me as her mate. She is frightened of me, and though I have tried to show her I will keep her safe and provide her with a home, she is still scared.
She must miss her family and tribe terribly. Maybe she even had a mate in her tribe, and she misses him, too. There had been no females my age in my small tribe, and I had been waiting for one of the girls to begin her womanhood before I took her. I had been several seasons older than the one closest to me in age, and there were no other tribes nearby to trade mates. If an older woman’s mate had died, I might have mated her instead.
But they all died at once, and I had no one.
I remembered how frightened I had been in the beginning. The fire had destroyed the berry bushes in the forest and the homes of the rabbits I liked to hunt. I was a man but had only killed larger animals twice and then with the help of the other men. I nearly starved before finding the freshwater lake among the pine groves and figuring out how to catch the fish at the edge of the water.
Looking down at my mate, my fingers reach out and brush strands of her beautiful long hair away from her forehead. The softness distracts me from her sorrow, and I pinch a few of the strands between my fingers to hold them out and look more closely. The firelight brings out the slight tinges of red in a few of the strands, but it is the texture that intrigues me the most.
As I look back at her face, I can see she is still frightened. Releasing her hair, I reach up and let the tips of my fingers touch the tear stains on her cheeks. I feel like crying for her—lost and alone out on the steppes. I touch slowly her cheek and jaw before my hand finds her shoulder and the incredibly smooth tunic covering her. Like her hair, I find it fascinating. I have never felt anything as smooth and soft. It’s lightweight, too—as if it were made from strands of a spider’s web.
I stroke her hair again to feel the difference between its softness and the texture of the clothing and find myself again fascinated by how soft and beautiful it is. I know I am very lucky to have found such an attractive mate though I am really just thrilled to have another person with me. As I take a deep breath, I inhale the scent of her hair, and the combination of sweet fruit and possibly some kind of flower confuses me—it is still too early in the season for buds to be blooming. Pulling her close to me, I run my nose from her hairline to her temple.
Definitely fruit.