Beh is so tired, and the baby doesn’t sleep very long at a time. It’s been a while since I have been around a baby. My youngest sibling was already several seasons old when the fire took my tribe, and I forgot how messy they can be. Beh uses the little triangles of leather with some of her squares of cloth inside to wrap around the baby’s backside, and I end up washing the stinky things outside of the cave along with the straps of leather Beh wears to absorb the blood from after giving birth.
We make a lot of trips to the lake using the hide on a stick to carry not only the supplies we gather but also our baby. She lies in the middle, surrounded by furs, and looks around her with wide, blue eyes that are exactly like Beh’s. She wriggles and moves around a lot when she’s placed on her back, and her skin is wonderfully soft. I like to touch the corner of her mouth and watch her turn toward my finger, looking for milk.
She’s so pretty, just like Beh.
Even with little continuous sleep, we have to prepare for winter. I fish at the lake as Beh holds the baby close to her breast and digs for cattail roots. Once she has many of them loaded on the hide, she sits to feed the baby for a while. I go back to my work until I hear her call out my name-sound.
“Ehd!”
Quickly, I look up and around the area, but there does not appear to be any danger, and Beh’s sounds don’t seem alarmed. Picking up the three small fish I have caught, I go to her and crouch down to make sure the baby is all right. She sucks at her mother’s breast greedily and makes little grunting sounds as she does.
I smile.
“Ehd.” Beh reaches out and touches my chest. Then she places her hand on her own chest, right above her breasts. “Beh.”
I narrow my eyes at her as she places her hand on the baby and makes more sounds. I tilt my head to one side and try to listen closely to her sounds, but they’re just noise. She keeps going for a while, and I get bored. Just as I am about to stand and go back to fishing, she grabs my hand and holds tight.
“Ehd…Beh…” she repeats, and then touches the baby again.
Slowly, understanding comes to me. Beh wants a name-sound for the baby. I don’t know why she is asking me since mothers always make up the name-sounds for their babies. I wonder if the sounds she has been making are supposed to be a name-sound, but I don’t think that’s possible. There are too many strange sounds all together for that.
Maybe she doesn’t know what to call her.
“Beh,” I say as I touch her shoulder. I place my hand on top of the baby’s head then reach over and place my hand on Beh’s lips. I pull back and look at her expectantly, waiting for her to tell me the baby’s name-sound.
Her eyes stay on mine for several minutes before she looks back to the babe suckling her and runs her hand over her soft head. Then she makes a combination of sounds that remind me of the noises she sometimes makes when she cooks—the ones that all run together. She looks up at me and smiles, repeating the sounds more slowly.
It’s still a ridiculously complicated amount of noise for a name-sound, so I’m not sure what she is doing. She makes the sounds again and again, and I watch her lips and tongue move together.
“Sheee…lah…”
At the last part, her tongue flicks over the back of her teeth in a somewhat familiar sound.
“Luffs?” I question.
“Laaaah,” Beh says. “Sheee-lah.”
“Luuhh…” Why does she make all her sounds so complex?
“Shee-lah.”
“Luh.”
“Ssss-lah…”
“Llllah…”
We go back and forth for some time before Beh sighs and shakes her head at me. She makes a long, loud trail of sounds, and I look around to make sure she hasn’t attracted any unwanted attention as she sighs again.
“Lah?” she says quietly.
Much better.
“Lah,” I repeat with a smile.
Lah chooses that moment to release Beh’s nipple and turn to the sound of my voice. My smile grows larger as I run my finger over her tiny, soft cheek, and she blinks at me before turning back to her meal. Beh laughs and reaches out to pull me close and put her mouth on mine.
“Lah,” she says softly.
“Lah.”
Our daughter has a name-sound.
Winter comes early in the form of heavy snows.
The weather changes quickly and without warning, but we have plenty of food and should have enough if the winter isn’t overly long. As Lah takes her nourishment from her mother, Beh is hungry more often than she used to be. Still, I think there should be enough.
I hope there is.
Snowflakes fall from the overcast sky as I wrap my outer fur closer around me and survey the snow-covered field. I also hope that Beh will let me try to put another baby in her soon, but she pushes me away every time I try. It has been a long time since I have had myself inside of her, and I miss it. I’ve tried to just touch her, but she is still bleeding from the birth, and she won’t let me do that either.