“The last present.” He pulls out a leather-wrapped package, covered with more of the terrible doodles and holds it out to me.
“You open it,” I say softly, gesturing at the baby.
He does, and a moment later, the leather falls open to reveal more of the strange discs with the hole in them. Several, in fact.
“What are those?” I exclaim. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for days.”
Cashol looks surprised. “It is cons. Like you told me.”
“Cons?”
“Mahnee?” When I continue to look baffled, he shakes his head. “You told me that humans use cons and mahnee to give value to things. That you use those instead of barter.”
Oh. “Coins,” I realize. “Money.” I look down at the disks and they seem a little weird to me, but I guess for a guy that didn’t even know what an arrow was, these are a pretty good approximation. “Why are you giving me money?”
“To show you how much you mean to me.” He picks one up and places it in my lap, then does the same with the next one. “You said that things in your world were valuable if they cost much mahnee. You are the thing that I love the most in this world, so I wanted to give you mahnee to show you that.”
Is…he trying to tell me that I’m priceless to him? I suddenly love each ugly coin and every awkward painted doodle on them. “You are the sweetest,” I tell him, my voice thick with emotion.
Cashol shakes his head. “I am just a male devoted to his mate.” His hand goes to Holvek’s tiny head. “And now his child.”
He’s perfection, my mate. I gaze up at him adoringly. Sure, he’s goofy at times, distractible, and maybe he’ll have to leave for weeks on end occasionally to hunt. But he’s sweet and he makes me smile and I don’t care how cold or desolate this planet is…
There’s no place I’d rather be.
Author’s Note
This is a short story. Just a tiny one! It was only ever intended as a short story. I try to keep the ‘full’ books a nice, meaty length, but I’ve had so many people tell me that they would love to see any slice of life in the sa-khui world that I thought I’d go back and give a little time to a few of the couples we skipped over. I’m on deadlines for my New York name, but I couldn’t stop playing with a few scenes about Megan and Cashol.
I’m sorry if this feels a bit short (I know some readers hate it when the story ends), but I enjoyed writing a little ‘slice of life’ instead of a full novel. There will be more of both, of course! If you liked it, I’d love for you to leave a review - those help me gauge what fans want to read more of. Your vote really does count!
A big thank you to Natalie Gordon-Smith, Amanda Kotski, and Annette Cephalis Cody McDonald for suggesting the baby name of Pacy for Stacy and Pashov’s baby boy. It’s brilliant and I couldn’t NOT use it once I heard it.
I went a slightly different route with Holvek’s name. Sharp-eyed fans might notice that the ‘Hol’ in Cashol matches the ‘Hol’ in Holvek. Sharp-eyed fans might also notice that there’s more than one ‘Vek’ in the tribe that we’ve known of. That’s because with such a small group, there’s a lot of related people (and one reason why resonances were happening to fewer - inbreeding!). In this case, Cashol and Vektal are cousins. Their fathers were brothers. Maybe someday I’ll do a family tree!