“Perhaps not food, then,” Haroth muses. He flexes, as he always does, though no females are currently watching. “A stone? The shiny ones work well.”
“She rejected the shiny stones our brothers left by her mat,” I remind him.
“Because they are not you.” He sounds oddly satisfied about this. “She watches you when you are not looking.”
That pulls me upright inside. “She does?”
“Always.” Haroth’s grin is too wide. He has been practicing this human expression of joy. It looks wrong on his face. He does it anyway. “When you leave for hunts. When you return. Her eyes find you first, before the others.”
I test this against memory. It is true that when I enter the cavern, I often catch Mih-kay-lah’s gaze quickly averted. As if she had been watching the entrance.
Waiting?
No. That is too hopeful.
But still… she looks.
Mih-kay-lah.
When the dust is wide and empty around me, and the dunes stretch unbroken in all directions, I practice her name aloud. It sits uneasily in my mouth, caught between my teeth and the shape of my tongue. Drakav throats are not built for sounds, and human words are narrow, cramped. They catch. They scrape.
Mih. Kay. Lah.
One day, I tell myself, I will call her name, and she will stop.
“I think,” Haroth goes on, clearly pleased with himself, “you should stand nearer to her. Let her become used to you.”
“I already do this.”
“Closer, then. And blink sometimes. It has worked for me.”
This is news. “With which female?”
He lifts his chin. “All of them. I study them.”
Haroth has the eyes of a newling.
His advice will not help me here. What works on soft, laughing Pah-m or patient Tee-nah is not what will work on Mih-kay-lah.
She is… shaped differently. In her spirit. In her edges.
Hunting a beast is simple. Hunting a female is not.
“I will seek counsel,” I tell Haroth, pushing away from the wall.
He tilts his head. “From whom?”
“From those who have succeeded where I have not.”
I findTharn and Rok near the weapons cache, bent over a spear shaft. They turn it carefully, looking for cracks that could turn a good throw into a lost meal.
They both straighten when they sense me. I pull my mind in tight, smoothing away the flare of envy before it can leak.
They are bonded males. Their glows came. Their females accepted. They have what I want and have not earned.
“Sarven,” Tharn sends, inclining his head. He looks larger than before, as if Jah-kee has filled spaces in him even the dust could not reach. “Is all well?”
I lower myself into a crouch beside them. The position is not one I like for conversation. It feels exposed. But these are not rivals. They are my brothers.
