STACY
“You’re sure the weather will hold?” I ask Pashov as I peer out of the cave at the clear skies the next day. The weather is lovely—for Not-Hoth. It’s sunny and there are only a few fat flakes drifting on the breeze. Instead of Antarctic winter, it’s more like…Canadian winter. Still chilly, but not nearly as miserable. “As much as I like being here with you, I also worry we’re going to lose our window for travel. Maybe we should be traveling while the weather is good?”
“Rokan says the brutal season will wait a bit longer,” my mate says stubbornly from his place by the fire. He holds Pacy by the hands and is trying to get the baby to walk instead of crawl. Pashov looks over at me, a touch of hurt on his broad face. “Do you not wish to be here with me?”
“That’s not it at all. I love being with you.” I pull the privacy screen back over the entrance and move toward him. “Being here together has helped us reconnect,” I say, and touch his arm. “It’s been wonderful to have private time. I would love tostay in this cave for months on end if we could.” The little cave is big enough that we’re not tripping over each other, and just small enough to be cozy. It’s a little smoky at times, but I could be happy here. “I just worry about the travel. It hasn’t exactly been easy. I don’t want us to get stuck in the storms when they do come in.”
“Rokan is never wrong,” Pashov tells me. “He says it will be clear for longer, and my chief has given us four hands of days before they will come searching for us.”
“But you said it would take at least five days to get to the valley, right? Maybe six if we travel slow. That means six days here, and we’ve already been here four. I don’t want to cut it too close.” I stroke his arm. “I just worry.”
He gives me a knowing look. “You do not wish to cut it close, or you wish to see your new home?”
I laugh and feign lightness. “Am I obvious?”
Pashov smiles at me. “You like to keep a tidy cave, and this one is a mess.”
I glance around at the crowded little cave. Our gear is piled up in one corner, along with a lot of Kemli and Borran’s gear. We haven’t unpacked much, because I am acutely aware that we’re going to have to gather it all up again and cram it onto the sled. Because of that, we tend to have to step over rolls of furs and baskets of dried meat while we move around the cave.
That isn’t what’s bothering me, though.
Last night, after the oral-sex-a-thon, I fell asleep curled up in Pashov’s arms, content and happy and feeling like my mate was back. That things were starting to get back to rights in my world.
I woke up to the sound of his nightmares.
Sometime while I was sleeping, Pashov had moved me back to my own furs, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Part of me thinks it’s sweet that he remembered to put me back, and part of me is disappointed that he didn’t hold me all night. I know he’s just following my wishes, though, so I can’t be mad. Pashov was asleep in the next room in his own blankets, and thrashed wildly.
Pashov has always been a heavy sleeper, and he’s never struggled with nightmares. Not since I’ve known him. Last night, though, he flailed and moaned in a nightmare until I woke him up. He sat bolt upright, eyes wide with terror, his skin beaded with sweat. When I asked him what was the matter, he murmured something about the cave falling in on him.
Then he promptly fell back to sleep.
After that, however, I couldn’t sleep. The restlessness isn’t like him.
I worry he needs the healer, after all. His memories haven’t come back, and with the nightmares, I’m scared he’s hiding a deeper brain injury. Or what if he has PTSD after the ceiling fell in on him? It’s possible, and I feel ill-equipped to help him through something like that.
I also worry that we’re vulnerable alone out here in a cave by ourselves. What would happen if there was another earthquake and something should happen to Pashov? It would be beyond devastating to lose my mate after such a near miss recently, but even more awful…what would I do to keep Pacy safe? I can’t just think about myself; I have to think of our child. I’d have to somehow hunt and survive and find the others.
Our existence is so fragile here.
But I don’t want to stress Pashov. I also don’t want him to feel like he’s not enough for me. If it was safe? If there were no worries? I’d miss the others, but I’d be perfectly happy spending the entire brutal season curled up in the cave with my mate.
There’s too much to worry over, though. I nearly lost my mate once. I don’t want to lose him again. So I smile and shrug and decide to pretend I’m excited about the new living quarters. “It’d be nice to see what the new little houses are going to be like. And Georgie said there would be toilets. I admit, I’m looking forward to toilets.”
Pashov turns his face up for a kiss. “You will have more than enough time to set up your new nest, my mate. Let us enjoy our time together, yes?”
“All right,” I say, and press my mouth to his with affection. Maybe I’m being paranoid. Nightmares don’t mean a brain injury. The healer would have seen it already. And we’re safe here. Pashov wouldn’t take me and his son somewhere like this if he thought we were even in the slightest bit of danger.
I’m just overthinking.
I pull out one of the big hides from a recent kill. We’ve scraped it clean of all meat and fat, and it’s dried out. Now it’s stiff and ready to be worked, and I consider it, trying to figure out what to make. Extra boots would probably be wise, even though it’s not water-proofed. But Pacy needs more diapers, or as the sa-khui refer to them, loincloths. This particular hide is too tough, but I could get out a scraper and work it over to soften it up. Pashov needs winter tunics, I need a couple of ponchos to go over my winter tunics, and there’s just so much stuff to make that I get a little stressed thinking about it all. I wish we could hop in the car to the nearest Walmart and buysupplies, but it’s all on us. Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming.
So I focus and try to think about what is most urgently needed. Boots are probably the smartest idea for now, because one pair only means that my feet turn into blocks of ice by the end of a day of travel, and the boots take longer than one evening to dry out. My current ones can be reinforced with more padding to make them warmer, and I can use the hard leather to make a spare pair. Extra diapers are nice to have, but I can just use a bit more arm muscle and scrub the ones I have. The good thing about frozen leather is that you can just scrape off the gross bits and wrap the skins in herbs to freshen them. It’s not quite the same as having disposable diapers, but beggars can’t be choosers. I should make Pashov a new tunic, but the leather’s poor quality, and I don’t know how soft or comfortable I can make it, even with scraping. It would need days and days of scraping to be supple. That might be wasted effort. I spread the skin and look at Pashov. “Boots for me or a tunic for you, do you think?”
“Boots,” he says without looking over at the leather. “You need to keep warm. I am not as bothered by the weather.”
“Yes, but you’re out in it more than I am,” I fret. “It’s just that the leather’s so hard and gross for a tunic. You need something soft.” I look over at him. “Are you going to hunt anything with a better hide that I could use for you?”
“I do not like the thought of leaving you and Pacy here alone while I hunt,” he tells me, taking Pacy’s small hands and helping him wobble a few steps forward. He has a delighted smile on his face at the baby’s progress, and reluctantly looks over at me. “But I can check my traps, and if they are empty, I can see what else is frozen in the cache, but it means smoking more meat.”
