The moment I step outside the cave, though, I stop.
Two dead dvisti are neatly laid out a short distance away.
I approach them, puzzled, but they are definitely dead. There's ice crusting on their fur, with slashed throats and bellies from hunting. I kneel next to one, and it's been bled so the meat will stay good. Rukh must have done this, and the thought fills me with relief. Dvisti don't come down on the beach. In the few days since we've been here, I've seen the occasional one up on the ridge, but they don't come below. I guess it's too hard on their feet.
Glancing up, I scan the beach, but there's no sign of my mate. "Rukh?"
My voice echoes on the cliffs. There's nothing but silence.
I get to my feet and follow the tracks of footprints in the sand, but they lead back to the cliffs and disappear. He went back out? Without waking me? Without talking to me? I don't understand.
Why wouldn't he come and wake up his mate? Kiss me hello before running off again? I totally understand if there's a lot to be done and he feels the pressure to provide. Maybe he senses a storm is coming and wants to get a lot of meat preserved. He's used to being on his own. He knows what has to be done to make it in this harsh environment.
Even so…I feel a little abandoned.
This is all new for me, and I'm lonely. Yesterday, I was so terrified something had happened to him that I couldn't think straight. I had to throw myself into chores or else I'd lose my mind with worry.
Instead, he's just out hunting…and I guess he doesn't want to be disturbed by his mate.
I chew on my lip, worried. Am I too clingy? Is that why he's run off into the hills? Does he need a break from me? The thought cuts like a knife, and yet…it makes sense. Rukh is used to being alone. Of course he'd find my constant presence a bit annoying. He's probably going off on his own to get a breather, and I need to just accept it.
We're in this together. He's my mate, and we just need to get used to how the other operates. When he comes home, I'll try to be less clingy and needy and more independent. I don't want him to feel smothered.
I'm still hurt, though. Oh sure, some of it's hormones, but I guess when I envisioned us living on the beach together, I had an idea in my head that we'd be…together. But maybe his idea was different.
Frustrated, I grab the first dvisti by the leg and start dragging it back to the cave. There's no time to mope. I've got to process this meat and get the skin off of it, and there's no one to do it but me. Hurt feelings won't give us food to eat in the brutal season, so I'd better hop to it.
5
RUKH
When I return to the cave that night, I have another dvisti and this time, two dead snow-cats. I am also scratched, bloodied, tired, and want nothing more than to hold my mate. But this is not enough fur to keep her warm, and the colder weather will be upon us soon. I will not have my mate shivering when I can hunt meat and take the furs from animals, so I must keep going out
I drop my kills a safe distance away from the cave and arrange them so Har-loh will know it is me. Even though I know this is necessary work, I hate being apart from her. I wish I could slide under the furs with her and drink in her scent, touch her until she wakes up and reaches for me. I wish I could go to sleep with my arms around her. I wish for a great many things, but wishes will not keep my Har-loh warm. With a frustrated sigh, I turn and head back to the hills again.
HARLOW
Rukh's been here again.
I want to scream with frustration when I see the new kills lined up a short distance from the cave. I can't believe my mate came back—again—and didn't say shit to me. He didn't even bother to come into the cave. I laid out a fine covering of sand across the entrance to check for such a thing. If he came in—even just to look at me—it'd show a footprint or two. Sure enough, it wasn't touched.
I'm moving quickly beyond hurt into anger. I realize he's used to being on his own, but what the fuck? Did I say something to make him angry? Or is this just him needing even more space? How long will this go on for?
I have no answers. I can't even write him a note in the sands. We can barely talk to each other, much less communicate in other ways. I have no choice but to wait this out. I can't even go and find him now, because the meat he's bringing in has to be processed. I have to chop it up, remove all the usable bits, cut it into strips, smoke or dry the meat, and clean the usable organs. The hides are sitting rolled up, and I need to scrape those, too. There's not enough hours in the day, and I worked until I fell asleep by the fire last night.
And now I get to do it all over again.
I stare, exhausted, at the kills. The sa-khui have caches in the deep snows where they keep their meat. I can't drag these things into the mountains, though, and a pit here on the beach would just get eaten up by crabs. It wouldn't stay cold enough, either. It all has to be cooked and processed and…I just want to cry.
With a weary sigh, I drag them toward the cave.
Another problem crops up, of course. I run out of fuel for my fire. The dung chips that are so plentiful in the mountains are non-existent here, and there's nothing for me to burn. All of the meat is going to go to waste unless I figure out something. I gaze at the charnel house of my cave around me, looking for something to burn. There's bloody meat everywhere in varying stages of drying. There's long chains of intestines hung, and the stripped animal heads glare at me from nearby, waiting for their brains to be used to work the skins. Six months ago, the sight of this would have made me run away screaming at the horror. Survivor me knows it's all useful, though. Messy, but useful.
I'm fucked if I have no fire, though.
I drum my fingers on my filthy hip, trying to think. Okay, if I don't have fire, how else can I handle this? How did old timey humans preserve meat?
Salt. Salted meat.
"Bingo," I say to no one, and head down to the shore. I can wet one of the furs in the ocean water and lay it out to dry, I think, and scrape the salt off of it as it dries up. Not the fastest method, but maybe there'll be a salt deposit of some kind on the beach that I'll be able to use.
There isn't, of course. But there is a gigantic, half-rotted log.
I stare at it in wonder as it lays at the edge of the tideline. The trees here are all flimsy, ridiculous little things that can't be used for regular wood. The only real firewood grows high, high in the mountains, I'm told, and it's so remote that going there for wood isn't even an option. But this hunk of wood looks like a chunk of tree you might find back on Earth. It's thick…and with luck, it'll burn.
Ignoring the sand-scorpions scuttling nearby, I move to the tree trunk. It's still a little wet, but with luck and some quick thinking, maybe I can make it burn. It's too heavy to lift, though, so I spend most of the afternoon rolling it, little by little, toward the cave. When it's close enough, I dig a fire pit, use my precious dried out seaweed reeds as starters, and start a slow, smoky fire on the beach and drape meat nearby to dry.
I'm exhausted, but I'll have to stay up and watch so predators don't come steal the food. Maybe I'll even catch a glimpse of my mate.