- Ar'ox -

I heard those two Bigs fighting and went to check it out. Sometimes those duels leave dead creatures that can be harvested for skins, claws, fangs and bones that have many uses. Certainly the shell of the repet could be used for making armor, but the repets rarely lose fights. Their venom and many claws make them formidable opponents. The opiok is a good fighter, too, of course, but its teeth and tail are the only weapons it has, and despite its much larger size it was probably outmatched here.

Then I saw the boy trying to escape the fight. He was small and had long hair, which I can only suppose is the fashion among his tribe. He also seemed to have a very well-fed shape, so the thought crossed my mind that he might be from a very wealthy tribe.

Normally I would try to kill any man from another tribe, but boys who haven't yet gone through the stripening are not honorable foes and should be protected. I deemed this one to be only in his teens, and he probably had some injury, because he ran in a strange way, as if his hips were too wide to get up a good speed. When I saw that he attracted the attention of a rekh, I knew I had to help him.

The rekh is still following us. I was hoping it would give up and find some other prey, but it's still keeping up.

I will have to fight it. But first, I have to bring the boy to safety.

I see a suitable tree and stop under it. I let the boy down and take around his waist. His body is remarkably soft, but I don't have time to wonder.

“I'll lift you up. Grab hold of that branch and pull yourself up on it, then keep climbing!”

I lift him easily over my head, but then his strange garment gets tangled up in my head and I look up.

And I get the shock of my life.

What in the name of all the Ancestors ... is that a slit?

That's not a boy at all! That's a ... a ...

The sound of the rekh coming very close forces me to cut short my wonder. The other ... person has a grip on the branch now, and I place a hand on their round behind to give an additional boost.

Then I turn around, draw my sword and face the rekh.

It's an uneven fight. The beast is as large as four men laid after each other on the ground and as wide as the gate to our village. It has long, sharp teeth and fangs and it's small hands have long, curved claws on them.

But it's facing a seasoned warrior who has just seen something that has turned his whole world upside down, and it has no chance. After two swipes with my sword its head lies on the ground and the rest of the rekh runs off headless into the woods, like they sometimes do. It will run until the body realizes that it has no head, and then it will fall for good.

Again I can direct my attention to the other human.

It looks down at me with eyes so large and dark that my heart skips a beat.

How could I have missed that this can't possibly be a boy? The body is shaped differently and has a pleasant roundness to it that I hadn't really noticed, because the silly garment the person is wearing hides the shape.

There was a slit. Definitely.

And humans with slits are known. From myths and legends. The 'woman', they're called, and they used to roam the lands with us men. They were companions. They were partners. They lived with us and raised our children. Some say they even gave birth, before there were Lifegivers, but that seems a fanciful idea to me. They were beautiful and graceful and kind and soft and unspeakably beloved by the men. Until the Plood took them away.

And here is one of them now.

I'm afraid I keep staring at her for a long time, limply holding my sword in my hand without even replacing it in its scabbard. Then she speaks.

“Noble warrior, is safe come down?”

I understand the words, but everything about her speech is strange. Some of it reminds me of some other tribes, but mostly it just sounds ... strange.

I seem unable to form words myself at this point, so I just walk over to the tree and help get her down. I'm very curious to see the slit again, but this time she closes the garment so that I can't see anything under it, other than soft thighs and graceful calves.

But even that is enough. My manhood is growing rapidly in hardness in ways that I can't say I've experienced since I was a teenager. Certainly that's one effect of a woman, as the former shaman taught us boys when I was much younger. He used a wooden effigy to show the many interesting features of the female body, and the memory of that effigy has been the source of many pleasant fantasies ever since. Indeed the figure has to be locked away and kept under guard so that nobody will steal it and keep it in their caves for unwholesome purposes.

She stands in front of me and I still stare. Her chest is wondrously full and her hips are wide in a way that makes my now very hard manhood twitch.

And her face ...

Well, it's not as downright beautiful as we were led to believe. The proportions are a little wrong, and there are no fangs. But there's a basic otherness to it that makes my crotch twitch and swell almost painfully. I long to rip the garment off her and bask in all her glory.

But I will not do that. Not now. Firstly, that is forbidden – the Woman is to be worshipped respectfully, so that she will settle with us again. And secondly, I sense deep in me that just doing something like that uninvited is somehow ... wrong. I can't define it, but there's a wrongness to the idea that repels me, although my whole mind and parts of my body protest vehemently against that decision. She must be able to see that, because the swelling is very visible.

The woman stands there and looks up at me. “Thank you rescuing.”

And of course her voice matches her looks perfectly – bright, but full and melodious. Beautiful in the extreme.

“You were chased,” I'm finally able to say. Then I want to kick myself. Such an inane, earthy thing to say to the first woman I've ever seen!

“Chased,” she confirms kindly. “Warrior rescue. Good warrior noble. What name?”

Still her speech puzzles me. Does she come from another tribe? Do the other tribes have women? Is ours the only one that doesn't? “Ar'ox,” I manage. “The Trevin tribe.”

“Oh,” she says and gives me a little smile that almost stops my heart dead. “Me Emilia. You come from far away? You alone here?”

I'm overwhelmed with all kinds of confusion and surprise and even joy. I want to tell her about the mysterious object that I found, the one that reawakened my wonder about this planet and our lives here, and how it spurred me to take a long walk trying to find the mythical mountain Bune to see if there might be more things like that there, or even something better, and now I have walked for many days and been away from the village, which is frowned upon in the tribe, and still I haven't found Bune but I think I see a mountain in the distance, and how I feel like something is missing from my life and that suddenly I realize that it's the lack of women that does that to me, and that she's the first woman I've ever seen here and that I want her to be with me so that my life will feel more complete, and then I want to explore her body and find out if it might be true that she can give birth to babies without the use of a Lifegiver and maybe we can try that together, if we can figure out how.

“Yes,” I say.

“Is outcast from tribe?”

Emilia. The name feels to my mind like a mouthful of the sweetest silkberry.

“No.” Outcast? Such an unthinkable idea. Though it occurs to me that I have done a few forbidden things lately. Like keeping the mysterious object instead of destroying it. And my long absence will require a pretty good explanation. Not to mention meeting a Woman. Somehow I sense that it might not be a good thing that it was I, and not Hen'ex, who met her first.

She looks at the rekh's severed head and shrinks away from it. “You hunter?”

“Yes.”

“Me too! See spear?” She holds up a little stick.

Her question wakes me up, finally. Here we are, making all kinds of strange sounds in a spot where I've just killed a rekh. His relatives are certainly coming for revenge, and if we're still here when they arrive, one warrior won't be enough. Even five would have trouble defending against a pack of them. It's very urgent that we leave this place.

“We must go,” I state and reflexively take her by her thin wrist. Her skin is cool and smooth and the bones beneath feel so delicate the world spins around me at the touch.

“Okay,” she says in a language that I don't know, but which I like already. It sounds to me like a bright morning in spring.

I gently, but quickly lead her away in the best direction, which is towards the river that I passed not too long ago. Rekhs will not be able to follow us there, even if they were to catch our scent on the wind.

Especially Emilia's scent. It's so strange and so unusual, yet at the same time so sweet and so right.

I change my gentle grip on her so that I'm holding her by a small, slender hand. It's soft and feels luxurious, but not weak. An urge to protect her at all cost rises in me.

I know she can't run fast, so I lead her away from the spot slower than I would have liked. But the Ancestors have blessed us, and none of the rekhs appear behind us. Probably they're still attracted by the fight between the two Bigs and are waiting to eat the loser. But still we're in danger.

The river is far away, and Emilia is exhausted and keeps stumbling, even where there are no obstacles.

I stop and she looks up at me with those dark eyes. I must concentrate to not lose myself in them.

“We should travel faster,” I state. “I will carry you.”

I don't know if she understands, but she makes no protest when I take her on my shoulders. This time I can get a better grip on her and make us both more comfortable.

And then I run.