I awake to the warmth of a feminine body next to mine, the familiar smell of her skin, and the soft sound of her breathing.  I realize I’m smiling before I even open my eyes.

It’s still strange to me, this feeling of familiarity and comfort, but the more I accept it, the more I like it.  I enjoy having her beside me when I sleep, and I like watching her all curled up with her head on my shoulder and Solo lying in a ball on her pillow.

When I lived with Margot, I’d often get out of bed in the middle of the night and sleep on the couch, just to be alone.  She never said anything about it, but I know it bothered her.  As much as she tried, I was never as comfortable around her as I am now with Seri.

And Iris.  And, to a lesser extent, Netti.

Carefully sliding my arm out from under her, I crawl over Seri and the cat to stoke up the fire.  The floor is cold, even on the rug, and I dance back and forth, rubbing my hands on my arms as the flames lick the logs.  I stretch my arms over my head and turn from side to side, trying to work out the soreness in my back.

I glance at Seri, who is still sound asleep.  I’m not surprised, considering last night’s escapades.  Half an hour after Iris jumped me, Seri came around and wanted the same.  Though the two personalities prefer vastly different types of attention, both take a lot out of me.  Not that I’m complaining, though it has me wondering if Netti has similar impulses and whether I could handle all three of them in one night.  I’m just glad everything worked the second time.

No wonder my back aches.

I pull on my jeans and make some coffee.  Seri shows no signs of waking, so I decide to do something productive.  I grab the caribou hide from the wall, and I spread it out on the floor.  Using a thick pencil, I make an outline of one of Seri’s shoes.  I make a few more lines on the hide with the pencil and then start cutting out the pieces I need for boots, mittens, and a coat.

Solo wakes up, demanding food.  Once he’s eaten, he tries to help me out with my work, and I have to keep shoving him out of the way.  Running out of patience, I take a strip of sinew and tie it in a large knot.  I wave it around a couple of times before tossing it toward the kitchen.

Solo takes the bait and goes bounding after his new toy, allowing me to make a little more progress.

“What are you doing?” Seri asks when she finally wakes up.

I glance up at the bed and smile.  Her hair is sticking up around her shoulders, and she looks like she just walked inside after battling hurricane force winds.

“Making you some decent winter gear,” I say.  I hold up the pieces I’ve cut.  “These will end up inside winter boots for you.  I have an old pair I can resize to your feet.  The other small pieces will be mittens, and the big one will be the outside of a parka for you.  I still need to get some more skins for the inside.”

“Wow.”  Seri runs her hand over the soft caribou skin.  “You are making all of that for me?”

“Yeah.”  I shrug.  “You need better gear.”

Seri bites her lip, and I get the idea she wants to say something else, but whatever it is, she doesn’t come out with it.

“These,” I say, holding up strips of sinew and a long, bowed piece of wood, “I will use to make you your own set of snowshoes.”

“Can I help?”

“Sure.”

I grab the wooden base for the snowshoes and show Seri how to bend the frames into the right shape and then weave the sinew in diamond patterns across the openings.  Once we have that done, I fit her shoes to the base so she can try them out.

“Will this be warm enough with my tennis shoes?”

“No.  That’s why I’m going to make you boots.”

“They’re so big,” Seri says as she takes off the shoes.  “Why do they have to be so long?”

“It’s all about spreading your weight over the snow.  They have to be big enough to distribute your weight but not so big that you can’t walk.”

“Yours don’t look like this,” Seri says as she points to my snowshoes near the door.

“That’s because I bought those in Yellowknife,” I say with a laugh.  “They’re aluminum and will last a lot longer than these.  Hopefully, these will be strong enough to get you through the season.”

“How did you learn to do all of this?” she asks.

“The Dene locals,” I say.  “Everyone in Whatì has some skill they use to benefit the group, and they’re usually pretty happy to share the knowledge.  Most of the winter is spent making things, from winter gear to craft items, to sell to tourists.”

“I knew people around here had to do something all winter other than read and stare at the fire.”  Seri bumps her shoulder up against mine and smiles.

“It’s either this or Hand Game.”

“What’s that?”

“Dene Hand Game is the main pastime in the Tłįchǫ lands.  It’s the sport of the region.”

“How do you play?”

I sit back for a minute to try to figure out how I can explain.

“Well, it’s kind of difficult to understand even if you’re watching it being played.  The point of the game is to figure out in which hand a person is holding a small object, usually a penny or a small stone.  I suppose the closest comparison would be the shell game.  You know, when someone hides a ball under one of three shells, and you try to guess which shell it’s under?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Like that, only you use your hands to hide the penny.  Two teams of four or more people kneel on the floor facing each other.  They have a blanket or their jackets on the floor in front of them.  Drummers play behind them, and a lot of people chant along.  At the start, one team hides their hands under the jackets, passing the penny back and forth in their hands and deciding which hand to keep it in.  A caller signals them when it’s time to start, and then they all raise their hands up at once, dancing and moving their hands to the beat of the drums.  The other team’s captain tries to guess which hands are holding the objects.”

“Everyone has a penny?”

“Everyone on the hiding team, yeah.  Then the other team guesses.  If they guess right, they get a point, and the person doing the hiding is out for that round.  If they guess wrong, the other team gets a point, and the person doing the hiding stays in the game.  They play over and over until everyone on the hiding team is out.  Then they switch which team does the guessing and which does the hiding.”

“Do they guess one person at a time?”

“Not exactly.”

“How do they guess?”

“A series of hand gestures that split the players.”  I hold my hand out sideways with my thumb up and all my fingers straight, pointing to Seri’s left.  “If I do this, you and the person sitting to the left would show me your inside hands.  So that’s your left, and the person next to you would show their right hand.  If I’m right on both counts, I get two points, and you’re both out of the round.”

She tilts her head and narrows her eyes at me.

“Sorry,” I say with a sheepish smile.  “I don’t think I’m explaining it well.  It’s an ancient game—thousands of years old, I believe.  The combination of moving to the drums, hiding the object, and catching the facial expressions of the players is a dance as much as it is a game.  It’s really cool to watch, but also insanely involved and complicated.  I never got the hang of it.  Different regions sometimes have different guessing gestures, too, which can cause all kinds of ruckus during the championships.  The frenzy of the people involved reminds me of how excited people get during March Madness in the States.  They even teach it to the kids in schools.  It’s a big deal.”

“Sounds like it.”

“They held the championship in Whatì the first year I was here.  People drove in from all over the place, tripling the number of people in town.  They filled up the school with cots to give people a place to sleep.  It was a huge deal.  The championship tournaments last for days, and the pot for the winning team can be thousands of dollars.  The drumming and the way people try to psyche out the other team can get very intense.  There were so many people packed into one place, and it was so loud for so long, I thought I was losing my mind at the end of it.”

“Yeah, I think I would have to see it to understand.”

“Maybe I’ll take you sometime.”  I feel my face heat up, and I grab the poker for the fire to give myself something else to do.  I spread the coals around while Seri goes quiet.

I hadn’t considered the implication of what I just said—that Seri would be around long enough to go somewhere to watch the games—before the words were out of my mouth.  It is one thing to tell her she can stay, but it’s something else to make future plans with her.

I just redefined our relationship—or whatever the hell this is—and I didn’t really intend to.  I’m not exactly sorry that I did so, but I am unsure about how Seri will feel about it.  Now I don’t know what to do.

Iris’s voice echoes in my head.

Does Seri know that you’re in love with her?

“You don’t have to do that,” Seri says quietly.  She bites her lip and looks away from me.

I look at her and blink a few times, trying to figure out if she’s trying to let me off the hook or get herself off the hook and feeling annoyed with myself for creating my own Margot-style fishing metaphor.

“You don’t want to?” I ask.

“I can’t imagine you want to be around that many people at once.”

“I don’t, really,” I tell her.  “The first time I went, it wasn’t easy for me, especially being one of the only white guys around.  Coming from the States, it took me a while to get used to being a minority.  But the Dene are good people here.  The drumming is loud, but you do get used to it.  The energy in the room is positively insane but in a good way.  You might like it.”

“I think I would,” Seri says, “I mean, if you really want to go sometime.  It sounds unique.”

She’s twisting her fingers around themselves and blushing, and I’m not sure what to make of it.  Does that mean she really wants to go, or is she embarrassed because we’ve trapped ourselves into a future plan?  Do I want to make future plans with her?

Yeah, I do.

“I’ll take you.”  I look up and her and try to smile while my heart races.

“No,” Seri says abruptly.  She pushes herself off the floor and takes a few steps away.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t…”

“Shouldn’t what?” I ask.

She takes a big breath and squares her shoulders.

“I know you want me out of your way sooner rather than later,” Seri says.  “I get a little wrapped up in myself sometimes, but I know how you feel, and I don’t want to interfere with your…your life the way you like it.  I don’t want you to feel like you’re obligated or anything.”

“Obligated?”

“You’ve already extended your hospitality far more than I know you’re comfortable with,” Seri says.  She’s smiling, but her eyes aren’t sparkling.  “The storm has been over for a while, and you’ll be wanting me out of here before some tournament, I’m sure.  I mean, if we can get to wherever these games are played, you could take me to Fort Providence, right?  Or Yellowknife?”

I shake my head, confused and trying to figure out where all of this is coming from.  Yes, I’d offered a future when we haven’t really defined how long this is going to last, but it’s not like we haven’t had similar conversations.

“What are you talking about?” I ask her.  “I told you, you can stay as long as you want.”

“I can…I can stay?”

“I told you that before.”  As soon as I finish the sentence, I realize I told her no such thing.  I said those words to Iris and to Netti but not to Seri.

I really, really need to be taking notes.

With a deep breath, I stand up and walk over to Seri.  She takes a slight step back, but I reach out and wrap her in my arms.

“It’s different now,” I say as I hold her against my chest.  I kiss the top of her head softly.

“What made it different?” she asks.  She places her hands on my arms and leans back, her eyes dark.  “Is it just because we had sex?”

I close my eyes for a second, trying to rein in the sudden anger I feel.  For a brief moment, a flash of violence invades my brain, and I swallow hard to keep it in check.

“Is that really what you think I’m like?” I finally ask.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Seri says.  She shakes her head slowly and then moves forward to press her cheek against my chest.  “You’re a little hard to read sometimes.  I wasn’t sure how you felt about it.”

“I didn’t think of it that way,” I say.  “Maybe some guys would but not me.”

“You’re not like other guys.  I know that.”

“Besides, I thought we made love on a bearskin rug.”  I mean it as a joke, but when she tenses in my arms, I know she’s not taking it that way, and I try to fix it.  “I mean, it was more than…it was… Fuck!  I’m not any good at this shit, Seri.  I just want you to know that you don’t have to go anywhere, not unless you want to.”

“I’m not trying to…to trap you.”  She tightens her grip around me, her actions contradicting her words.

“I don’t feel like that,” I tell her.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

“I feel, um…”  I pause to take a deep breath.  “I don’t feel like you have to leave.  I mean, I don’t want you to.  I…I don’t mind you here, I guess.”

Seri leans back and looks up at me with a tight-lipped smile.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re right,” she says.  “You are pretty bad at this.”

“Yeah, I know.”  I roll my eyes and then look back at her.  “Do you want to go?”

“No,” she whispers.  “I…I like it here with you.”

“Well then,” I say, “I guess that’s settled, right?  You’re going to stay until you decide you don’t want to stay here anymore.”

“What if…what if I never want to leave?”

“I guess I will have to make a point of stocking up more supplies in the future.”

Seri turns her face up toward me, and I lean in to press my lips to hers.  I kiss her softly and hope that I can demonstrate with actions what I can’t seem to put into words.

In the back of my mind, I’m already picturing us curled up by the fire next winter.