I think of her invitation from yesterday – to mate with her with no khui involved. To ‘practice’. It goes against everything I have ever wanted for myself…but what do I want more than Tee-fah-nee in my furs, yielding to me? I contemplate this, and with the gnawing envy in my belly, I watch her possessively as she gets a basket and heads out of the cave.
I follow after her. We shall discuss her suggestion more in private.
She walks a short way, following the cliff walls, and then stops in front of the tanning cave to light a tallow candle resting on a plate of bone. When she ducks into the small tanning cave, I move forward.
“Ho, Tee-fah-nee,” I call out a moment before I enter the cave.
She looks surprised to see me. Her eyes are wide in the flickering candlelight, and then she sets the candle down on one of the rocky ledges. “How are you today?” She picks up a big bone – probably from a sa-kohtsk – and begins to stir the vat of stagnant water, urine, and leathers in the center of the cave.
I squat on my heels as I usually do when relaxing, but that puts me that much closer to the cesspool of water in the center of the cave, and I quickly stand again, my eyes burning. She has taken up the same hobby as Kashrem, and the stink of urine and herbs in the water is overpowering. I take a step backward for fresh air, coughing.
“That good?” she teases, and I hear her throaty laugh echo in the small cave. “Don’t stick your face so close next time.”
“The smell is unbearable.”
“It’ll make the leather so soft, though,” she says, and her voice is cheerful. There’s a happy note in it I have not heard in many days.
“There’s leather in there?” It looks like a sludge that I saw once when a dead scythe-beak fell into a pool of water and rotted there.
“Dvisti leather,” she tells me. “I scraped the fur off and now I’m treating it. If this works, there’s gonna be a run on dvisti.”
I do not grasp her words. “We eat many dvisti. Why would we run them?”
“It’s a saying. And I wish we didn’t eat dvisti.” The look on her face grows far away. “I had a pony growing up and he was real shaggy. Reminds me of him a little. Makes the meat hard to choke down.”
A poh-nee. I mentally store this information away. “I shall do my best to hunt more snow-cats, then.”
She smiles. “What brings you over here? Not hunting?”
“I came to talk to you,” I tell her, wiping my still-watering eyes. “About your suggestion.”
All the smiles in her fade away. “Oh?” She tries to look casual but I can see the worry on her face. “Did you decide?”
“I am still thinking.”
“I see.”
“I wish to tell you why I need to think about it.”
She stirs the watery mess in the cave pit with the bone. “We’re friends, Salukh. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
“I want to take you up on your offer,” I tell her bluntly. When she looks up in surprise, I go on. “But there are things that make me hesitate.”
She pauses and studies me. “That’s fair. What kinds of things?”
“I was waiting for resonance. I wanted to share my first time with my mate.”
“Oh.” Her face softens. “Oh, that’s sweet, Salukh. I understand.”
She is beautiful in the candlelight, her eyes glowing bright, her hair like a cloud around her face. I do not tell her that it is her I wish to resonate to. Tee-fah-nee is skittish. “Your suggestion has merit, though. I do not wish to go to my mate clueless.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself, really. It was just a suggestion.”
“I am still considering.” I study her, imagining her body beneath mine. My hand in her curly hair, my fingers touching that oddly smooth human skin. And then I imagine her cringing away from my touch. The thought is an unpleasant one. “I wish to know more. What is it we would practice?”
“Oh.” Her mouth forms a small, plump circle. “I…don’t suppose I thought it through. Well, we could practice kissing.”
The mouth matings that humans are so fond of? My cock grows hard immediately, and it takes everything I have not to spill there on the floor in front of my future mate at the thought of my mouth on hers, my tongue fucking her. “Sa-khui do not kiss.”
“But you might want to learn,” she points out, and averts her face, stirring her mess once more. “What if you mate a human?”
Does she like the thought? There is only Josie and Tee-fah-nee left amongst the humans. Does she speak of herself, then? “Then I would wish to please her.”