So I hide like a coward and hate myself for doing so. I want to be brave. I want to more than anything. But every time I think about leaving my cave and speaking up, my body freezes in terror and I can’t breathe.
In the end, I say nothing.
Josie doesn’t offer any sort of recrimination, though. She’s a good friend. She goes out to the central fire and gets me breakfast when I’m too afraid to go and get my own. She heads off with Aehako in the afternoon to go over the rest of the ‘competition’ because he wants to see it done – and me selecting a winner – to keep the tribe harmony.
I nap in my furs, but even that makes me sad because they still smell faintly of Salukh’s warm, spicy skin and I wonder if I’ve ruined everything. He says he’ll fight for me with the others, but will he be upset if he loses? Will the others freak out if he wins? What am I going to do if he doesn’t win? The others have more of the seeds that Josie’s been handing out as prizes. The gnawing knot in the pit of my stomach only grows worse.
“Knock knock,” calls Kira, interrupting my self-flagellating thoughts. “Can I come in?”
I sit up in my furs and adjust my clothing. “Sure. Come on in.”
She ducks into the cave a moment later, baby in her arms. “I see Farli’s watching over Chompy.”
“Again. Yup.” Just another thing I feel guilty about, though I do feel less guilt over that aspect because Farli gets such pleasure from taking care of the small dvisti.
“I hadn’t seen you all day and thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing.” Her smile is faint.
“I’m doing terrible, thanks for asking.” I get up and pull out an overstuffed pillow for her to sit on, and place it across from the fire pit. “How about you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. A little sleep deprived, but good overall.” She sits down in one fluid motion and crosses her legs on the pillow, all without disturbing the baby cradled in her arms. “But I didn’t come here to talk about me.”
“Yeah, I figured.” I give her a half-smile and sit back down in my blankets again. “Aehako mad?”
“Not at you. He’s furious the men started a fight, though. He likes to keep the peace.” She pulls the furs back from Kae’s round little face and glances over at me. “A lot of it has to do with the competition.”
I nod glumly. I hate that I’m the problem. I like to fly under the radar, to skate by attention. Lately it seems I can’t do that at all. I don’t blame Aehako for stepping in and laying down the law, though. He’s not the chief – that’s Vektal, Georgie’s mate – but while we live in the South caves, he’s our leader. And it’s hard to piss off easygoing, smiling Aehako, which means that things are worse than I think. Greaaat. “In retrospect, the competition was probably a stupid idea. We just didn’t know what to do to get them off my back.”
“Well, sleeping with someone else probably wasn’t the way to do it.”
Ouch. “Thanks.”
“Sorry.” She sighs. “I’m not judging, I’m really not, Tiff. But I don’t understand. Why make everyone compete for your attention if you don’t want any of them?”
I pull my blankets over my shoulders and stare at the small fire in our cave. Probably needs another dung chip added to it but I can’t bring myself to get up. I shrug my shoulders. I never told Kira that I was raped by the aliens – the basketball heads. I told everyone that they’d just examined me on a medical table. No more. Backtracking now seems like a lot of work and talking about things I don’t ever want to think about again. “I didn’t know how to say no to them.”
The words sound lame even as they leave my mouth.
“So say no now!” Kira exclaims. “Tell them you’ve picked Salukh and call everything off.”
I can’t, though. I can’t call everything off because I’m terrified of their anger. What if I declare that I want Salukh and then two days later, I resonate to someone like Bek? He won’t be kind and understanding, and I’ll be stuck with him, having his babies. It’d be a nightmare scenario.
However bad things are, I’m safer at the moment by taking no action.
Kira sighs again. She reaches out and touches my knee. “You can talk to me.”
“It’s hard to explain.” My head’s a mess and I’m living in terror. I want to be like Josie where she only looks ahead, never behind.
“Then you won’t call it off?”
I’m silent.
“Then you have to live with the consequences, Tiff.”