Transcendence(17)

“Beh,” she says quietly.

I smile as I watch her hand reach out, and a single finger touches the center of my chest. More sounds from her mouth, but I know what she wants. She wants to know if I have a name-sound too.

“Ehd!” I say proudly.

After so much time on my own, I am lucky I even remember my name-sound.

“Ehd?”

“Ehd!”

“Ehd,” she says as a small smile finally comes over her face. It is a beautiful sight, and my body almost tingles with excitement. She has given me her name-sound and asked for mine, which must mean she has accepted me. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have given me such valuable information. Now she will take me as her mate willingly, and we will form a new tribe with our children.

I jump up and grab her arm to help her to her feet. She stands and brushes dust from her coverings before I take both of her hands in mine. For a moment, I look at her eyes, which are still red with her sadness. I hope now that she has accepted that I am her mate, she will be happy. I lean forward slowly and run the tip of my nose over hers again, starting at the tip and moving all the way up to the place between her eyes. I look at her again, and though I can still see her wariness in her eyes, she does not pull away from me.

Then I begin to show my mate her new home.

Since we were already outside the cave, I start by showing her my impressive collection of wood. There’s a large crevice outside the entrance to my cave that isn’t big enough for someone to live in but keeps the wood nice and dry when it rains, and it’s very easy to retrieve more wood when the supply inside is running low.

Beh looks at the wood and then back to me, but she doesn’t seem impressed. I show her again, but her reaction is still one of disinterest. She looks out over the field away from the cave and up the cliff to the steppes but not at the wood. I’m disappointed that she doesn’t seem to like it because it really is the best I have to show her, but I push on, determined to impress her somehow.

The rest of the day doesn’t go any better.

I do not understand my mate.

I show Beh everything I think will impress her, but she does not react the way I think she will—not at all. I am trying, but she is just…odd. After she won’t look at any of my furs or the smooth rocks around the fire pit, she sits down near the entrance to the cave and cries half the day. Then she begins these strange little movements of twisting and turning her body around. I can tell she needs to relieve herself, but she doesn’t do it! She just keeps looking around the outside of the cave, then back at me, and then around again. I finally get tired of her doing that, grab her wrist, and drag her over to the place where I usually empty my bladder and bowels. I relieve myself to show her the best place to go and then stand there and wait a while, but Beh won’t do anything! She just starts making lot of noises again! Eventually she pushes my arm until I am standing on the other side of the scrub brush and looking away from her. Then she finally relieves herself and stops fidgeting.

So strange!

Afterwards, we go back into the cave, and Beh is finally willing to eat something. I give her the best pieces from the antelope, but she doesn’t seem to like it at all. I want to show her the last fur I made—it is the softest and covered us the night before, and I hope she will use it to make herself more suitable clothing—but when I try to take her to the back of the cave, she pulls away from me. Once I give up on that, we go outside and I show her the edge of the wooded area where there is a lot of good wood to refill the cache near the cave, but she doesn’t seem impressed by that either.

At this point, I’m frustrated, to say the least.

I don’t know how well our mating is going to work when each thing she does makes less sense than the last, and everything I do appears to leave no impression on her at all. Earlier in the morning, I had thought getting her to like me would be fairly simple, but now that I have shown her everything I have, she seems bored, and I do not feel like a very good mate.

Beh obviously agrees.

Since nothing I have around the cave demonstrates my worth, I decide to show her the nearby lake. It doesn’t take long to get there, and maybe she likes water and will appreciate how close it is. I think the area is beautiful, and I hope she will enjoy it as well. I reach out my hand and gesture toward the evergreen forest on the horizon. The lake is just on the other side of the stand of trees.

For a moment, she just looks at my hand, and I can feel my heart sink in my chest. She has not made any more noises for a while, nor has she cried since this morning, but I know there is still something wrong. I just don’t know what it is.