The rain was letting up, so I went out from under the overhang, Koh immediately following. As I had noticed before, the clearing in the ravine was long. The tiny river that ran through it…was that fresh water? Drinkable water? I was thirsty…I went over to check. I saw small fish in the water, so I knew it was safe to drink. Books had always said that if there were dead things in the water it was bad, but if there were live fish, then it was ok, even if it tasted a little odd. Since I didn`t have a cup or anything, I cupped my hands to scoop up a little water. It tasted ok, but was very cold water, which reminded me that I was cold.
Activity would help me feel less cold, probably. And I did need to find food. I couldn`t remember if I had noticed if the cottage`s garden had still survived, even though everything else had gotten old. I had been distracted by how old everything was. It was worth a look, even though I half didn`t want to see the cottage looking that old again…I…I needed food after all, not blood. And…and I liked vegetables. I turned to Koh. “I-I want to go to the cottage again.” It wasn`t my cottage anymore. Koh`s eyes darkened a little. He didn`t like that idea? I took a slight step back, just in case. One of the two times I had seen his eyes darken, he had hurt me. But…but it had been just an accident, right? And he had promised not to hurt me…mother had always kept her promises. Would Koh keep his promise as well? If Koh didn`t hurt me now than it had been an accident and he would keep his promise?
Koh sighed, and after a long moment, held out a hand. I looked from his hand to his face. Even though his eyes had turned dark, he hadn`t hurt me. That one time really had been an accident… Thinking that again, I remembered now that there had been one time where mother had hurt me, by stepping on my foot when she walked past. She had apologized for that, many times, and told me it had been an accident. Koh hadn`t apologized, but…he hadn`t really talked and he had been gentle since then. An accident…I stepped forward, and placed my hand in his. If it had been an accident…maybe…maybe it was all right to trust him.
Koh used that to pull me closer to him, so that he could put his arms around me, to jump. The same as before, he wouldn`t let go of one of my hands. But that was all right. His hand was bigger than mine, so when he held my hand, my hand was warm. I looked all around, but couldn`t remember which direction we`d gone in before, so I looked at Koh. “The cottage?” I asked.
…cottage. Koh led me in the right direction, even though he seemed a little reluctant to do so. Why? We walked in silence, and this time, I tried to remember the path. The sight of the cottage—old—made me pause again. This was hard. My cozy, safe little home was gone. But the need to find food was more important than the fact that the house was old. And…I wasn`t alone now. Now I had Koh. I carefully didn`t look inside as we went around the outside of the house to where the garden was.
Koh let me shake off his hand as I knelt in the mess of plants and weeds to see what I could find. He crouched next to me, and just watched. I found both berries from the blueberry bush that had been there, and wild potatoes, and even a few peppers. The blueberry bush was huge now! How had it grown so big so fast, in just a couple of days…? But everything else seemed to be gone. Plants? Koh tilted his head curiously, studying my finds. “Food” I corrected, even as I considered the three items. Koh looked at me blankly at that. Berries were easy, but with the potatoes was I wasn’t quite sure how to cook them…I did know that you weren’t supposed to eat them raw. Mother had always cooked the potatoes and peppers together, so I could do that, or eat the peppers raw. Those were ok to eat raw. With all the berries peppers and potatoes I could carry, and fit into my pockets, we returned to the ravine.
If the rain was stopping…could I…could I build a fire? To cook the potatoes? And it would be warm… Mother and I had always lit fires when it was cold outside. In the cottage, mother and I had always used spark stones, but I remembered reading that you could make a fire without one. And in either case, fires required fuel in the form of sticks. You had to start with little sticks, then add bigger ones to keep it going. That`s what we always did…had…had done, in the cottage.
I looked around. There were one or two trees tall enough to overhang the rock walls, so there were a few random sticks in the clearing. I gathered them, while Koh watched, then I took two of them. The rest I divided between a pile where I wanted the fire and an extra pile. The extra pile wasn`t very big… the other two sticks I tried to rub together…I remembered reading or hearing somewhere that that was what you were supposed to do. At home, mother and I had always used spark-stones to start a fire. I hadn’t seen any around here, and I hadn`t seen them…in the…the cottage…so sticks were the only option.
It took a long time to spark, and was harder work than I`d thought it would be. I jumped in surprise the first time I saw a spark, so it was lost. I tried again, and this time it worked, but the sticks wouldn’t catch fire. I sighed in frustration. Koh’s expression hadn’t changed, but I saw that he was curious. What are you doing? “Trying to make a fire”
Of course no response, but I was getting used to that, and besides, it had been a long time since I had actually had a conversation with someone, and I`d never talked to anyone other than mother, so maybe I wouldn’t know how. I had read books, but since Koh wasn`t like any people or demons in the books, I didn`t know if the books had been completely right after all. And since he had started being gentle, his expression did change enough for me to guess what he was thinking, sometimes.
After I had failed to make an actual fire several more times, Koh reached over and took the sticks from my hands gently. I frowned at him a little, and protested with his name. “Koh,” He didn`t look at me, but instead, he studied the sticks, the marks on them from my attempts to get them to light, and the little pile that I`d made. My hands had gotten scraped a little, I saw now, but it was cold enough that I couldn`t feel it and it wasn`t actually bleeding so I ignored that, watching as Koh first studied the sticks, and then mimicked my motions with them. Of course he started a fire on his first try, and far quicker than I`d gotten a spark the first time.
“That’s just not fair!” I said. I had always told mother that too, because she had always gotten fires lit and burning merrily far faster and easier than I could. I studied the fire for a moment, and then looked at Koh, who was watching me. I had already gathered all the sticks in the clearing that I`d seen, and the trees were out of reach, so…“Koh, please get more sticks?” No response, so I picked up one of the few extra sticks. “This” I waved it at him, and he watched a little warily, keeping far enough back that I couldn’t hit him with the stick. But why would I do that? He had hurt me once, but if it had been an accident like it seemed, then I had no reason to retaliate. And mother had said that people were mean enough, and if I ever met anyone else to not be mean first.
“Is a stick. A stick. Stick. Go get more.” He didn’t understand. I repeated the word for him several more times, then put it down near him and held out my hand, “Stick.” I asked. I wasn’t sure how long it took before Koh put the word together with the object it represented—maybe we really did speak different languages? But after a little bit, and a lot of repetition, and a lot of hand motions, he picked up the stick and put it in my hand. I half winced as it touched the new scrape on my hand and that feeling went through the cold, but smiled at him anyway. Mother had always smiled at me for a job well done.
I put the stick down, starting to make a new pile, and then held out my hand to see if it would work again. But before I could ask for the stick, he noticed the scrapes and grabbed my hand tightly. “Koh!” he ignored me and lifted my hand to his mouth, warm tongue licking the scrapes. He was…he was licking my blood again?! I winced, expecting hurt to come next. It stung, but when there was no hurt after, I looked at both Koh and the grip he still had on my hand and saw that the scrapes were healing. Koh licking his own cut to heal it was one thing, but it worked on me too? How…That didn`t seem like it should be possible…He did the same thing to my other hand before even paying attention to me again. His eyes met mine. An unreadable expression in those ice eyes…but one I thought that I should recognize, if I had had more experience with people myself. I blinked and looked away.
“Stick.” I tried again after a long moment. He hadn`t hurt me. He wouldn`t hurt me. I was worried that the fire would die while it didn’t have enough fuel to keep it going. At his expressionless look, I pointed to the first stick. “That was a stick, remember? Stick.” I sort of pointed to one of the sticks a little further away, at the edge of my first stick pile. When that didn`t work, I pointed to the trees. “Sticks are there too…” It took a while, but just as the fire was beginning to die, Koh understood what I wanted. He jumped out of the ravine easy enough, and now that I wasn`t clinging to him while he did so, I saw that his muscles all contracted easily while he jumped. He had more muscles than I`d realized. Men really did look different from women, didn`t they…?
Koh was only gone for a few minutes before he came back with an entire tree branch. Stick. He seemed pretty sure that he had gotten what I wanted. And it was true that sticks came off of branches. It was nice to have a fire that night, and have both light and warmth. Koh wanted me to snuggle with him anyway, he made that clear by pulling me into his arms and laying down with me and I…I didn’t see why not. It would be warmer, when the nights were cold, and now, I knew that he wasn`t going to hurt me again, so I didn`t have to be scared of him at all.
But snuggling with him near the fire reminded me of mother again, and I tried to gulp back tears. He touched my cheek with one hand. Shhh. I looked at him, and his eyes were odd in the firelight. But…kind. The expression in them now was like mother`s…I hid my face from the wind that was going through the clearing by ducking it against Koh`s chest. I tried to muffle the sobs that had started. I felt Koh`s hand in my hair as I cried myself to sleep, missing mother. I wanted mother back…I hadn`t cried all the time I was alone, but with Koh here…all my tears had come.
The next day started the same, me waking up in Koh’s arms. But we were still out in the open, near the remains of the fire that had gone out while we slept. I ate some of the berries for breakfast, but tried to portion them out. I didn`t know how long I had to make them last for… Koh didn’t seem to need to eat regular food, and didn`t understand when I tried to give him berries, just studied them curiously, then handed them back, but I needed to make these last, at least until tomorrow, or the day after. Then I’d convince him to bring me to find more. I thought he would, even though he didn`t seem to understand why. But it was still better to make what I had last longer.
After I`d eaten, Koh jumped out of the ravine. I watched, startled. What…? Where…Where was he going now? Was he leaving me alone? I didn`t want to be alone! But when I stood up, afraid of being alone again, I saw that he was pacing along the edge of the ravine. I didn`t know why, but as long as he wasn`t going away, and especially if he stayed where I could see him…I watched him for a while to make sure, then turned to the task at hand, which was pulling sticks off the branch that Koh had brought back, so that they would be ready to put into a fire. An entire tree branch wouldn`t fit in the fire, after all. Mother and I had always had to break sticks smaller to fit into the fireplace in the cottage.
It wasn`t very cold at the moment, but when dark fell, I thought that it would be, since the other nights had been. When I accidentally scratched myself enough to make my arm bleed, Koh jumped back into the ravine and was immediately by my side, grabbing my arm, licking the blood. “Koh!” I protested as it stung. Shhh. The blood…I didn`t try to pull away because Koh wouldn`t hurt me. And because I remembered that him licking my cuts had healed them last time. It did this time as well. Was healing by licking something that demons could all do? I`d never read about it…
Koh hadn`t responded to me the first few times I`d used his name, but now I noticed that every time I said his name, he came over to me. Relieved that he would now come when I called, like mother had, I was willing to explore a little in the other directions when Koh brought me out of the ravine, to see if food could be found there as well. As long as I held onto his hand, Koh didn`t seem to mind at all. But if I tried to let go, Koh almost always immediately headed back for the ravine. I found wild onions in one of the other directions, so I started a stockpile of them under a teeny overhang in the ravine. There were several overhangs, I`d found, some bigger than others. The one that Koh and I slept under sometimes was the biggest. I wasn’t sure which day it was. I was losing track, since there was nothing to mark the days as separate, other than once every couple of days the trip outside the walls to forage for berries, potatoes, onions, peppers, and sticks for the fire.
Comments (0)
See all