Page 49 of Romancing Rem'eb

“Lunsh,” she tells me again happily.

“So you stay here because the food is abundant,” I muse, and it makes sense. When the warmth leaves a garden cavern, all of the plants inside die off. I cannot imagine that they can grow the mushrooms and mosses that our people are dependent upon. Her people eat the things from the strange, salty waters.

And the cave full of fruit…that my people cleaned out. I am uneasy about that realization. We were selfish, all because Kin’far spoke his poison to my father and said the fruits should be ours.

We dig up more of the lunsh from beneath the sands as we walk, and I forget that it is so bitter cold after a while. Sunlight pushes through the clouds, blindingly bright, and then the water glitters and it is a beautiful sight. I pause to look at it and a winged creature soars far overhead, dipping down to the waters to skim its beak against the surface. I point it out to Tia.

She nods. “Ee eets fish.” And she makes a back and forth motion with her arm.

“Fish?” I grow excited. “You can fish in these waters?”

Tia smiles widely, amused by my enthusiasm. “We fish. Come.”

We return to her hut and stomp the sands off of our boots just outside. Then she ducks in and puts the clams and mussels into a container full of water and grabs a net and what looks like line attached to a long, bendy thing that looks like bone but is not.

“Fishinpole,” she says, offering it to me. “Lessgo fish.”

Chapter

Twenty-Four

TIA

Rem’eb’s delight at fishing is palpable. We use the same sort of gear he does—that much is obvious when he smiles with joy at the sight of my fishing pole. He seems puzzled by the material it’s made from, and I try to explain that it comes from a fish that grows a long, sturdy hollow reed atop its head. Or I try to explain it, anyhow. I’m sure it doesn’t come across but he gets the idea eventually and we settle on one of the big rocks that jut farther out into the waters so he can cast. I help him get set up at the edge of the rocks and watch as his color flutters, changing to the same stone-gray as the boulder beneath his feet. He thinks for a moment, gazing down at the furs that cover almost every inch of him, and then his color flutters back to its normal reddish-gold shade. “I guess I do not need to camouflage.”

“Only if you want,” I call out, and sit back at the far end of the large boulder so I don’t get hooked when he casts.

For the first time today, he looks like he’s in his element. His strange, poofy mane is fluttering around his face, his cheeks chapped by the cold and the tip of his nose red. But there’s a huge smile on his face and a confidence that wasn’t there before. He must really be feeling out of place in my world.

“My” world. Ha. I’m not sure this will ever be my world, but I make do.

I watch him while the morning away casting his line, and this would be the perfect time to work on my knitting, except I left it back in the hut. I have a loom to pore over, too, and my heart squeezes with affection. Even when he was spiriting me away, Rem’eb knew how much that loom meant to me and he made sure he brought one. He’s such a good man.

“You guys are fishing wrong,” calls out an obnoxious, reedy little voice.

Biting my tongue, I glance back at Raashel, who stands with her younger sister, Aayla. It figures that out of all the kids on the beach, we’d get stuck with Liz’s girls. They’re just as nosy and bossy as their mother. “Rem’eb’s people have a different way of fishing than we do,” I call back. “Leave us alone.”

“Don’t you want to know how to catch fish?” Raashel asks, tilting her head up at us from below on the shore.

“It’s fine.”

“But you won’t catch anything.”

“It’s fine,” I say again, fighting to keep my tone pleasant.

“He’s dragging his line back constantly instead of letting it sink to where the fish are hiding in the rocks,” Raashel continues, oblivious. Or maybe she just doesn’t care that she’s annoying us because she feels a bone deep need to be right. “You need a bobber. Where’s the colored bone he should be using?”

“Where’s your mom?” I retort. “Shouldn’t you kids be supervised?”

“We’re practically adults now,” Raashel continues, and starts climbing the rocks to join us. “I’ll have to show him how it’s done or you guys won’t catch anything.”

I clamp my jaw and it’s on the tip of my tongue to tell them to leave when Rem’eb sets his pole down and carefully makes his way over the slippery rocks to help the girls. “We have visitors?” he asks me. “Who are these young ones?”

Swallowing my sourness, I watch him help the girls up to join us. Raashel takes his extended hand as if she’s a princess receiving her due, and Aayla is silent. The younger girl has her hair in pigtails, as blonde as Liz, and she gives me a shy smile and comes to sit beside me as Raashel moves forward to the spot where Rem’eb had been fishing.

“Let me show you how to fish these waters,” she announces in her favorite know-it-all tone.

Rem’eb glances back at me.

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