Page 54 of Planet Zero
Finally exhausted, she slumped on the pallet.
Zoark watched her without a word.
“Sorry.” She slowly raised her hands to wipe her teary face. “It was just so unexpected. Water. Do you know what water is?”
“Only what the women told me. About lakes and oceans of your homeland, and animals without legs that live there, called fish. It is such a strange concept. Like a make-believe children’s tale.”
Addie smiled weakly. Poor Zoark, it must have been hard for him to comprehend. And had he heard about fire?
“Do you want more?”
She nodded.
He sliced another couple of the hard bulbs, and let the juice drip into his hand. The Timpho grass water even smelled like rain, fresh, elusive,wet.
As she drank, he snaked his other hand around her shoulder, offering support. He stayed with her while she cried silent tears because this moment, and Zoark, altered the fabric of her life.
Chapter 17
Addie’s new life had begun.Accepted into the tribe, if not one of them, she now felt protected and seen. Belonging to a healthy social group was a wonderful thing, even whensomegroup members with a penchant for yellow robes tried to petrify her with their mean little red eyes every time their paths crossed. Which occurrences Addie went out of her way to make as infrequent as possible within the confines of the same settlement.
But the true life-changing event, the monumental occurrence, the plate-tectonics of life’s gifts was discovering the hidden magic of Timpho grass. It greweverywhere. Even the ubiquitous tubers required searching for and digging out from underneath the vicious Qom bush. With Timpho grass, Addie could take two steps away from her pallet and hack off a stalk with her knife.
It was exactly what she started doing two days later when her ribs allowed her to take a semi-decent breath. Getting to her feet and moving super slowly, she began organizing her life.
More of her things arrived - the remaining skins taken off her old little teepee, her spear, and her supply of Nessi fruit to reward her pet Yuux, - all brought back by Melmie and, shockingly, Hunlath.
“I will help you to cut sticks that you can weave together for a new tent,” Hunlath said when he unloaded the bundle of her possessions at her feet.
Chele must have heard him from inside her teepee as she immediately appeared next to them.
“No, Hunlath. Addie-woman will stay with us. With Oh’na and I.”
“As in, live with you?” Addie was so moved that she didn’t know what to say.
“There’s safety in numbers. And you will work and help take care of Oh’na.” Satisfied with her pragmatic arrangement, she bobbed her head in a way humans would find anatomically impossible.
Live with Chele and little Oh’na? As part of their small family? Yes, Addie was more than fine with it.
She kept her bed articles but relinquished the rest of her divine furs, Sathe’s creations, to be used in their combined household, and moved in.
That first night in Chele’s teepee, Addie could hardly sleep. The presence of bodies so close to hers, the soft breathing and the rustle of clothes when they moved - something she had wished ardently to experience many a night while sleeping completely alone in the vast foreign steppe - was now turning into a source of discomfort.
You’ve been a savage far too long, Addie,she thought with irony staring at the teepee’s pointed ceiling.Time to get back to society.
And so she did.
Slowly recovering from her injury, painful and restricting but thankfully non-life-threatening, Addie began to learn the rhythm of the tribe and the roles of its members.
Everyone worked, even Chief Net’ok who hunted along with his men, though he rarely sharpened his weapons or gutted his kill - others took care of that for him in deference to his status.
Strictly speaking, every family was self-sufficient and could do a little of everything, but certain persons were masters in different areas. Like Hunlath with stone tools. Like Vircea with dyes. Vircea was the only woman except for Qalae who possessed knowledge of good dyeing techniques, and the queen relied on Vircea’s help to get the process right. Addie now suspected, although she couldn't tell for sure, that Chemmusaayl Yellow was an experimental color.
Speaking of Chemmusaayl, she wasn’t sure what he did all day. On some mornings, he made visits to the teepees and spoke to the residents, providing words of support and, well, counseling. When the chief was in the village, Chemmusaayl remained joined at the hip with him and Vuskas, making the three amigos their de-facto governing unit.
Chemmusaayl continued to regard Addie warily and with disdain but made no overt attempt to get rid of her.
Zoark avoided her. Addie discovered that he was often away from the settlement on scouting expeditions, and when he came in, he would go to the tent he shared with Oh’nil and Vircea and stayed there. He gave other men a wide breadth to avoid being picked on, but some, like Wixab, still managed to find a way and a reason to snag him out of sheer mischief. He never engaged. He took their aggressions in stride, without fear, and left them without repercussions.
