---Raala’s perspective---
I lie on my back in the clear water.
My feet tickle pleasingly as minnows nibble the skin.
Above me, I can see the late morning sunlight through the forest canopy.
There’s a slight breeze on my face, nicely complemented by the gentle current on the rest of my body.
Soon, Winter will be here and the streams will be too cold to bathe in like this…
I’m guessing the outlanders would already think this water was uncomfortable from what the leader’s told me…
“Raala…!” the dampened sound reaches my ears through the water.
‘Think of the Mammothdamned Wolf!’ I think to myself as irritation replaces my serenity.
I sigh at my post-wash-soak being interrupted, raise myself from the pool and turn around.
“Oooh!” yips the tall man before hurriedly turning away and saying “Sorry… I didn’t… the light… the reflection… I couldn’t see…”
Frowning up at the back of the man’s head, I ask “‘Couldn’t see’ what? What are you sorry for?” not daring to hope that he’s apologising for cursing us with his people’s presence.
“Well… uhm… you’re naked?” says the man, still with his back to me and the water.
“…Yeah… aaaaand?” I prompt.
“I’m sorry… it’s… it’s just embarrassing for me is all… I know your people aren’t the same but… I can’t help it.”
“‘Embarrassing’!?” I mock “What by the fucking Maw is there to be embarrassed of?!?!?!… oH nOoOoOoO(!) NoW yOu KnOw I’vE gOt TiIiIiItS(!)… Is my body that ugly to you or…!?”
“No, no! It’s definitely not that! The opposite if anything! It’s just… err… it’s… men and women… we don’t… In the 144 Channels… they only see eachother naked… when… uhm… when they are… when they’re about to… erm…”
The realisation hits me like the head of a charging rhino and my face contorts in disgust.
“STOP!” I snarl “Not one more WORD, outlander!”
I stamp up the pebbled bank to where I left the large buckskin.
Absolutely furious at him for the warm ochre flush he’s made stain my cheeks, I yank up the soft hide and hurriedly start rubbing down my body to dry off.
“I thought your people came from a place where it’s always warm? How’d you end up as uptight fucking weirdos about nudity?!” I fume, under my breath.
“Well… when it was hot, we needed to wear light clothing all over our bodies to shield us from the sun… like portable shade… It never got anywhere near freezing where I’m from but it did get cool and, when it was cool, we needed to wrap up not to get cold… The parts of the year where clothing would’ve been optional got swallowed by the parts where it wasn’t… is my guess?”
“Khhh!” I scoff “And now you bring your weird hangups here to inflict on us!” starting to get dressed.
He says nothing, just continuing to look forward, away from me.
“Why did you even come to the pool if you’re so weird about nudity? You knew I was bathing!” I growl.
“I thought you would’ve been wearing something. I realise now I was wrong.” he mutters.
“You thought I was wearing clothes to bathe(?)” I ask, flatly “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”
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At this point, I notice what he’s wearing…
His legs are bare from the midcalf to the upper thigh and his arms are entirely uncovered up to the shoulders.
His top has a small vent between his shoulderblades and a larger one at the lower back, exposing the toned muscles there.
Searching my memory for the brief glimpse I got of his front before his squeamishness made him turn around, I recall there was a similar vent over his stomach, lines of pale scar tissue visible through it.
“What’s with the getup, outlander?” I ask, as I finish covering up and stride past him, getting a noseful of his tangy alien scent “You were more heavily dressed when we talked in your tent! Your skin got thicker in the last two days or what(?)”
“Oh, well… I’ll get sweaty if I dress more heavily than this… I mean, I’ll get sweaty either way but less so dressed like this.”
I scoff, thinking he’s being a massive baby about getting a bit of sweat in his clothes!
---Ksem’s perspective---
I jog alongside the wheezing, sweatdrenched woman who’s been chasing the aurochs with us for about a twelfth of the sunlight now.
I’ve got a pleasant cooling sheen on my skin but she looks as if she’s just come out of that pool again!
The brief glimpse I caught of her naked body pushes itself into my mind, causing me a wash of shame.
I feel terrible for two reasons; one, I saw something I should not have seen and, two, if I hadn’t said anything, she wouldn’t’ve needed to be embarrassed about it at all!
Of course, if I hadn’t said anything, if I’d done my best to treat talking with a beautiful woman who’s not wearing any clothes like it’s a normal thing that’s happened to me a thousand times, she would’ve found out eventually and been angry at me for not making the situation clear the first time!
I can’t win, it seems…(!)
When we first sighted our quarry, her initial reaction was to try and run it down in a flat sprint!
As impressive as it was to see the way everything about her is clearly meant for running fast (from her thick, muscular legs to the way her flat, squared off feet smack against the ground to her rock solid stability), I can’t say I would’ve advised starting an endurance hunt with a sprint!
She obviously had no luck chasing down the bull when it was able to see her coming from so far away but what she did do was tire herself out!
It was perhaps a little cruel to extend the invitation at all when I knew how bad she would be at keeping up but… well, I know from experience that Old Red’s people don’t tent to believe our stamina until they witness it!
Hopefully, even if she is embarrassed and annoyed by being shown up like this (as I’m sure she’ll see it), she will at least be reassured that this is actually the way we hunt and we’re perpetrating no deception about it!
Leaning down so she’ll be the only one who can hear me, I start “Uhm… Raala?… You know you could just wai-?” but she cuts me off.
“I said…*hhhhh*…I’m fine! …*hhhhh*… Leave me…*hhhhh*…alone!”
---Raala’s perspective---
My whole body is on fire as I lie on my back, my clothes soaked with sweat in a way I already know is going to get uncomfortable on the return walk…
Those outlanders are insane!
This is how they hunt?! Every time!?
It’s fucking creepy!
That aurochs had no idea what was coming for it!
You could see in the almost lazy way it was running early on, it had no clue that today was going to be it’s last on earth! No idea that its fate had already been determined by having caught the eyes of those people who just don’t seem to get tired!
I watch them from the top of this knoll I collapsed on, way in the distance, as their prey finally falls to the ground.
I can see the strength to even stand is simply gone from the mighty bull’s limbs as the lanky outlanders close in around it.
I see their leader raise that bent stick he carries in some kind of gesture but the distance and the fact that he’s turned away from me don’t give me a good view of exactly what he does with it.
Then, suddenly, my attention snaps to the bull, its head dropping to the ground like a heavy sack!
The spear wielding outlanders rush forward to lance its sides…
I watch the strange creatures as they immediately set about butchering and skinning their kill.
It looks like they really do hunt on plains, I guess.
---Bwey’s perspective---
“You sleep Ksem tent tonight(?)” I quip at the dour girl, sat alone, as I sit down next to her on the log seat in the centre of camp, the light of my people’s fire fighting back the dusk as we sing, dance and eat.
“I’d rather sleep in a bear’s den.” she sneers, the skin twisting on her thick brow, voice as serious as a lion attack!
“It joke, girl! Not serious this way!… You sleep me and girls… Not worry!” I giggle back in my best attempt at her language.
I don’t have Ksem’s talent for tongues and never spent as much time with Old Red as he did, so most of my learning of Basinspeak has been from him, in the last year.
“Here! Food for you!” I say, pushing a wooden bowl of spitroasted beef and emberroasted onion to her.
She extends her hand to push it away.
“I didn’t help. All I did was run and collapse. I can’t take that.” she growls, looking away.
“When you people get food, only people help get food?” I ask, wryly, knowing that isn’t how they do things.
She meets my eyes but doesn’t answer.
I push the bowl back towards her and smile “Eat girl! You work hard, you need food! It not complicated(!)”
Reluctantly, she takes it… and starts to eat.