***Nema***

Nema hummed, sucking on gor root as she planned out Tom’s new shoes. They were going to be stunningly big when they were finished. Her father had more than enough leather in storage, but the tricky part was getting the soles right. Tom’s feet were so big it was actually a little tricky to make a boot without irritating seams on the soles.

She had to pull from her father’s stash of game hides from the south, where the trees and the animals grew big and wild, but she eventually found a hide big and strong enough to withstand the increased size and forces involved in being a giant.

Now it was just a matter of practicing her leatherworking.

Make a man happy, and he’ll appreciate it for a time, but he may still leave for greener pastures. Make a man comfortable, and he’ll be too lazy to leave you.

Nema chuckled evilly as she thought back to her mother’s advice. Why not both? She thought, using a stone knife to cut the pattern out. She’d borrowed Tom’s strange shoes long enough to rough out the shape.

She was about to sew the leather moccasins together when she realized she was out of binding agent. It’d been a while since a hunting party came back with a big enough prize to make glue from. Most of the bones went towards broth for the children.

Maybe I can borrow some from Antul. No, wait, I called in most of my favors for the extra furniture. Beconn should have some.

Nema smoothly rose to her feet from a crosslegged posture and marched over to the curtain and whipped it out of the way, almost colliding with the man looming in the doorway.

Vol!

“EEEP!” Nema yipped, shoving the young shaman away, tapping into her well as she did. The body flew out of the entryway like a startled Kalbet.

“Bones, girl, you almost killed me!” Gunn’s old-man voice called from the distance.

Bones.

“You made me drop my gor!” Nema deflected, picking her gor root where it had fallen, the somewhat bitter yet savory root had immediately become covered in sand. Nema winced as she wiped the sand off before putting it back in her mouth.

Ruined. The texture is ruined. Gak.

“Pleh, pleh,” She spat out sand as Gunn approached.

“I’ve no understanding why you like that stuff.” Gunn said, rubbing his back as he staggered in.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Nema said with a sniff, changing the subject again before she could dwell on how she’d acquired it. “What brings you here?”

“Just checking in. How are you two? How’s your ploy to claim the giant as your partner?” He glanced around the room. “I see you’re already half moved in. Moving fast.”

Actually Nema was taking time and great care to acclimatize the giant to her ministrations so he didn’t scream like a girl, throw his valak cloak over his manhood and try to sprint for the door, braining himself on the stone.

People still laugh at Gruba’s scar, Nema thought, her gut wrenching a bit.

Gradually broadening of the scope of Nema’s service to Tom was probably not the exact topic the elder wanted to discuss, though, so she gave him a vague answer and a tidbit of interesting information.

“It’s going well. He treats me like glass when I could break him over my knee, which is amusing. He’s learning the language faster than I gave him credit for, too. In the last two weeks, he’s gotten a very simple understanding of our language. Basic phrases and simple words, like yes, no, toilet, ‘you’re the best a man could ask for’, that sort of thing. Well, he thinks that one means ‘I’m hungry’,” Nema felt a mischievous grin settle on her face.

“Really? How’s his accent?”

The amusement disappeared and Nema frowned. “Not…southerner, if that’s what you’re asking.” She paused and cocked her head at the elder, trying to unravel the old man’s presence in her home.

“What are you actually here for?”

Gunn’s stance deflated somewhat as she pricked the matter with a thorn.

“That…not southern southerner you’ve been taking care of…what was his name…” Gunn’s one remaining arm drew at the air, trying to pluck the name from ether. “Tom. That’s right.”

“What about him?” Nema asked.

“I couldn’t help but notice the three gold discs he’s carrying around on his person. To be sure, he doesn’t take them out often, but I recognize them for what they are, even if I haven’t seen them outright.”

Nema had sometimes felt hard lumps in Tom’s clothes that couldn’t be explained by simple excitement, but she hadn’t pried.

“I don’t know what you’re talking abou-“

“Gold discs, about this big.” He said, holding his fingers apart. “About half the size of your fist. With a little cylinder in the center.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Whatever you’re looking for, I haven’t seen them,”

“I have,” Gunn said, his face turning red with some powerful emotion Nema couldn’t quite place. “Every night in my dreams since this.” He gestured emphatically to his missing arm. “I was there, six years gone by now, when the southern Alia unleashed a tide of demons on us. When your father and practically every able-bodied man in the village was slaughtered to a man by an unending horde of…limitless numbers.”

Nema waited for him to continue, but Gunn seemed to get a grip on himself.

“I pretended to be a corpse. Only reason I’m still alive. Hiding under my brothers and sisters. Which is how I got a real good look at one of the gold discs. A black-haired fellow bore it, black and straight like our hair, but pale as milk. He was stalking through the aftermath, looking for survivors. One of ours leapt up and charged him, like I was fixing to do, but he just held up this dinky little gold disc and FWOMPH!”

Gunn expanded his hand. “Yesra was a pile of ash. I laid back down and gave up on an ambush after that.”

“What are you getting at?” Nema asked, her guts twisting in her stomach.

“What I’m getting at, is your new man has direct ties to the Alia who took the greenlands away from our people nearly a decade ago. Until we know what those ties are, I want you to watch him close.”

“I’m not a spy.”

“He might be,” Gunn responded. He searched her eyes for a moment before giving a shrug. “I’ve said my piece. Have a good morning.”

Honored Elder…old bastard trying to get in my head, Nema thought, crunching the gol root in frustration.

Of course the man she began investing her time and effort into had some connection to the greatest tragedy of her generation. Why not? Now she would be suspicious of Tom, which would sour her further interactions with him.

That is, if she acted like a Sletzhol and didn’t clear the air with Tom.

The only problem was, basic phrases and daily words didn’t really allow them to have a deep conversation about the gold discs Gunn mentioned.

We’ll have to keep working on it. In the meantime, I’ll simply assume Tom is innocent.

If the gods had decided to ruin her shot at claiming a man a fifth time…well, she would probably just give up altogether.

Now, about that glue… As she left the home, Nema packaged up that conversation and tucked it away in a cluttered corner of her mind, labeled ‘Inane Prattlings of Old Men.’

***Tom Graves***

Village life was…interesting.

Tom hadn’t quite figured out how he could contribute. A nineteen year old with high school level experience, a tiny bit of baby-handling and freight-stocking history, does not have the skills to compete with people who have been preparing to literally feed a family their entire lives.

He thought about using his truck to aid in hunting transportation in some fashion, but he’d have to fix it first, and build a stockpile of gasoline. He still hadn’t quite stockpiled enough soul pulses to try, and he was still developing his Vith vocabulary.

Honestly it might be more soul-pulse efficient to animate a skeleton and use that as a personal beast of burden. Tom was seriously considering the low efficiency of duplication as a stumbling block.

That would only cost him roughly fifty soul pulses, and would serve until it was destroyed, while duping enough gas to make an eighty mile round trip would run him…three hundred and twenty, I think?

It could take Tom half a year or more to build up that much gas through duping. If the gas even stored that long.

The issue was, the truck was a known quantity. The tribals understood that it was a machine and not a monster…now. They wouldn’t freak out too bad if he got it running again and used it to haul hunters out and prey back.

Which would create value in keeping Tom alive.

On the other hand, creating a large beast of burden from some of the bones he’d seen scattered around was a huge X factor. He had no idea what they thought of animated skeletons, but he could imagine their reaction might be violent if they weren’t expecting it.

There were problems with either situation.

I think my best bet would be to call Luz and use Nema as a litmus test to see how a civilian would react.

Thinking of Nema almost brought a shit-eating grin to his face before he brought it back under control.

Village life was interesting.

There was a clear division of labor between men and women. Typical hunter gatherer stuff where men hunt and women do almost everything else, but it was the social aspects that gave Tom pause.

There was a single male leader who was sort of the face of the village. He mediated disputes, he married people, and made the rules when rules were needed. The guy had a relatively slow job, as everyone in the village knew their role and how to fill it.

The women though, they had just as much, if not more power than the men. If Tom understood what he was seeing and hearing correctly, women were responsible for cooking, cleaning, sewing, and all that stuff.

While the women were expected to do that, no man in particular had a right to demand service from them. The women as a whole could collectively exercise their right to not take care of an asshat, which meant this particular person would have to cook, clothe, bathe and hunt for themselves. That was a full-time job.

There was one guy who often gave Tom the stink-eye when he thought Tom wasn’t looking.

This guy wore the stench of the women’s disapproval around wherever he went as an actual smell that clung to him. The longer Tom stayed with them, the more it intensified. His clothes became dirty and ragged, his cheeks sunk in, and his home gradually cluttered.

Men couldn’t help but pick up on this deliberate ostracism and subtly distanced themselves from the fellow in order to avoid the same treatment. This compounded the man’s isolation.

Aside from glaring at Tom, he also gave Nema a hungry look whenever she walked by.

Bad news, but it seemed like the women understood that and were in the process of starving him out.

It was interesting seeing the close-knit behavior that allowed the women of the village as a whole to render judgement upon someone. This was only possible because of the size of the village; every one of them had to be on board with the plan.

It also brought into stark relief the fact that Tom was being taken care of, and he wasn’t even earning it. If Nema decided to cut him loose, that was probably it.

Goodwill has an expiration date. As grampa used to say.

Tom hadn’t seen anyone he could pinpoint as Nema’s mother, and from what he could gather, she had been supplying most of his basic necessities from her personal wealth and the effects of her dead father, who had been an influential man in the village. Not the chief, exactly, but some kind of problem solver.

Learning a new language is hard, even with double the time to practice.

Tom stretched out his aching muscles as he approached his house, eager to relax for a while before he used his broken Vith to gauge Nema’s reaction to animating the dead.

Actually, I could first broach the subject during a dream, then summon Luz and animate a skeleton first during a dream. Just to see…

Tom’s thoughts came to a grinding halt as he took in the ruined state of his house.

The shelving was shredded, his stone table was cracked in the center. His blood sword resting on the wall was missing, along with the mirrors from his truck, and several other valuables.

It also smelled like piss.

~Tom, ~ doing?” Nema asked, grabbing him from behind in a playful hug.

A moment later she glanced around from behind him, her body stiffening against his back.

That night, Nema inadvertently taught him a few new curse words.