Chapter Eighteen - Let You Touch Mine

-Summer-

https://i.imgur.com/6VzHabA.png [https://i.imgur.com/6VzHabA.png]

Without Eefim hunting and preparing the meat, Deenat had to step in to take over the smoking and sun-drying of the meats. This meant Belbet was left with the job of making the bigger kiln, which she managed to complete in a few hours of muddy back-breaking work. Setting that to cure, a huge fire inside thanks to the charcoal they’d made, she turned her attention next on the field.

This time, Dahnei joined her in her weed-picking exercise. As Belbet bent down to touch and coax the little sprouts of their food up above the soil, so did Dahnei. Mohniit followed behind them, but mostly his goal was to gather up as many rocks as he could find. Dahnei, however, was a fountain of questions that Belbet wasn’t sure how to answer.

“How do you do the glowing thing, Mama?”

“I don’t know, Sweetheart.” Belbet closed her eyes and pressed her fingers just below the surface soil, taking a moment to think and feel that bright warmth in the dirt. Just like before, she moved it to her breath, drawing in breath and light from the earth, swirling it in that golden ball, and then passing it out back into the earth and the imagined seedlings beneath the surface.

“But you’re glowing right now, Mama.”

“I am?” She asked, keeping her eyes closed. It was hard to keep up the rhythm while answering questions like this.

“Yeah! It’s really pretty. Hard to look at, like the sun!” Her daughter’s voice was close and Belbet could feel her breath on the side of her arm. Was Dahnei leaning right into Belbet’s space? She didn’t open her eyes to find out.

“All I’m doing is imagining my own light moving down my arms, into the earth, and then when I breathe in, I take the light from the earth into my body, swirl it around in my belly. I breathe out, and pass the energy back to the earth and the seedlings just below the surface. If I glow while I do that, I don’t know why.”

The breath on her arm moved, and Belbet could hear Dahnei shuffle to another place in the garden. A crunch of dirt, and Belbet could picture Dahnei crouching down to push her hands into the dirt, to try what her mother had just described. Belbet turned her attention back to her own passing of energy.

And she was startled into opening her eyes upon realizing she could SEE Dahnei’s energy. It was gone, of course, the moment she opened her eyes, but when she closed them again, breathing out and focusing, there it was. Her own energy glowed a deep, forest green. But the energy flowing into the earth just a little ways from her (where she assumed Dahnei had crouched down) was a light, spring green, playful and wavering.

“Try to pull the energy back a little. Make it like a liquid that soaks into the ground with each breath, and then spread it as far as you can.” She coached, hoping it would make sense to the little girl.

Sure enough, the little girl's energy seemed to solidify and then melt, like water. It only lasted a little bit, however, and Belbet could only blame that on Dahnei’s attention span. What could she really expect from a five-year-old child?

When Dahnei began fidgeting a little too much, Belbet opened her eyes and decided that they should move on to the next activity, before she started getting destructive out of boredom. “Want to help mama make soap?”

Dahnei’s little face lit up and she nodded, eager as always to learn. Belbet grinned right back, and took her hand. Since Mohniit seemed content to click his rocks together there in the garden, she let him be. She’d be able to see him from the fire anyway.

“First thing we need to do is render down the fat.” Belbet began explaining, “That means to take the fat, and make it liquid. That liquid can be stored and saved for later. Fat has tons of uses,” She continued, as she picked up the pile of cut-off-fat from Deenat’s station. Carrying it over to the fire, she began to prepare the pot to render the fat. “Like to make soap, to cook food in, to make lamps that light up the night without fires.”

“Ooooh,” The child commented, and Belbet had to roll her eyes in amusement. She settled the pan over the fire, and plopped the chunks of fat and gristle into the pan, waiting to hear the gentle sizzle of it melting. While that was happening, Belbet took out their other pot, and handed it to Dahnei.

“Go and fill this with ash, okay? Be careful not to burn yourself.” Dahnei nodded and ran off to do exactly that.

“What are you going to make now?” Kaion asked from where he was seated, filling in the tile-forms with clay. “And how many of these tiles do we need to make?” She could see his frustration in the incline of his shoulders and the way his hands bunched on the tiles.

“We’ll need a lot of tiles, since we’re using them to cover the entire roof of the storehouse. Any leftover can be used when we renovate the hut. But you don’t have to keep making them right now. We have a lot stored up waiting to be cured, so you can take a break.” She gestured to the clay tiles laying around drying in the sun.

“...We need baskets and pots still, yes?” Kaion asked, setting aside the tile he’d just finished.

“Always.” Belbet laughed, nodding. “We’re going to need more pots to cook things in and store things too. It’d be a big help if you wanted to put some together.”

Kaion nodded, then stilled, his eyes drifting to his foot. Or perhaps he was just looking off into the middle distance, Belbet couldn’t quite tell. After several moments of sizzling silence and stirring the fat, Belbet couldn’t stand the silence anymore, and so spoke without thinking.

“Does your hoof hurt? Should I check on it for you?”

His eyes flashed back to her, and the sharpness in them made her heart thump hard in her chest. “If you would.” He said, his voice different from a few moments ago, almost… warm. She nodded, leaving the wooden spoon someone had carved in the fat as it gently bubbled. She added a few more chunks, so they could start melting down too. Then, she shuffled around the fire to Kaion’s side.

He’d shifted, sitting up straighter so that she could reach the digitigrade limb easily. As always, his legs were covered in a soft, curling white hair, not quite thick enough to be called fur, but definitely enough to be called hairy. She unwrapped the fur strips from his hoof, lifting it to look at it in the sunlight, careful not to get in her own way.

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The first thing she noticed was how much the redness and swelling had gone down. It was already looking much better, if she compared it to what it had looked like the first day he’d been here. “Does it hurt less?”

“Yes. It feels so much better.” Kaion commented. He didn’t flinch when she pressed a gentle finger against the skin around the outside of the incision wound, checking for heat. No streaking redness that would indicate an infection. “I should be able to resume work today or tomorrow.”

“I believe I told you not for several days.” Belbet chided, standing up and going to get some of their boiled water. She poured some of this over the wound, cleaning it out again as best she could. She was quite amused by Kaion’s hiding of his flinches, watching his hand bunch in the furs beneath him.

As she was wrapping the wound, now packed with new medicine once again, he spoke again. “I have… never encountered an otter-spirited woman before.” His pause drew her eyes to look at him. She saw him looking at her, brow lightly drawn and lips almost smiling. “Your ears look very soft.”

Belbet found her cheeks warming. “Thank you?” She asked, unsure if that was a compliment. Turns out it was, because he leaned forward, eyes more intent now.

“Could I touch them?”

Her heart stuttered in her chest, and she found herself at a loss. He was looking at her the same way Mohniit did when she played with him, all curiosity and joy. In the end, she felt like it would be more painful to say no than to allow him a few seconds of feeling up her weird new ears. “A-Alright.”

She tied off his bandages, and then shuffled awkwardly closer to his torso, so that he wouldn’t have to twist oddly to reach her head. She didn’t even have to lean in. He reached up and before she realized what was happening, she felt his thick fingers rub along the edge of her small folded ears. She felt a shiver run down her spine, and her shoulders rose, as if they could hide her ears from his touch.

His fingers pressed and kneaded the smooth fur along the outside of her ears and Belbet closed her eyes, trying not to flinch away. Soon, however, his fingers traced up over the rim of her ear, and down along the soft sensitive insides. She felt his fingertips lift and tug at her hair, where it connected with the fur of her ears.

Then, his touch was gone, and she cautiously opened her eyes. Kaion was staring at her face, and for a moment, she wondered just how red she’d gotten. His eyes flicked over the various points of her face, and then he spoke. “Would you like to touch mine?”

Startled by the generous offer, she nodded, her hair slipping around her shoulders from the loose braid she kept it in. Reaching up herself, she let her own fingers brush first over the hard keratin of his horns. They swirled, bumped and ridged, curling around his ears almost protectively. She focused entirely on them to avoid the heat in Kaion’s gaze. Why wasn’t he closing his eyes, like she had?

After she’d gotten her fill of the rough texture of the horns, she shifted to the long, folded lengths of Kaion’s sheep-like ears. Sure enough, they were soft as lambs ears. The short fur lay smooth and the whole texture of the thing was just delightful to squeeze gently. She let her fingers linger along the length of them, tugging at the tip, before she let go entirely. She couldn’t keep petting them, not now that she’d seen how Kaion was looking at her.

“Th-they’re very nice!” She declared, shifting immediately to stand. She made her way to the other side of the fire again, stirring the fat as if that was all she wanted out of life. She couldn’t look at him. Her embarrassment rode her like a particularly enthusiastic two year old on it’s father’s back. She would have whined in her throat if he wasn’t right across the fire and would hear it.

She could feel his heated gaze on her for a few more moments while she avoided looking at him, only for his gaze to slip away onto something else. She let her emotions settle as she watched the fat bubble and melt into the pot. Deenat delivered another set of chunks next to her, patting her on the shoulder in solidarity as she passed.

Dahnei came back with the pot filled with ashes, and Belbet shifted the pots so that both of them could sit over the stove-like fire. She poured water into the ashes, and began the process of boiling them. “This is to make Lye,” She explained to Dahnei who was watching. “It’s very dangerous, we don’t touch barehanded, okay? It’ll eat your skin.”

The little girl gasped, wide-eyed, and nodded. She watched the pot grow warm enough to bubble, and Belbet had to reach out and push her back to sitting on the log. “The fumes off this can make you very sick. Don’t breathe them in.”

“Oh okay.”

“You never answered my question.” Kaion interjected. Belbet blinked at him, lost as to what question he was talking about. “What are you making?”

“Oh! Soap. We’re making soap. It’s something that helps you get clean, and helps clean dishes, so that you don’t get sick. This stuff will be very useful.” Belbet explained. “Plus, one big batch should last us one or two months.”

“Months?” Kaion raised a white brow. “What are months?”

“Uh, the time it takes to go from new moon to full moon and back,” Belbet said, hoping that he would accept that. He seemed to, nodding along as if she made sense. “Anyway, it’s a lot of time.”

“Mama, what’s time?” Dahnei asked, and oh wow, that was a whole conversation Belbet wasn’t sure she wanted to have right this second.

“Um… Time is how we measure how long it takes to do something.” She said, and then realized that that was actually a pretty good explanation. “The sundial measures time, and shows us how long hours are in the day.” This of course, lead to a lesson on how to tell time with the sundial.

By the time her impromptu lesson was done, the ash was boiling merrily on the fire. Deenat had pulled out another round of smoked meat, and was packing it up in the leaves, and the sundial was reading a little after noon. Not that they needed the sundial when the blazing sun was overhead, making them all sweat.

“Mama… Mama bath.” Mohniit demanded, tugging at Belbet’s leg. His hair, slick with sweat, was sticking heavily to him, and yeah, she realized, he would be the hottest out of all of them, with his hair black like that. She sighed, pushing aside the instinctive fear that rose at the idea of taking them all to the river again.

“Alright little one.” She sighed, standing up. She eyed the water in the ash pot, and figured they had enough time without having to add more. “Come on. Dahnei!”

Her little daughter poked her head up from the scraps of rope that she was playing with, and when Belbet made a ‘follow me’ gesture, she abandoned them easily and followed after. Belbet helped Kaion, although the man seemed stable enough on his hooves, and even tried to brush her off as she slipped beneath his arm to support him.

“We need to make you some crutches.” She muttered, thinking on how that might be accomplished.

A lovely river dip/swimming lesson later, she had a baby who was willing to lay on his back in the water, and a daughter who could doggy paddle. The children were learning quite quickly, and it was nice to see that the recent attack hadn’t increased their fear of water. From here, she could even see Eefim, sitting on one of the rocks in the river, surrounded by the sounds of the waterfall and river. He seemed quite content to bask in it, eyes closed. If Belbet closed her own eyes, she could feel his energy moving, and she imagined it as an odd orange color. She didn’t hover over his progress, though.

Eventually, the heat of noon passed, and the children were sleepy, so a nap followed the water play. When they all woke up again, it was nearing six o'clock in the evening. The summer sun was still up and would be for another fourish hours, so they went back to work. Belbet continued adding water and ash to the ash pot, letting the solution brew for a few hours. Then, once she was content that she had a lot of decent lye water, she took the pot off the stove, so that it could cool and the ash could settle to the bottom.

The rendered fat was going into the once-a-cistern at a record pace, the beaver huge and fatty enough to produce nearly enough to fill it up a quarter of the way. Since the pumpkin was easily the size of a truck tire, she was quite happy with this amount of fat. But while the work had to be done, it wasn’t very attention-intensive. Which meant she had time to teach her babies.

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