Chapter Two - Auntie Visits

- Summer -

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It had been a late summer morning when Belbet was banished from the Tribe, and fled west, taking her two babies with her. With Dahnei's sticky little hand in hers, Belbet intended to find a good place for them to settle down. Her memories as Victoria were full of useful little tidbits about how to create a home in this situation. She'd planned on becoming a homesteader, after all, and had spent years researching ways to do so. She considered it quite lucky, now.

Belbet's memories told her that if she kept going this way for long enough, she'd run into a cliff-side, with a waterfall coming down it, leading to a long, long river. This cliff-side marked the edge of the tribe's territory, so if she could climb down, she wouldn't technically be in their lands anymore. Which meant, she wouldn't be stoned to death.

Hours spent walking through the early summer woods told her all kinds of oddities that sent the Victoria part of her into circles of confusion. Late-blooming trees and bushes next to trees heavy with fruit and fields of what looked like wild garlic and potatoes spread across her vision as she travelled. She was pretty sure she spotted wild strawberries growing as big as her five year old's fist. She heard and saw the rustle of so many animals, rabbits and deer bounding endlessly through the woods. She could see food as far as the eye could see, and all of the tutorials and books she'd read as Victoria swirled in her head. Was this really what the prehistoric world was like?

She spent the walk forming plans, thinking about what sort of shelter, what sort of farm they'd start, and what animals she could trap and domesticate. All they had to do was get to the cliffside, and then down it to the river-land below.

And sure enough, Belbet's memories were right. After hours of walking, and the sun passing overhead to now shine in their eyes, Belbet and her little family came to the cliffside. Looking down and over, she frowned, realizing how difficult this climb was going to be. Not impossible, surely, the stone looked old and well-worn, which she thought meant steady and it was only about fifteen feet from top to bottom.

She didn't have rope. This meant she'd have to try and climb this bare-handed (and barefooted, she didn't trust these straw sandals she was wearing to grip onto the stone). She took a deep breath, and then turned to her baby. "Dahnei, Mama's gonna climb down from here. I want you to wait, right here, and then when Mama yells up, you start climbing down too, okay?"

"...What if I fall?" The little girl asked, fear squeezing her voice high.

"Mama will catch you." Belbet promised, reaching out and hugging her. "Mama will definitely, definitely catch you. Don't be scared, and make sure to check before you put your weight on anything okay. Do you know how to do that?"

After Dahnei shook her head, Belbet showed her, poking a rock with her foot, and showing how it wiggled and when it stayed steady. Then, Belbet kissed Dahnei's forehead, and began her own climb, Mohniit a wiggly weight on her back that she had to compensate for each movement. At least she'd had the smarts to move a little down the ways from the waterfall, so none of the rocks were slippery.

That didn't stop her from losing her footing at least twice, eliciting twin shrieks from her babies, and Dahnei to scream, "Careful!" at her. Despite her firm belief that she could handle it before she’d started the climb, fear began creeping in, and her children’s fear was contagious. She gentled her steps, the touch of her hands on the stones, hoping to make it. Finally, after much fear and hard work, her legs shaking and breath heaving, she made it to the ground. She took a moment, sitting down and untying her pack. This had the unfortunate effect of freeing Mohniit, who was in fact interested in his surroundings. She ended up setting down the furs in a circle, and declaring that he was not to leave the circle. He seemed content with this, and picked grass while inside.

Then, Belbet turned her attention back to her daughter, who was still at the top of the cliff. "Alright, baby, you need to turn to face the wall, okay, get down on your belly, and start your climb by looking for good places to put your foot. Remember? Tap it twice before you push against it."

This advice got Dahnei a good five feet down the cliff, until suddenly she started whining loud enough for Belbet to hear it. "Mama.... Mama, where do I put my feet! My hand hurts!"

"It's okay baby, you may need to push to the right a little bit, reach out, okay. Don't worry, you can do this." She promised, even though she was terrified the girl would fall. Sure enough, Dahnei tried to reach, but her little arms couldn't hold herself up, and Belbet braced herself, panic coursing through her veins.

The severely underweight five year old slammed into her chest and shoulder, and she heard something crunch, even as her body folded under the weight of them both. They ended up on the ground, Dahnei crying as she scrambled off her mother, Belbet wheezing as she tried to catch her breath.

"G-Good... job, baby." She managed, Dahnei crowding into her side, burying her face in Belbet's shoulder which screamed in pain at the touch. Belbet thought she must have broken or maybe dislocated it. She wasn't sure. She turned, gently pushing her daughter away.

"Mama-" Dahnei cried, worry painting her little face as Belbet sat up, feeling tenderly at the wound on her shoulder.

"Shhh, it's okay, nothing's bad. Mama just needs to-" She hissed in pain, sitting up and taking a deep breath. Based solely on some old videos she'd watched as Victoria, she figured the arm was dislocated, rather than broken, for the simple fact that she could kind of move it a little.

Standing up, she went to the cliff, biting her lip, and giving herself a few seconds to breathe, before ramming her arm into the wall as hard as she could. She felt another click and the pain spiked so sharply, she cried. Then, it lessened immensely. That wasn't to say it wasn't still there, just that it seemed less dire.

She moved her arm, rotating it gently. The first time, she couldn’t really get it to go around, it hurt so much. The second, it went a little father. By the fifth attempt at rotation, it went around. It ached, but she figured she could use it, although she should probably ice it, or something. She looked to the river, and sighed. "Alright, Dahnei... We need to build shelter. Do you remember how to do that?"

Dahnei nodded, having had this lesson from the elders of the tribe. She started gathering long, thick branches, dragging them towards the small clearing near the cliff by the waterfall. Belbet used this time to begin gathering heather and small sticks and get a fire going. She kept one eye out for Mohniit, who was for now content to pick grass and point at things, babbling quietly.

The fire was more difficult than she'd thought it would be, since Victoria had never started a fire with a bow-drill. Belbet had, which was, perhaps, the reason why she got it started on the thirteenth try. Blowing desperately on the embers, she fed them slowly the stringy tree bark, the grass her son had picked, and then slowly the twigs and branches she and Dahnei had gathered. Light was slowly starting to fail, and the fire was warmth incarnate.

After it was made, she put Dahnei to work gathering stones to put around the base of the fire, so as to baby-proof it. Then, she began putting together the branches into a lean-to, leaning the larger, longer sticks against the cliffside, and stamping them into the ground. She spent far longer than she really wanted to, and earned more scratches than she cared for, weaving some of the more willowy branches between those stakes. She piled sticks and leaves atop the shitty woven lattice, to try and give it some insulation. They'd have to solidify something more tomorrow, but for now... For now, a lean-to and a fire would work.

She put the furs trapping the baby underneath the lean-to, at which point she realized she didn't know when they'd get enough food for all three of them to eat. Hoping to have something to eat before bed, Belbet took the net bag she'd been given and gently waded it through the river, hoping beyond hope to catch something. She didn't catch any fish, the wily bastards too quick to be caught, but a good number of crawdads wandered into her net. A few of them even spanned her whole hand. Which meant they had to have a decent amount of meat. The problem was cooking them without getting pinched.

In the end, she did get pinched, but the pain was worth it to stick the little bastards on a stick and cook them over the fire. She cooked them until the shells blackened and she was sure they were done. It was gross, eating the meat out of the shell while she told her babies stories, but it was food, and she was starving. Watching Dahnei, she realized that cracking them open and sucking on the heads was a more effective way of getting meat.

After letting a few cool, and showing Mohniit how to do so, Belbet felt reassured that they at least weren’t going to starve here. After Mohniit had passed out on the ground next to the fire, face glistening with leftovers, and Dahnei was blinking back sleepiness, Belbet gathered her two-year-old up and slid into the lean to. She called Dahnei to join them, and the three of them curled up close, and warm. Their limbs had to intertwine, the lean-to close and small. She could feel Mohniit’s limp, sweaty baby body plastered to her, and the feeling of Dahnei’s breath against her arms was new to both her selves.

While sleeping on the ground was normal to Belbet, to Victoria it was very distressing, and so she spent most of the night tossing and turning. Luckily, with all three of them close, warmth wasn't hard to find, even though the campfire had burnt to barely ashes.

Morning light peaked grey over the trees, just barely, and Belbet woke to a whining and hungry little Mohniit. Sighing, she rubbed the poor child’s belly. They were only going to get hungrier from here, until she could figure out a steady foodsource. Eventually, he settled back into sleep, too used to hunger for it to keep him awake.

She got up, crawling out of the lean-to and heading to restart the campfire. She thanked the gods that she still had Belbet's memories, or she would have been in a lot of trouble. While the children stayed sleeping, she began clearing brush from around the fire to make it a little safer. Then, she went to the forest with her little net bag, and began gathering various berries and roots that Belbet's memories assured her were healthy and edible. She spent a few moments identifying some, deciding just to name them the names Victoria knew, since Belbet's names were silly things like 'stink weed' and 'earth egg'.

When she had a somewhat full bag of onions, finger-sized carrots, and some strawberries, she came back to the camp and chuckled. Still the babies slept, tired and wrapped around each other like puppies. She left the berries and food on a rock next to the rock ring around the fire, before moving to the right of the lean-to and beginning to scrape bare a large square on the ground.

This would be where she built their one-room mud hut of a home. With the river nearby they had no shortage of fresh water, and with that they could make mud to act as an insulator. So, she used the handaxe to cut out a pole as big around as her fist, which she used as a sort of shovel to dig just an inch into the ground, pulling out rocks and weeds. She hadn't even cleared a square foot before the children woke up, little voices calling for her.

"Food by the fire." She called, and sure enough two tiny bodies went to the pile she'd left and began eating. She kept one eye out for them, while continuing her hard, backbreaking work. Luckily, this body was used to hard work, to walking miles each day, and to using muscles for digging and cutting. Foraging made you quite fit, apparently. When they got done eating, the kids joined her, curiosity radiating from their little faces, and she quickly put them to work gathering dry wood instead. She told them to pile the wood on the other side of the berry rock, so that it wouldn't get too close to the campfire and burn up.

The sun was up for several hours when she heard the thick and heavy footsteps of someone else in the woods coming towards them. She stopped her work, gathering the children in the lean-to, and then looking for whomever it was. In the end, she didn't see anyone, and a voice calling from the top of the cliff drew her attention.

The sight of a soft face, pale white, surrounded by long, soft white hair peering over at her triggered Belbet's memory. This was Deenat, Belbet's older sister. An ermine spirit, Deenat was considered one of the most beautiful women in the tribe, and to see her here, seeking out someone who'd been banished? Well. It was odd.

After a quick (safe and injury free, Belbet mentally grumbled over) climb down, Deenat took Belbet's face in her hands, checking her over for any damage. "Good, you're safe."

"Well, yes. The babies and I are safe for now. I'm working on making a house." She gestured to the dug-out area, and watched Deenat's face frown.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Why are you not heading for another tribe? They’d take you in, even with children." Deenat asked, half-ignoring the children as they crowded out of the lean-to. "It isn't safe to stay this close to tribal lands."

"They won't come any further than the cliff." Belbet reassured, before smiling. "I'm going to build a home here. I'm going to make more food than the tribe could ever find. It's going to take time, but we'll be eating so well we'll get fat."

"How?" Deenat cried, her hands thrown in the air. "You cannot survive without a tribe! You and the babies will die of cold in the winter!"

Belbet shook her head. Then, an idea formed, "Why not stay and see? Stay and help. If you're so worried, we'll survive better with another to help."

"This is insanity, Bel. You're going to get you and your children killed. You should pack up, head east." Deenat tried, taking her sister by her shoulders as if to shake her. Belbet flinched back, unused to being grabbed like this.

"And have those idiots condemn my children to barely any food, being ignored or abused by the adults of the tribe? The way *we* were?" Belbet demanded, calling on memories of her and Deenat, who had been born barely 4 years from each other, huddling together in the group tent, sharing heat and what little food they were given by the chief. She referred to years of neglect and abuse by the adults, with an occasional kindness if things went well for the adults.

"That's... just the way of things, Bel, and you can't tell me you didn't ignore the kids too! You were glad you didn't have to try and feed them." Deenat reminded, and saw Belbet's face crumple, just a little.

"And I regret that. I regret not giving these children a better life." She turned to her sister. "I'm not leaving this place. I'm going to build a home here, and my children will live here, and their children's children, as well." She stated.

"You can't be serious. The prey will thin! They'll run away from you!" Deenat sighed, shaking her head, "You don't even have a hunter! What are you going to do, survive off of plants forever? Winter will come and you'll have no food!"

"Meat is nice, but if you can find substitutes, you don't need a lot of it." Belbet stated, knowing for a fact that if they can find oats and beans, they'd be fine for one winter. "Deenat, I have ways, and if you're willing to trust me, I can keep you fed too. But if not, I ask you to please leave."

Deenat made an annoyed grunt, turning away from her sister. Belbet could see her shaking hands pulled into fists. "You're going to regret it, Bel." With these parting words, she dropped a net bag, before climbing up the cliff and disappearing into the woods. Belbet sighed, reaching down to pick up the bag she'd left, seeing it full of stolen sun-dried meat, rope, and a few other things too.

"Thank you!" She cried after her fleeing sister, before hanging the bag in the lean-to. Then, she went back to finishing the square their hut would be in. Luckily, Mohniit had found some rocks to bang together in the center of their little soon-to-be hut, and that kept the two year old occupied. Dahnei, however, was staring at her, biting at her little fingers.

"What's the matter, baby?" She asked, not stopping the work. "What's got you thinking so hard?"

"...Will we die here? Like auntie said?" The child asked, voice tremulous, her little lips quivering and her eyes unable to leave the ground. A truly pitiful sight, Belbet felt.

"Well... under normal circumstances, Auntie would be right. If we lived the way the tribe lives, yes, we would die here. But we're not going to live the way the tribe lives. Mommy has some ideas, and we're going to live differently. Better." Belbet gave her daughter a smile, so that hopefully the girl would be reassured.

She didn't look reassured, though. If anything, she was biting her fingers harder. Belbet took a break, setting down her digging-stick. She knelt down in front of Dahnei, and took her fingers from her mouth, kissing them gently. "We've got food, right?" The little girl nodded, and Belbet continued, "And we've got water, right? Then we'll be fine, no matter where we are, or what happens. With those two things, and your Mama, you will live, no matter what."

"..." The girl still looked unconvinced, and Belbet couldn't help but think her skeptical face was cute.

"You see this square I'm making?" Belbet tried instead. She pointed to the pounded out square roughly 20 feet by 20 feet across. Dahnei nodded, and she continued, "This is going to be our house.” At Dahnei’s confused look, Belbet realized she probably didn’t understand what the new word meant. The Tribe didn’t have a word for a permanent home, after all. “We're going to plant big trees in the earth so they don't move, and then we're going to weave little trees between them like a basket. And then, we're gonna pile mud on the outside of that basket, so that the wind and rain can't come in. And we're going to pile a bunch of sticks and leaves and mud on the roof, too, so that rain can't come in that way either. And that's going to be our home, our house."

"...Like a lean-to?" The girl asked, and Belbet knew she had her now. Curiosity always beats out fear.

"Yes, but bigger." She explained, making her voice overly excited, to draw the child in, "But I need Dahnei's help to make that happen. Do you think Dahnei will help me?"

Dahnei's face brightened up, "I can help Mama?"

"Yes!" Belbet was so glad now that Victoria had worked as a babysitter throughout her life. "I need trees, see. Ones about this big around-" Belbet pointed to her own thigh, so that Dahnei would know the size of the tree to look for. And if the kid got it wrong and got a little smaller or a little bigger, it wouldn't matter. "So what I need Dahnei to do, is to go around the camp, and mark all the trees that big, okay?"

Dahnei's big brown eyes sparkled with purpose, making her look extra cute as she nodded. Belbet handed her the precious obsidian handaxe and pointed out her first target. "Start there, okay? And make sure you can see Mama at all times."

"Yes, Mama!" The girl ran off, her little sandaled feet pitter-pattering in the dirt and stones. Belbet picked up her digging stick, and got back to work. A few moments later, she finished getting the outline of the house done, and started digging post-holes at each corner. By this point, Mohniit had decided he was interested in what she was doing, and followed her around like a little lop-eared assistant.

As the sun rose to almost-noon, Belbet decided it was time to take a break. That is to say, it was time to gather food. So, giving Mohniit the job of holding the net bag, which he took about as seriously as any two year old could, she went back into the woods. She paid attention to where the various berry bushes and fruit trees were, while also mentally making a map of the spring onion and carrot fields too.

A particularly happy discovery was the discovery of what must have been sweet potatoes, or some variant. The bright orange flesh of the tubers had come as a surprise, but she grinned, showing it to little Mohniit, who took the root from her and shoved it into the net bag. She brushed the dirt off one portion of another root before cutting it into a bite sized chunk for herself, and an even smaller bite size sliver for Mohniit. He took it and chewed on it dutifully.

While he was bouncing up and down out of joy for the food, Belbet called out, "Dahnei! Lunch time! Come here, sweetheart!"

It only took a few seconds for the girl to come sprinting out of the trees and to Belbet's side. She held up the axe and grinned, "I've marked a lot of trees, Mama!" which had Belbet smiling right back at her.

"Good girl. Here, eat this." She cut up a chunk of sweet potato, and handed it to the girl, who chewed on it thoroughly. "It'll fill you up. We're going to take some back home and grow them. Want to help me carry them?"

"Yeah!" Dahnei declared, spewing bits of chewed sweet potato into the air. Belbet sighed a laugh, and shook her head, cleaning the spittle off the girl's face.

"Alright then, remember the basket your aunt brought?" It was a small one, in the net bag that was still on the lean-to. "Can you go get it and bring it here?"

Without waiting, Dahnei was off with a whirlwind of energy. When she arrived back, they dug up a lot of the field of sweet potatoes, putting them in the basket and hauling them back to the lean to. Belbet had Dahnei pile them up next to the lean-to, knowing they wouldn't go bad from just a few days above ground. Then, she moved on to find more food. With the hand-axe back in her control, it was easier to clear a path and gather things along the way. She had several vines wrapped around her shoulders and arms, along with lots of broad leaves in hand to cover the lean-to for more insulation. Berries eaten off the vine were sweet and juicy, and by the time they were full, she and her kids were sticky and dirty.

"Time for a bath!" She declared, heading back to camp, Mohniit was a happy little shadow with a belly that stuck out. Dropping the vines and the leaves next to the lean-to, she headed for the river. Picking up Mohniit, she called Dahnei to the side of the river too. She sat down on one of the water-splattered rocks, already feeling the cold of the water against her feet.

It was actually kind of nice, since the rising heat of the afternoon was making all of their work sweaty and difficult. Belbet walked the children through Victoria's knowledge of washing. Wetting their faces, washing their hands and arms and legs, making sure to clean behind their ears. Then, she had Dahnei dunk her head in the running water, while she herself dropped handfuls of water over Mohniit's head, wetting his hair. The damp hair would surely help the kids stay cool, and would hopefully dry by nightfall.

Once she was satisfied they were at least a little clean, Belbet let the two of them play in the shallow water near the edges of the river while she herself washed off and rinsed her own hair. It wasn't perfect, and Victoria's mind still felt they were grungy and gross. At least this way they wouldn't be getting sick anytime soon.

Looking at the running water, though, Belbet decided she needed a way to hold water, and to make it safe to drink. Calling the children away from the water, so that they wouldn't drown without her nearby to save them, she set Dahnei to find more firewood. This, she set about burning, while using her digging stick to pull ash from the fire. This, she mixed with sand and water from the river, forming it into rings. Three of them, each different sizes. These rings she left to dry for a few hours.

During that time, she returned to the woods, finding one of Dahnei's marked trees, and began the arduous task of chopping it down. Since it was so thick, the handaxe wasn't doing much good, so she chopped a decent little shelf on one side of it, and then went to get embers from the fire. Carrying them required the use of a sort-of-flat river rock and her entire concentration, but it was worth it. Putting these in the shelf, she let them burn their way through the tree, weakening it and making it easier to chop down.

Time passed as she went from tree to tree doing this, until about dusk, when the children were starting to get hungry again. Another round of a few more chunks of sweet potato, and then Belbet was able to go out and chop down the trees in earnest. Three of them fell in quick succession, and she put the fourth's embers out to avoid a forest fire. She'd have to work on that one in the morning.

Dragging the big trees back, Belbet marvelled at the stamina of her body. She felt sore and tired, certainly, but if she had been Victoria doing all of this, she'd have collapsed hours ago. Luckily, now that it was nighttime, it was mostly time to sit. She sat down next to the fire, and began telling the children stories, while stripping the branches from the trees Dahnei had picked out. Dahnei’s quick little fingers were weaving grasses she found into rope, and Mohniit babbled along with the story, smacking stones against each other.

They passed time this way until once again, little Mohniit passed out next to the campfire, and Dahnei had trouble keeping her eyes open. This time, Belbet bundled the two of them into the lean-to, before wrapping the big leaves they'd found earlier into the ceiling of it. Then, she crawled in herself, leaving the fire to slowly die, and curling up with her two little heaters. Soon enough, the three of them were asleep.

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Earlier that day, Deenat had returned to the tribe, her heart tight in her chest, and only one or two voices asked her where she’d been. She'd waved them off saying she'd been looking for a bush she'd found a while ago, but failed to find it. The irritation of her little sister's leaving, the way Belbet had responded to her... It stuck with her.

It stuck with her, as she watched the elderly point out to the children which berries were good and which would kill, which plants could be chewed and which should be avoided. Her watchful eye picked up when a child burst into tears from a painful blister on their foot, and how the elderly ignored or avoided that child, focusing instead on picking their own food.

Deenat watched as the children handed over what they found, sneaking bites and getting smacked when they played around too much. It stuck in her craw, and she heard Belbet's voice, 'Children shouldn't live like this.'

Deenat thought of her own children. She'd only managed to carry two to term. And one of those had died after she'd abandoned her to the care of the elders. It had been sad, yes... but children died. It was a fact. Often young and for no discernable reason.

While watching the children, she noticed someone else watching her. Her son, Eefim, seemed to have noticed her. She remembered birthing him as a scared 15 year old, and to see him now 11 and skinny and suspicious of everyone... Ah, it was scary, and she knew why Belbet had freaked out, had killed Ayneah like that.

Her heart hurt. So, she went to him, a bit aways from the group, and asked him. "Do you feel safe here? With this tribe?"

His answer was to furrow his brow, confusion twisting his lips. "...Maybe? We’ve fended off a lot of attacks."

"...If I left... If I could feed you. Would you come with me?" She found herself asking the same question her sister had asked her, and she found herself wondering if Belbet had felt this fear, this anxiousness over what the answer would be. Maybe... Maybe Deenat was considering staying with Belbet. Maybe memories of shared gatherings as children was enough to instill trust.

"...Would I get hit?"

"Only if you hit others." Deenat responded, because no one liked to be hit. No one liked to hurt others. "My sister says she knows a way to get food without worrying about prey running away. Without having to chase the prey."

"...That sounds nice." He bit his lip. "...I'm trying to be a hunter. One of the adults was teaching me. ...I can make spears and slings. We could hunt there too." It hurt to hear him almost pleading with her. Like he thought she needed him to be useful, for her to ask him to come with her. Like he wanted to stay by her side, but thought she wouldn’t let him. Had all the children wanted that? To be by their mothers' sides?

"If you want... If you want it, we'll go. We'll leave this tribe and join your aunt and her children. But we'd have to work hard. And it'd be strange work. My sister was digging a hole in the ground." Deenat stated, wondering who she was trying to scare off, him or herself.

"...That's okay. It beats getting most of my gathering and what little I hunt taken away." Eefim declared, puffing up his chest and looking so proud. Deenat felt her heart melt in her chest.

She nodded, "Do you have anything you need to get?" When he shook his head, she took his hand. "Let's go. We'll get there by morning."

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