Daysha felt Maisen stir beside her. With a stretch, he turned toward her and rested his arm across her body. The straw bedding crunched dully against the dirt floor as Maisen settled his shoulder into the bedskins. Aching to alleviate the pressure now settling into her hips, Daysha also turned on her side to face Maisen. Raising only a single sleepy eyelid to look at Daysha, Maisen took a deep breath before asking, closed-eyed once again, “Did you rest well?”
“Mhm,” Daysha lied.
He leaned in to kiss her good morning. Smiling at him, Daysha resolved to let the night’s panic fall away from her.
With a groan and a brief hesitation to rest in the warmth of the bedskins, Maisen stood. He wrapped golden skins patterned with oblong black eyes, to his waist. His proudest kill. He had won that skin on the Watch after a midnight bout with a prowling jaguar. His loins wrapped, he paused to stretch his brawny shoulders. Maisen then knelt beside the fire pit, which had turned to embers.
“Just a moment and I’ll feed it,” Daysha said, rising.
“No need to hurry,” Maisen’s hands extended to the coals, “It’s perfectly warm.”
Daysha donned her tunic before exiting the hut. A collection of wood just outside stocked various sizes of logs, twigs, and kindling. Returning inside with an assortment, she prepared the fire for cooking. Maisen crossed her path with the shoulder yoke donned and their two largest clay vessels swinging empty on either side. He nodded his head with a loving glance and headed off to the river.
Daysha tended to the fire. She placed the cookstone atop the lingering coals then added
small, dry tufts of grass and sticks to stoke the heat. Before long, duck eggs were cooking. She carefully separated out a portion of nuts and placed them aside in a leather pouch. A second portion she placed deep in the fire to roast nearer the coals.
Maisen returned with the two waist-tall clay jugs swaying pregnantly. He squatted, set them against the ground at the hut’s opening, and gently stepped out from under the cross beam. He gingerly placed the jug just inside the hut for washing. Leaving the other on the ground to save his back, he rocked it back and forth slowly to ease it to the far side of the hut.
Daysha admired him as he exited once again, sweat glistening off of his shoulders. Rising to scoop fresh water into a clay pot with a blackened bottom, she returned to the fire, stoked the flames, and leveled the pot on the coals to start it boiling.
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When Maisen returned, Daysha handed him a utensil made of a seashell, bound to a stick with sinew. Scooping bites of egg directly off the cook stone, they enjoyed their meal together. Daysha removed the boiling pot from the coals and dropped in herbs to steep. She placed a flat stone atop the opening to trap the heat.
"Bosha will be leading the hunting party at twilight," Maisen informed her, cracking open a roasted nut.
"His leg is healed, then?" Daysha removed the topper from the jug and scooped the tea into a small vessel, handing it to Maisen.
He drank deeply before answering. "I would not have thought so, but he ran a foot race with Poulter just to prove it."
"Ah," Daysha breathed with a tone of recognition. "So Poulter lost the race and the hunt lead."
Maisen snorted a laugh into his tea. "Bosha wouldn't seek to prove anything unless it also won him a boon."
Maisen lowered his cup to his lap dejectedly before continuing, "I wish he'd not been so impatient. Bosha only caught his leg in a bad stumble when that stag charged, Volan caught a horn in his side. I fear that this will encourage Volan to return to a hunt before he's ready. He may never be."
They both remained still in the hovering weight of what that meant for Volan. He was young. He had no mate. Without a full recovery, his life would never become what he likely dreamed it would be.
"That's where I'll be until the hunt," Maisen continued, "He's capable for laying out the nets but not for dragging them in."
"Downtime between catches may allow you to offer him some encouragement. Remind him to rest willingly." Daysha began scraping the egg remnants from the cookstone into the fire.
Maisen humphed, accepting the suggestion but clearly not taking it to heart.
"What?" Daysha challenged playfully, "You can't say to him what you said to me? Healing properly is his only hope of returning to his duties in the tribe."
"And if he doesn't heal properly?"
Daysha had begun collecting their utensils, but Maisen's assertion gave her pause. As if gingerly reaching for the correct answer to the problem, she slowed her hand and with great deliberation closed her fist around the next item within reach.
"What I think he needs from me,” Maisen slowed his speech to a tone Daysha knew well, “is what he will miss from the hunt.”
When the present issue demanded neither cunning plan nor decisive action, Maisen had a talent for tender resolve.
"What we need is a full catch,” Maisen stood, “As much as he can manage alone, I’ll let him." He kissed the top of Daysha's head, "You ladies have your stories and songs to learn from as you work, my love. But the hunt…" He gazed dreamily out the open door of the hut, "requires silence.”
Having collected the breakfast items for washing, they readied themselves for the day. Maisen collected his spear and nets while Daysha settled a jar of oil carefully within her wash bundle. She and Maisen sat beside each other, wrapping leather straps to bind fresh straw to the soles of their feet. Maisen stood and rocked back and forth a little to settle the straw comfortably. Once both were satisfied with their footwear, they walked together to the river, Maisen off to the fishing grounds and Daysha to the bank for washing.