---Raala’s perspective---

  The drums of the festival echo through the forest behind me as I trudge away through the cold night air.

  I’ve never felt as alone as I did back there, surrounded by all those people I didn’t know dancing and revelling with the only one I did, in this hearthstead that’s the furthest away from my home I’ve ever been…

  I can’t believe that girl (so utterly infatuated with Ksem as she is) had the sympathy necessary to come and check with me that I didn’t mind her confessing to him!

  If she’d come up to me and said ‘Look, bitch! Ksem’s gonna be my man so back the fuck off!’ that would’ve been just about in line with my irrational impression of her but no!

  ‘I don’t want to tread on your toes’?! ‘I would’ve backed off if you’d wanted him enough’!? ‘Maybe we could’ve both been his women’!?!?!?

  The fact that she was so fucking cool, calm and collected about it was somehow worse than if she’d just slapped me in the face!

  That poly joke she made definitely didn’t help calm me down either!

  My heart sinks as I imagine the nearly two Moons of travel I now have ahead of me being asked to sit outside the tent the outland woman is sewing us and listen to the amorous moans coming from within… two Moons of being outvoted on everything because, of course, those relentlessly positive birds of a feather are going to agree on every issue… of being the unlit torch on their honeymoon!

  The thought is absolutely sickening…

  At least with three of us, we’re slightly less likely to die on the journey…?

  Nope!

  Optimism doesn’t suit me at all!

  Shouldn’t’ve tried it!

  Unbidden, the image of myself sat on an overturned sledge by a tent out in the wilderness swims into my mind. The door curtain is drawn aside. A pair of blue eyes and a pair of brown ones both fix on me from within. Five long, slim, brown skinned fingers extend on a slim wrist alongside five pale ones on a gorgeously fat wrist, beckoning me inside. I get up and…

  …CUT the fantasy off right the fuck there!

  As undeniably exciting and arousing as the prospect of becoming their third is, I can confidently and with all my heart proclaim that that is not what I want!

  At this point, I find a limestone tor blocking my way.

  I look up and see that the flat top looks like its exposure to sun and wind has kept the snow off of it.

  Glancing around, I spot a red pine that’s growing so close that it should be simple enough to use to climb up.

  I make my way to the base of the trunk and quickly clamber to about four times my height from the ground before hopping over onto the top of the little plateau.

  With no forest canopy obstructing the view, I’m able to lie down on the rough rock and watch the stars turning through the heavens overhead.

  The beauty of the glittering night sky above does help ease my mood slightly but… that gaping chasm down in my guts is not gone!

  The main star belt, Mother Mammoth’s Milk, has passed through about a twentieth of the span across the sky since I’ve been watching when I hear voices approaching me from below.

  I try ignoring them at first but they keep drawing closer and closer. I’m quickly able to make out just whose voices they are.

  The deep one is Ksem, the high one is Lurla!

  Of all the directions they could have gone, they really had to pick this one?!

  Did Lurla intentionally follow my tracks through the snow so she could do this in front of me!?

  I roll onto my belly and crawl to the edge of the tor, just enough to peek over it.

  They’re approaching from a direction which would’ve made tracking me here difficult… Just a coincidence, not that that’s going to make it hurt any less to watch!

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  I take a breath to call out to them to let Lurla know that this patch of forest is already occupied and her confession would be best done elsewhere but… my voice catches in my throat…

  After a full breath I haven’t taken, I realise why I can’t bring myself to call out to them: As much as I don’t want to see this… I am also morbidly fascinated by what might be about to happen in front of me!

  I won’t get another chance if I announce myself!

  The two of them draw up to the base of the cliff, almost directly below and close enough that I can clearly make out every word as Ksem says “Alright, Lurla, here I am… What did you want to tell me?”

  Jealously, I watch the gorgeous woman as she looks back at the man I’ve spent the best part of the last Moon completely alone with.

  She takes a deep breath and says “I was really hoping that I’d be good enough in Deltaspeak by the time I next saw you to say what I’m about to say in your language but… well… I’m not! I was planning to try and convince someone to chaperone me up to the Basin to find you next Summer so I could tell you this but, since you’re here now, I can’t let this opportunity go to waste!”

  “Oh… uhm… alright?” says Ksem, curiously.

  Another audible inhale before the courageous girl appeals “Take me with you, Ksem! When you go back to the Basin, back to your people, let me come with you!”

  “What? Lurla, no! You heard Torgan tell us we shouldn’t even be making this journey, right?! You remember me saying we wouldn’t be if the risks of doing so weren’t outweighed by the risks of not!? It’s too dangerous a journey to risk your life on it for no reason! You are of course welcome as my people’s guest anytime you can find us but-”

  “I love you, Ksem!” she exclaims, fiercely “I’ve loved you since the day I met you! I let you get away once without telling you how I felt, I won’t let it happen again!… You’re everything I want! Everything I’ve ever wanted!… Let me come with you up the river… Let me spend the rest of my life trying to return the happiness you give me every moment I’m with you… Let me be your woman, Ksem ‘Bear Bane’ of the 144 Channels!… Let me have you as my man!”

  Well, that’s it! Not a gynophile alive who could resist a confession like that coming from a woman like this!

  I’m wooed and I’m not even the one it was directed at!

  That… is an awfully long period of silence Ksem’s left before giving his inevitable ‘Yes! Yes! One thousand times, yes!’, though?

  “I… see…” he says finally.

  What the fuck was that tone? He’s going to start his life with this woman so tepidly!?

  “…I’m… truly sorry, Lurla… I’m afraid I cannot accept your feelings…”

  My jaw falls open and it’s all I can do not to emit an audible gasp!

  The girl below looks similarly shocked but recovers quicker than I do to say “If it’s about that Basingirl, I talked to her before-!”

  “It’s not about Raala. My answer would not be different if I’d never met her… I simply don’t feel the same way about you as you do about me… I wish I could return your feelings but it would be dishonest of me to pretend that I ever might.”

  The girl half sobs, half chuckles “Ksem… did you really have to rip my heart out of my chest like that(?!)”

  Calmly, he explains “Experience has taught me that it’s best to be clear and avoid giving false hope in situations like this. It’s kinder to be briefly cruel than to leave you indefinitely suspended between a ‘no’ and a ‘yes’.”

  “You…*sob*… you…*hehehe**sob*… you have a lot of experience in breaking hearts, it seems(!)”

  “More than I would like to have, unfortunately.” he answers, sombrely.

  “I…*sob**sob*… I should’ve guessed…! Should’ve known I’d not be special!…*sob**sob**sob*… Just another girl stupid enough to think she had a chance with you!”

  “Lurla, listen to me! You are not stupid! You are an amazingly beautiful, kind and intelligent woman! The fact that I don’t feel the same about you as you do for me is no reflection at all on your worth as a person! Out there somewhere is someone you are going to make deliriously happy by becoming their woman! Someone who will have as much love to give back to you as you have for them!”

  “Just…*sob*… not you, right?… *sob*… That someone’s not you!?”

  “Not me, Lurla… As much as I truly wish it could be otherwise… As much as I long for the day I can find someone who loves me like this that I love back just as much… today is not that day…”

  At this point, the girl breaks down into incoherent sobs.

  I watch as Ksem closes the distance to comfort her, restraining himself from getting to intimate, clearly (like his ‘brief cruelty’) to avoid leading her on.

  It takes a long time but he manages to get her calmed down.

  After having given some time for her recent tears to become less obvious, Ksem asks “Do you feel up to going back to the party, Lurla?”

  The girl murmurs an affirmative.

  With that, I watch the two of them walk back in the direction of the hearthstead together.

  Left alone again, I roll back over onto my back, looking up at the brilliant night sky once more.

  The stars seem like they’re twinkling just a bit brighter and with more colour than they were earlier… The void in my guts is completely gone too… Interrogating the warm and fuzzy feelings inside me, I find them to be… relief? Contentment?… Happiness?

  Am I really such a cruel, sadistic bitch that I’ve been given this feeling just from watching that sweet (though irritating) girl get her heart broken?!?!?!

  No! That can’t be it!

  Where’s the spite?!

  The malice!?

  Where’s the vindictive glee!?!?!?

  As much as she annoyed me, I wasn’t rooting for her misery!

  So where’s this joy coming from!

  Why-?!

  “Oh… shit…” I say aloud, finally realising exactly why I feel so happy right now!

  Stargazing |