A Little Jade in Goddess Gorge

Chapter 19: Morning Routine

"Sit." Big Hei obediently sits on the ground.

"Good boy. Now shakes hand." The black dog lifted one of his front paws and let Yu Xiao shakes his hand. She laughed and give him a jerky. "Rollover."

Li Mo is amazed that his giant beast that often scares children in the village will obediently show the girl his tender side and let her rub it. How shameless!

Even after spending a lot of time with her, the girl still surprised him a lot. 

In the beginning, he joins her morning walk due to worry. The mountains are treacherous and full of danger. He lost his parents in this mountain, and after so many years of scouring the mountain for their daily food, he knows that this place is not for women. 

But she is different, it's like she is born to be in nature. Now he just following her every morning because he just wants to see her. Even looking at her back when she runs around all over the place somehow gives him comfort.

He likes how easy it is to talk to her. He showed her how he cleans and skins animals they caught. She showed him various traps for every type of animal. 

The other day they caught a live rabbit that happened to be pregnant. Now the expecting mum stays in their house peacefully. She said if we catch a couple of females and a male rabbit, the family won't need to worry about meat for a while. 

He likes how she looks at him with concern when she saw the scar in his body, but how her eyes sparkle when he told her the stories on how he got those scars. Just to see that eyes so excited, Li Mo doesn't mind getting injured again.

A short whine wakes him up from his thoughts. The two wolves returned with a young mountain goat in Xiao Xue's mouth.

"Where did you get that?" Yu Xiao widens her eyes in excitement. "I guess we don't need to go far today." Xiao Bing and Xiao Xue are getting more and more efficient in hunting. She sighed inwardly. Maybe soon they will find a wolf family to join, and then what will she do?

Li Mo saw her look a bit lonely for some reason, so he asks her how about the trick she used for Big Hei and the two wolves the other day. He never knew that people could tackle and caught a boar so efficiently. Usually, he would need to chase for prey for hours.

"It's simple. First you need to learn all the commands, for example like this." 

She put her finger in her mouth and makes a sharp whistle sound. Xiao Bing, Xiao Xue, and Big Hei immediately stand up in unison.

"That one for standing." She then demonstrate various sounds for different tricks.

He laughed, "Yeah, I can't do that sound."

"Maybe you could use a bamboo whistle then." She cut a piece of small bamboo and cut it in someplace. She then blows on the small whistle couple of times and finally it makes a loud whistling sound. The dogs standing up again. 

"It seems to work, you can try."

"Ah?" He stares at her cherry lips then at the whistle. She just blew on it, if he used it wouldn't that mean...

Yu Xiao just realized what he is thinking about. "Ah sorry. Maybe you could try making one, this one..." Before she finished, he already took the whistle from her hand. 

"This is fine, thank you." He smiles and acts like it is not a big deal, but she saw that he is looking at her lips again before he turns around quickly and lift the goat to his shoulder.

She feels her face heating up. She stared at his back for a long time before following him back to the village. For a while, she couldn't think of anything. She could only feel her heart wildly beating.