The Wandering God

40 By Nature We Desire Food and Sex 1/3

食色性也
Shí sè xìng yě
By nature we desire food and sex. (Mencius)
Appetite and lust are only natural.

~Several Weeks Earlier~

The first time I kissed Zakhar I swore it would be the last.

After near two months of infuriating boredom trapped in the cabin Zakhar invited me one morning to hunt.

The snow had stopped falling, and the day was something close to sunny. It was brighter at least. The frozen crust on the drifts twinkled, light winking off the thousands of tiny crystals when they hit at just the right angle.

My eyes squinted at all the light. It was the first time I had left the small room in all the time we had been there, save occasional short trips out onto the deck to lean on the railing.

We went on foot, with Zakhar behaving like an overprotective mother hen. He had insisted I throw an extra fur from the kang around my shoulders, and was constantly asking if I was tired or my legs hurt.

Usually I would have found his behavior irritating, but for some reason it did not bother me today. Perhaps it was because of my experience that had brought me so near to death, or perhaps because my legs actually still ached at times. Either way, I did not mind his fussing.

"Are you sure you are alright to walk? I can saddle the horses. The snow is not too deep, and we are not going far. They will manage."

I sighed. "Yes, for the tenth time, I am sure Zakhar. And besides, I saw In'yii this morning. She is fatter than a badger in a berry patch. Too fat for her girth. We will have to lessen her feed, or I will not be able to ride her south in the spring."

I had gone through the trap door this morning, carefully gripping the sides of the ladder as I stepped down the wobbly rungs and into the small stable beneath the cabin.

My horse had looked at me coolly, as though I were a stranger she had never seen before, then gone back to munching on hay, which she appeared to be stealing from Makabe.

Zakhar laughed heartily at my description of In'yii. "I'll tie her closer to Dunya. My girl won't share her food."

I noticed Zakhar had been laughing a lot of late, and smiling wider. I wondered what had put him in such a good mood.

We headed up the hills, to where Zakhar said there was a meadow where game was found often. My big friend trudged ahead of me, ploughing a path through the snow that I could follow. I did my best to place my feet where he had placed his own, so my boots would not sink too far, resulting in me then having to pull them out of the snow again, an exhausting task.

Still, even with Zakhar carving a way through the snow, and doing his best to stick beneath trees where the snowfall was less, I was soon gasping, sweat springing out under my arms and on my chest beneath my many layers of wool and fur. The air was freezing, but still, and did nothing to cool me.

My breath emerged before my mouth in great puffs of cloudy moisture.

"Zakhar—" I said, beginning to ask him if we could pause to rest.

But Zakhar spoke before I could. "We're here."

The meadow was small, little more than an indent in the forest. The day seemed brighter here, in the wide open space. A narrow thread of a creek, near frozen over, ran down the middle, it's soft burble loud in the silence of the snowy forest.

Of course now the meadow was just a field of white dotted here and there with the patterned lines of animal tracks. But I imagined in the spring, when the grass sprung green speckled with wildflowers and the creek shone in the sun, it must be beautiful.