The Wandering God

40 By Nature We Desire Food and Sex 2/3

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

Thankfully I won our next competition as well, and so our kill rode back to the cabin on Zakhar's shoulders and not mine.

Kageyama rejoiced. That much meat would feed us for a week or longer if smoked, a task the kitsune set to with relish.

Near five days from our last hunt, Zakhar announced he would be going out again. I asked to go with him.

"How can you leave a handsome man like me all alone," complained Sanli, with mock dramatics.

Zakhar looked surprised by my request, but agreed.

This time I took my own bow. I wanted to practice my skill. I wanted to get out into the forest, and hunt for the little bit of blue sky poking through the clouds. I wanted to escape the ever present smell of smoke and deer meat that now filled the cabin.

At least those were the reasons I gave myself. But the memory of the brush of Zakhar's rough hands against my cheek, his warm breath on my lips, kept creeping through my mind, no matter how many times I drove it away.

The memory returned with frequency as I tromped after Zakhar toward the meadow, skipping in and out of my head like a rabbit frolicking in the snow.

He was just teasing you. And well deserved teasing it is.

We found the hide Zakhar had dug out some days previously and crawled inside. It had snowed since then, further sealing in the snow walled, fir roofed room.

I cleared away some snow to peer out at the meadow.

"There doesn't seem to be much out today," I commented.

"Perhaps the animals can still smell our last kill," Zakhar said. He did not seem particularly interested in hunting, and instead spread the bear skin he had carried with him, then sat on it, back against the ice wall of our hide.

Zakhar took out his knife and started carving away at a piece of wood about the size of my thumb.

"What are you making?" I asked, peering at the figure he was whittling in his hands. It looked like a...rat?

"The Twelve Clans. Two sets. For chess," he explained.

"That's what you have been making!" I exclaimed. "You have been working at it all winter."

"Aye," said Zakhar, grinning. "And this is the last piece. Want to play?"

"I do," I said enthusiastically, crawling across the hide to sit on the bearskin beside him. "But what will we use as board?"

"The snow of course," said Zakhar, carving out the board grid into the snow of the floor beside us. He stuck the rat he had just finished into the ice gird, the carved nose sticking into the air.

Zakhar reached into his jacket and pulled out the leather pouch I had seen him tucking his wooden creations into throughout the winter. He upended it between us, sending the pieces scattering over the bear fur. I sorted them into the two sets, light wood and dark wood, then helped Zakhar set the pieces in the snow.

"Kageyama always plays go, but I could never much understand it. Too many moves for my feeble human mind," Zakhar joked.

"It is terribly boring," I said. "You are not missing much. I prefer this game. Each piece is different."

"Aye," agreed Zakhar. "They all have their strengths and weaknesses."

We played, and I only managed to get three pieces across the river and keep them there. The monkey, the ox and to my disappointment, the tiger.