#grasha

It was probably selfish of her to ditch her mom, her little brother Luke, and the flying cat Harley, to set up camp by themselves. But she hated setting up camp! It was sooo boring.

Besides, she wasn’t really being selfish; she’d scooped up her bow and spear before she left. Their tribe had been walking as far as they could every day for weeks. They’d already been hungry, but now, several tribe members had meat cravings. Nasha would get a saber-boar or a long-tailed moose, something big enough to fill everyone’s bellies before Erza could beat her to it.

It was only when she realized she was lost that it occurred to her that she maybe, possibly should have stopped to listen to her mom…because she might have said something about the unfamiliarity of the area and needing to be careful to keep track of how far she’d gone.

Usually, Nasha would use her sharp sense of smell to find her way back, but there were so many new and unfamiliar smells around here—plants and animals she’d never seen before! She kept getting distracted which, in turn, made her get even more lost.

Once, she could’ve sworn she caught the scent a person, but even that was strange. Her instincts told her it was definitely human, but on the other hand, it was nothing like the scent of anyone she’d ever met.

Stronger. Deeper. More pungent.

It was so old and faint that she could only catch a wisp of it the once.

She wondered, briefly, if it could be a male. But she quickly dismissed the idea. The women’s tribe had been wandering for years, mostly in search of their men and boys. So far, they’d turned up squat. How likely was it they’d really find them this time?

The males had vanished years ago, when she was just a little girl. Even her dad. The only reason Luke was with the women’s tribe at all was because her mom hadn’t known she was pregnant when her father vanished. If Luke had already been born, the men would have taken him, too. And no one knew why.

Nasha had stopped asking her mom about her dad long ago. Talking about him made her mom too sad. Secretly, though, Nasha was determined to find him and the other men, one day. She’d demand answers regardless of whether he wanted to give them. She’d beat them out of him, if she had to. She wanted to know why she wasn’t good enough for him to stick around and watch her grow up. Nasha was strong. She was one of the best huntresses in her tribe. She always protected her family.

She’d inherited his igni.

“Ooh, what’s that bunny!” she gasped, chasing after a crazy looking rabbit with horns and a purple, spiky tail. It got away, leaving her pouting in the strange woods. She could’ve used stealth to try and kill it, but she knew better than to keep hunting now, no matter how bad she wanted to surpass Erza. The acceptability for risk went way down the second she got lost. Carrying around bloody, stinky dead prey she couldn’t even be sure was edible while lost was a bad idea.

She still acted without thinking sometimes, but Nasha wasn’t as reckless as she’d once been. She’d gained her holy mounds and come into her blood years ago. She’d even grown taller than all the women in her tribe except Cana. With age came experience. With experience came wisdom or death, and Nasha had no plans of croaking any time soon.

It wasn’t long before her head thudded in pain from sniffing so much confusing, new stuff. Her feet hurt, too, and she was sweating like crazy. It was strange for her to be hot (or cold, for that matter) with her power over igni, but the air was humid, sludging through her lungs and making the back of her neck itch. She’d drunk all her water long ago.

The sun blazed near its highest point when she pushed through some bushes with weird, swirly, blue leaves and found a spring. She cried out in relief when she dipped a toe in the water and found it cold. Her pelts and necklaces were still soaring through the hot air when she vanished under the surface with a huge splash.

“Thank Mother Mavis,” she moaned, floating on her back and closing her eyes. As the aches ebbed from her head and feet and the water cooled her sticky skin, she started to worry about how she’d get back, tears forming in her eyes, but she quickly shook it off. Panicking wouldn’t help. She’d refresh herself, fill up her skein with some buried water from over near that limestone she’d spotted while undressing, user her igni to boil it, and then figure out what to do.

She only wished she knew which plants she could use to clean herself, but she didn’t know any of these ones. So Nasha used her hands to scrub water against her scalp, neck, and more pungent bits, ending with the folds of her blessed valley. She flushed slightly as her fingers rubbed that spot that always made her breath go funny and her skin feel hot. The older women in the tribe spoke of such things, at times, but those conversations always came back around to the males and their “sacred rods”, which were some kind of shape-shifting snake they had where their blessed valleys were supposed to be.

At that point, women like her mom, Wendy, and Erza always blushed and forced everyone to change the subject, not that Nasha really cared. She knew some things. She knew the males were sorta like them, but bigger overall. She knew that just talking about them and their sacred rods made the older women act weird. They’d blush and smile and their eyes would get all dark and they’d generally act like freaks.

They’d giggle about the power they claimed to hold over the sacred rods. To Nasha, it seemed pretty obvious that it was the males who held some kind of power over them (except Wendy and Cana…although Cana got flushed and weird when it came to discussions of sacred rods and blessed valleys, truthfully.)

Nasha didn’t really think about it much. She was curious enough to listen a bit when they spoke on it, but not enough to ask about it like her best friend, Jeela, often did. Then again, Jeela was a lot like her mom, Levy; intensely curious even about things she’d never seen.

Nasha was the opposite. Who cared about whatever weird tumors the males had growing out of their blessed valleys? They weren’t around so it didn’t matter. At least not as much as tonight’s meal, tomorrow’s journey, the scent on the breeze, or the shape of the moon.

The only reason she even believed the stories was because she trusted her mom and the other women in their tribe. Plus there was Luke, who never denied the existence of the sacred rods, which meant he must have one. Not that Nasha had ever seen it or had any desire to. She did know he could pee standing up, which was so not fair!

Quickly withdrawing her hand from the folds of her blessed valley, she shook off the weird thoughts and waded out until the water came up to her knees. Turning, she squinted up at the sun and tried to gauge its lean, lifting an arm to cover the peaks on her holy mounds as the hot breeze tickled them distractingly.

There was a rustling sound behind her, making her heart slam into her throat. She whipped around halfway, eyes wide as the rustling grew louder.

A tree branch was pushed aside.

And then he was there.

The male’s scent hit her the second her eyes landed on him. He was downwind so she hadn’t caught it sooner. She knew, then, that the scent she’d caught earlier had been a male’s—not his, though. His was much nicer than that one. Cleaner, with something cold and fresh about it, but the two scents shared a quality she’d never encountered on any female’s scent or even Luke's, though he was only ten.

The older women had not lied about the males’ height and strength. Nasha was by far the most visibly muscular woman in her tribe, but this male’s shoulders, arms, and stomach were just ridiculous. He was also much taller than her or even Cana, still slightly ducking under a branch Nasha had easily walked under when he stilled completely. She wondered how he could even teeter and totter around like that.

A shocked expression consumed his unusual, angular face. A pair of wide blue eyes dropped to her legs, then climbed up.

Meanwhile, Nasha blinked. There was a woman in their tribe with clear, strange blue eyes like that. Juvia, who held such power over izu that rain fell whenever she spoke of her missing male, “Gray-sama,” and son, “Rage-chan” (or something…it was hard to understand what she said when she always sobbed and wailed). The other women would groan whenever her anguish called the izu, but Nasha kind of thought it was awesome. Juvia was so powerful, she called on her element without even meaning to.

Plus using her igni in the rain was good training, so Nasha often used Juvia’s despair to get stronger, standing near the wailing woman and roaring as she generated a blaze from her skin under the downpour until she couldn’t any more. Her mom sometimes yelled at Nasha for it, accusing her of being insensitive, but what was better? Leaving Juvia crying alone in the rain just because you were a baby about getting a little wet?

Other than Juvia, she’d never seen anyone else who had eyes like the ocean under a clear sky…

Except the first male she’d ever seen.

Nasha’s dumbfounded attention stayed on those eyes even while they clambered over every inch of her bare body, barely even noticing how they lingered in certain places—her rear, her mounds, her hair. Then they locked onto hers.

Her lips parted on a gasp. A powerful feeling she couldn’t fight or place swept through her. If familiarity was the sun, then this feeling was the moon. I don’t know him, her mind insisted, almost panicked. But something deep inside her, deeper even than the instincts she always relied on, disagreed. I always have.