A/N: Without exaggeration, this chapter has sucked all my strength, all my soul. Writing this forced, but no less magical event was a wonderful experience — but my battery charge is now critically low. In the process, I also managed to encounter so many secondary difficulty, distracting factors, that I want to raise a glass to the publication
Word count: 7,6K
Warnings: swearing, brief mentions of blood and injure, brief mentions of attempted rape, implied intimate themes, blur mentions of pregnancy and parenthood, confirmed implied xenophilia, and marriage, of course <3
(Look, that there are significantly fewer warnings than before. Here, the characters are in relative safety, provided by me as the author. But!.. I want to draw your attention to one important note. Right now, I really really really really really want to implement other ideas that have been hanging in the air due to work on "Creation". I will most likely return here in the fall — but in any case, I will keep you informed, my bunnies =(:•3) )
🎧 Ilya Beshevli — Defenceless Flower
Muffled voices argue behind the threshold. Don't have to listen, to make out about what — or rather, about who — they're talking.
"It's not enough for him to have an echo... among us... So he decided... to take her... as a wife? Talk him senses, before... it's too late. You won't be able... to be a grandmother... to grandchildren who... will not be born"
"My son has decided so. And I will not... contradict him. So has decided... his heart. If he wants... to be... with this woman... I will pray, that in ther home will live... not discord, but happiness"
From the footsteps approaching to the hut argument, so almost ending, immediately dies down. What the bickering about continues a minute later, more quietly than before, you don't hear, overcome by half-sleep.
***
Incapable to heal scar on your thigh wakes you up long before the first sunny rays.
Morning twilight, blue-purple, gives way to a pink dawn — but you can't admire, wincing in pain. You remove the bandage from your thigh, soaked in blood and ointment. This time the ointment smells different — much more mixed herbs, — and stretches behind your fingers as a sticky web. You look at the covered in blistered crusts wound. Has just begun to tighten a clean skin, has just stopped aching with any careless movement, it is torn up and crooked line. Lifelong mark of shame, that can't be removed.
Fold in half, you pull bandage back on — so as not to introduce an infection. Mangled by claws and teeth leg burning. From your hips to your ankles, you are covered in numerous scratches. On chest, also tied with a bandage over the rags of dress, and on neck, darkening bruises have spread across you. Wipe the sweat from forehead. Hands don’t obey... Everything has repeated itself, exactly as on that cursed night. All the disgusting touches imprinted on your body and your memory. All the blows. All the abrasions. There were two of them again, and there was a cruel irony. If you had clashed with the rapist one to one — it would have been easy for you to save yourself, using all boiling rage.
But you have already been saved twice by the same hands.
Your honor has already been saved twice by the same ape.
Remains of your dress tattered remind of the almost happened desecration. Bracelet on her wrist reminds of the happened courtship. Opposing arguments, clearly audible through sleep and walls, sounded like an tocsin. Vikima was right in her irreconcilability. That why Dar’s words had struck you so. Why would she indulge her son in an intention, that defied all the laws of this place, the social norms, the harsh sciences, and the highest design?.. Pulling the skin blanket, that covered you up to your ears, over your shoulders, you looked around the light-flooded hut.
Once again you lost consciousness, once again you woke up in unfamiliar place. Nest that served as a bed, in which you slept a feverish sleep, immensely wide. Menacing arsenal of several dozen different spears was placed at the threshold. Amulets with intricate carvings and blue feathers tied with braid were hung on walls. Sun sat on a carved pole standing alone, like a guard.
In a secluded, separated by hanging ribbons and barrier stakes corner — a covered cradle with a blue, fluttering in the timid breeze canopy. And a smaller nest curled up in a circle, woven from vines and huge oval leaves. Intended so, that the mother could spend all her time with the newborn, undividedly...
Absolutely everything looks not the same, as in your recent home. Even the cradle, awaiting the arrival of baby. In the hut you were settling in, the cradle was uncovered and uncurtained. Only a little white blanket lay inside, for changing. Here, the interior declares the high status of the owner.
This is indeed Noa's hut. The hut of the clan leader, who took you as his wife out of mercy.
The hut of your future husband, who is not a human. But who amazes you with humanity.
It wasn't a painful vision. It happened in reality. Noa actually did this way, that you found both unacceptable and generous.
Noa's subjects, who are still only guessing and don't know anything for sure, will probably be unpleasantly surprised by his actions. You didn't imagine the sympathy and understanding in the apes's looks, when Noa led you to his hut under cover of night. Here they really do show sympathy to you — but as an nonnative. You may be an exception to the apes rules — but you are hardly an exception to the apes standards.
You are a different species. They won't understand him.
His reputation will be tarnished by you, brought discord to the clan stranger. Apes will continue listen to him unquestioningly, but they will begin to accumulate hidden hatred directed at him. Because of the human, because of the echo. Because of you... By helping you, Noa punished himself extremely cruelly.
He, without making a sound, sleeps at the foot of the bed. On the floor...
Wasn't he supposed to lie down next to you?..
Noa protected you at his own detriment. Only your parents, — blood and foster, — had ever done that before. He never once made you doubt his integrity. Even if it took for you, that to label him same animal, like all others. Everyone else, who you had ever met, had always betrayed you. It didn't matter, who hunted your worthless carcass — both humans and apes were animals with the same behavior. Grinding your trust into dust. Beating the soul out of you, harassing, humiliating, lying. Intending to use you, and if you disobeyed — throw your corpse away like garbage.
You owe Noa everything. You don't even know, how to repay his sincerity...
In the corner, where wind is shaking canopy over the cradle, a scurrying sound can be heard. Daisy painstakingly rummaging around in her cage, unaccustomed to it thinking about hiding. Need to get up quietly, to calm her.
At the head of bed stands a deep, bowl filled to the brim with fish and berries, aside lying a spear with curved handle and a pistol. Little further away stands your shoes, with stuck to the toes blades of grass.
Count the bullets — not two, but four. On handle engraved the same symbol as at everything, that bastards in settlement shoot with. What the hell were they doing here? Were they really tracking you, like that time, when they caught in their trap weak rabbit?
If so, how come the gun, important thing, ended up in the grass and no one came back to pick it up? Four lost bullets — is four missed opportunities to pick up your trail. Or, did one of the bastards defend themselves clumsily, squandering their advantage by trying to riddle the night? Although it is not entirely clear — who scared these arrogant daredevils so much? ... What is clear, is that Noa didn't find all the bullets scattered in the thicket for nothing. And carved a five-inch wooden weapon, shaped to fit shape of your hand, suitable for hiding, forgetting, and using only when necessary.
Took you under his protection, Noa still left you free to defend yourself. God, Nature, Destiny, and the Universe — everything, that you prayed to in desperate moments, — took pity on you, when Noa came your way. From the first time you met, he cared for you. So unusual for that bloodthirsty, immoral species of animals, that chimpanzees were known as in human gossip. People, who's you lived with under a pile of rusty metal were foaming at the mouth to prove — these animals, obsessed with war, blood, and debauchery, must be exterminated. Now you understood — people, who's you lived with have been looking in others for the vices, that had consumed their souls.
If Noa were as that, as according to gossip, so bloodthirsty and depraved, would he be so outrageous polite?
If Noa were as that, as apes are painted by slander, the same, as the bastards from the settlement — would he have left you untouched, when you yourself agreed to something, that is wild to even think about?..
Admiring turquoise shades of beads of the bracelet, that serves as a wedding ring. You smile with sadness and flattery — among the acquisitiveness and coercion, this is an unjustifiably expensive gift.
How did this feeling sprouted in Noa? How did this sympathy grow inside him?
In the three months, that you've known each other, you've only managed to separate his behavior from the ubiquitous manly behavior that you're tired of tolerating. And he's managed to figure out what he feels for you — and not push with feelings. If it weren't for yesterday, Noa would've simply given you bracelet as a confession. And it would've been the first romantically tinged gift in your entire life. You would've accepted this gift anyway, and you would had opportunity to think about what answer Noa without haste. But two pairs of greasy paws interfered with his measured plan.
Salvation from shame. That's that, what Noa offered you in the middle of the night-swept forest. If you returned to your hut in such a shabby state — everyone without exception would think, that you had been toyed with, like a slut. Everyone would decide, that this was treatment you deserved. Everyone would criticize, avoid. Someone would definitely try to have fun with you again. You would've to run away again. But where would you go, if everyone you plead for help ignored your pleadings?
With a hasty decision, Noa saved you from wanderings, that would've drained the last of your meager strength. From condemnation. From bullying. From any violence, that could be foreseen.
Even if you hadn't had an accident last night, and Noa had nothing to interfere with — he'd already done too much for you.
All his displays of protection were patronage.
Everything in him spoke of feelings in hints.
Noa grumbles, rolling over. The floor is hard, uneven. His shoulder blades are sure to spasm. He is the one respected by everyone, from young to old. He is the rightful ruler. He could've demanded, not offered, that you become his wife, if that is his desire. He could've demanded that you fulfill all his whims. He could've intimidated you so much, that you would whine like a puny little dog... And he lies at your feet, like a servant.
"Get in bed... Please" you squat down in front of Noa, barely touching his shoulder. He immediately wide open his eyes. So, the sleep was superficial and he is exhausted.
"You... could not... sleep..." in confirmation of your thoughts, Noa yawns, baring his fangs. You are not afraid, move closer to him. "...if I... was lay next to you"
"After your proposal, which I accepted of my own free will, we will always be close from now on" you hesitantly look away. Persistently convince yourself of your own words, while Noa remains sitting on the floor, in the same hesitation. "So lie down and sleep, while there is at least a little time... And don't do it again. It's not customary in couples to sleep separately"
"We have not yet sealed... the alliance... with the Rite of Bonding. Y/N, you can still... back out. If you don’t want. Or if... you’re afraid" Noa’s voice is so hoarse and quiet, that you barely hear it, having taken just a few steps away.
What a rite? As twisted, as in the dungeon?
Mere thought, that it could be the same everywhere — after all, the wife becomes the undivided property of the husband, and this must be proclaimed, this must be boasted about — makes your palms shake and your knees buckle. You don't bend over Daisy, who continues to scrape the bottom of the cage, but fall helplessly off your feet. You stroke the snorting rabbit snout with her dissatisfied nose.
When did her skinny little body become plump, rounded? Why does she flatly refuse to let anyone touch her swollen belly? Is she really expecting little rabbits?
For some reason, it's habits of fussing rabbit finally bring you to what worries you in this unforeseen situation mostly.
You wrap yourself in a blanket, pacifying the contradictions. There is no roudabound path for this. This needs to be discussed. And the sooner, the better. In those books you read, it's written in black and white — between humans and anthropoid apes are thouthands years of evolutionary differences.
Genetic mismatches. Obstacles.
This means, you can come to terms with your new status and become Noa's devoted companion. You can fit into Noa's home so that you become its comfort, its integral part. You can open up to Noa, tell him all your secrets with utmost frankness. You can, if you already respect Noa immensely and unconditionally, subsequently try to give him a semblance of affection. You can even, if Noa continues to help you get rid of your fear of other men, decide to give him your virginity and share bed with him — precisely because he didn't seek to take your virginity by force... But you will not be able to conceive viable offspring. Because of obstacles, that cannot be overcome.
Walls are narrowing, causing dizziness. There is nothing to hide. You would like to start a family in the future. And, despite your fear of all the men living on Earth, you imagined, what would be like your future husband, to whom you would bear healthy children. This is completely natural. Noa, being older and possessing local power, was probably already looking at those females, who would be thrifty wives and bear strong offspring. And this is also completely natural. On a planet, prone to all disasters, immunity of the offspring — most important priority. Interspecies offspring, even weak and sick, is impossible a priori.
So why does Noa need a wife, from whose union the cradle, intended for offspring, will be empty?
Out loud, leaving aside all secondary questions, you try to say exactly this.
“If any of us should back out, it certainly shouldn’t be me...” you start from afar, not knowing how to continue.
"If you... agreed... Why would I... back out?" Noa asks, still watching you. Tone of his voice is as firm, as when he offered you the impossible.
"Pity for me will deprive you of descendants" lump in your throat tightens like a noose. But it's better that you say it now, than to console Noa and yourself with omissions and delusions. "After all, no matter what rites we seal the union with, I will never be able to bear you children, Noa. That's why"
Delicate fabrics, that decorate the cradle, flutter waves in the summer breeze.
It's light outside, but here footfall of darkness hasn't cleared yet. Noa sighs, looking at you with a look, wounded by the merciless truth. He doesn't say a word. Not a single word. You are separated by silence again. Hanging lights above the bed highlight the green of his eyes. Color of the lush foliage on the spreading trees, under which you hid during long, freezing rain. Color of endless meadows on summer equinox.
Talking about such topics with Noa, especially while being in the same room with him, especially having already essentially agreed to have connection with him, is almost physically uncomfortable. How to discuss with him those interactions between a man and a woman, that precede the birth of a new life?.. How to discuss conception with him?.. How to discuss intimacy with him?.. What do apes call this form of love, if even people call it obscene? Copulation?.. Mating?.. Banal reproduction?..
Will you ever be able to discuss with Noa any kind of expression of love?...
Hand, that you stroked over Daisy, who had settled in comfortably, but was still snorting, trembled uncontrollably. Had been sitting quietly on the perch, Sun began to rumble. You pulled the curtains over the scraps of fabric, to change into one of the few folded in a pile, washed shirts.
Noa can't answer you, realizing, that he's trapped himself. Noa stares at your silhouette. No matter how hard you try to hide it, to fight it, you're afraid of his stare, sliding over your body. He's done everything, what was in his power, to make you stop being afraid of him. But he alone can't overcome all your years of trauma.
It will take you more than one season, more than one year, to stop comparing Noa to others, to the faceless misogynistic crowd. Much more time. And it doesn't matter, that the comparisons are already always in his favor.
Noa scares you, because he's a man.
You scare yourself, because you look at Noa, like he's a man.
Understanding, that you allow for intimacy with Noa in the distant future, even if only theoretically — you don’t know, where to hide from the experiences that have flooded your soul. It’s sense of duty that speaks in you, that’s all. Noa, having acquired you by his side, won’t remain celibate... It would be better for you to think about this assumption later. Where his intent, probing gaze isn't present.
Noa's breathing is loud, abrupt. He turns his body in the direction of your shadow behind the waves of fabric. His nostrils flare, his lower lip curves. His shoulders tense. The veins on his neck stretch... You check to see, if he's going to break down now, when everything is in place to use you at his discretion. You're walking on the edge, but you know — Noa won't do it. For some reason, his self-control prevails over his animal instincts. Not a single boor you've met, who considers himself a man, was not like that. If one of them were in Noa's place now, your piety would be torn apart along with your clothes in an instant...
You step out of the curtains back into the light, adjusting the stiff collar of your shirt and trying to distract yourself from your chaotic, unnatural thoughts. In vain. Because Noa begins to tell you about a simple, but no less eloquent, rite.
Part of you selfishly wants to ask, completely forgetting about any fears, what did Noa see in you, that would make him deliberately go against the authority of society and the world order? One question would cross out dozens of other questions, that arose unintentionally. But you cannot bring yourself to ask about it — you will choke on embarrassment. So you hesitate. And prepare to go about your daily routine, before you begin preparing for the rite, after which your life will never be the same.
"Elder Wives will prepare you. Adjust your clothes, braid your hair, apply... paint to your face. And bring you to the Place of Bonding, where... I will wait for you. When the sun hides behind the hills, Elders will... bless us. We will... exchange things dear to our hearts. And vows. And we will return here as... a single whole"
"Bonding" — Noa had said the word twice before, and with incredible reverence. Bonding — is nothing less, than equality. You were already accepted here, as an equal. You hadn't expected more. But right now, Noa was saying, that being a woman, you wouldn't be his trophy — you would be his complement. In the life, that you've lived, women couldn't claim equality. That — and for another, more serious reason, — is why you can't believe your ears.
In the corners of your eyes gathering rain, that you can't stop.
About what awaits you soon, Noa speaks southingly and lovingly.
"Why do you need all this?" you squall, immediately shrinking to a confused whisper. You can't believe, that he's willing to spend his whole life with you, unsuitable for him in key critery.
"Why do you... talk to me... for the first time... when you saw a rabbit in a trap?" Noa answers your question with a question, walking up, when you put on your shoes. Catching you by surprise.
"Then it just felt right" you don't avoid Noa's eyes, look at him directly and answer honestly. Considering, what you have in common now, it would be difficult to lie.
"And it seemed right to me to become your... shield. I don’t know how to explain... I wanted, that you... not to be afraid. But I did not pity you. I admired you. Even when you looked like finished fowl, you... fought. I realized, that I wanted to protect you from... battles. I want to fight for you myself, Y/N"
From Noa's words, spoken so simply and so sincerely, you try not to burst into tears, closing your eyes. Just think, he's not afraid to anger the heavens...
He's not talking about fleeting infatuation, but about selfless love.
"Any relationship is based on satisfying needs. World we live in, is primitive. Two-faced. Everyone needs something... So what do you need from me? What will I have to do, to repay you?"
So what could Noa possibly need from you? You spent years in deprivation. Unlike you, Noa never lacked anything — much less, needed anything. Only thing you can do for Noa — is ruin his life, by bringing complexities.
But Noa, knowing this, chose you consciously.
"Don't say that. I don't need anything. Except... your safety. I'll be proud, if... you... let protect you. Keep you"
"Get me right... I... can't give you that, what marriages were invented for by our ancestors. I can't get it myself!.." you clutch your buzzing temples, sitting on the edge of the nest, hiding from Noa behind tangled hair. And you cry, choking on broken hopes about how joyful it would be to live, with a family and peace of mind, in a house on a hill. Far from all the strife.
"Would it have been better, if one of the... scavengers... had made you... servile?" now sitting at arm's length from you, Noa asks still quietly, but urgently and almost angrily. Fear gnaws at you constantly. So you just stare ahead, tearful. "On the weapon... smell of one of them. I blamed myself for the murder. I... regretted. But... one of them is definitely alive and... following you. Now I regret, that I couldn't... finish off"
"Why don't you just give me back to them?" you immediately fill with rage at the thought of the slavers, and look at Noa over your shoulder. You know, that only someone without a conscience would do that. "If they're wandering around here with weapons, to hunt me down, then I'm putting your clan in danger"
"You are embittered... at your species. I can see it in you. Long before I met... you... I was dissapointed on my kind. It turned out, among us there were despots. I understood you. And... I wanted you to be safe. Here. Among the apes. Without echoes. But... yesterday... I became angry at my kind. I did not think, that among us there were too... scavengers" Noa shakes his head, holding out his palm. So that his calloused fingers barely touch your scratched, trembling fingers. "Evil inside is independent... of species. So I will not give you to them"
In the touch not even drop of vulgarity. Trembling subsides, and it seems unbearable, to feel calm from Noa's actions and words.
You are surprised, that Noa, from whom fluently speech is still not so easy, speaks almost without hesitation. Because you cannot string together even a few truly correct words, to clearly express, what is happening in your head. Noa holds your hand in his, but you don't respond to touch.
You know, how to respond blows, how to break free from a grip, how to attack — perhaps, because of this you don't remember, how respond to touch, that doesn't entail pain, damage, scars...
"What difference does it make, who I’m embittered at? Whatever you say, Noa, I don’t understand, why you did it. Everyone you know doesn’t support you in your decision. Even if they want to. Your mother and your friends will, certainly, try to understand you. But you will have enemies. And the Elders, even having blessed us, will continue to feel disgust towards me. Because I am a human. Echo, just like those, who have been exterminating apes for generations. I don’t even want to talk about the fact, that I cannot be your equal. You are the leader. Hopes placed on you. Even if you choose me, I will not be able to become the leader and justify the hopes for prosperity. I would like to convince you otherwise, Noa. For your own good"
You want to run away from the nest headlong, but his palm clasps your wrist, on which the bracelet shines, as if he about to drown and only you are keeping he on the surface. You feel new streams of tears. And you give in.
"...But in such cases," you feel new streams of tears. And you give in. "my mother used to say, "There will be day — there will be food"
About that is what your foster mother said so wisely and allegorically, Noa doesn't need to know. About that your biological mother was infected with the mute virus and spoke only with gestures, Noa also doesn't need to know.
You will certainly tell him everything about that life, which from this evening will remain tens of miles away. About that life, which you would like to forget completely — but which will always send you reminders.
Sometime later...
For now, all Noa needs to know, is that you, blinking back tears, agree with him, understanding, how difficult it will be to follow the path that has become joint.
“Then... you need to eat" catching himself before you leave, Noa interprets expression literally.
Noa hands you a bowl filled with food, making you smile, and then laugh. You try explain to him the figurative meaning of phrase, after which — start eating with appetite.
Before this difficult dialogue, you wouldn't have been able to swallow a bite, but after discussing what happened with Noa, at least a little confidentially, you happily satiate yourself with the pleasant fattiness of the fish. Mixed with the juiciness of sea buckthorn, which you've never tasted before.
Still, the delicious taste seems like a small revelation. Compared to all, that you've managed to discuss with Noa. There's no turning back. He'll be your husband, as soon as the sunset touches the leaves, the brenchwood, and the huts. And in a way, that will be beneficially.
Time is short — just a few hours, until the sun disappears behind the hills — and you have too much to think about.
So much, that whole odorous summer would probably not be enough.
***
Washing in a bowk, filled with caressing rosebuds water, seems irreal. There, underground, women bathed at best a few times in their entire lives. They hardly used any water — although thanks to generators it flowed without interruption. You're not a deity, to bathe in luxury...
Behind a kind of thick curtain hung from the roof by hooks, you sit alone, while the Elder Wives wait for you outside. To prepare for the Rite of Bonding.
Marriage to Noa seems legitimately.
Setting aside everything, that could have happened to you, instead of a family life with Noa — for example, real family life with other partners, that you both knowingly forfeited — it step seems smartly. Noa has always been kind to you. Unlike more than a dozen other so-called men, who thought about marrying you, just to pushing you around... You dry yourself off, putting on a dress. Not a parade one this time, without frills — but favorite. White. How it should wear to a wedding.
On your image — glorifying naturalness and freedom image of the the Lord of Birds bride, — working six chimpanzee females in that age, when wisdom lies through in barely noticeable grey hair and life experience. They place a fabric blue as an endless ocean on your shoulders, tie the belts in knots, to adjust the garment to your figure. They comb your hair with bristle brushes, weave snow-white feathers into the scattering of braids. They draw intricate patterns on your cheeks, closed eyelids and brow ridges. Thoroughness, with which they conjure over your appearance, is amazing. When everything is ready, you are stunned. Admire your reflection, leaning over the transparent pink water in the bowk — you see, feel and recognize your beauty. For the first time in all the years, that you have lived.
Bow to the Elder Wives, listening to their parting words.
Caught by the arms by Soona and Kantis, who had arrived just in time, you listen to their chatter.
"This has never happened before... But over the past sunsets, you are definitely... the most beautiful bride!.." despite the controversial nature of what should happen any minute, Soona is delighted.
"I couldn't even imagine... that I so quickly would take you... down the aisle! Hey... stand up straight!" Kantis echoes her, encouragingly clapping you on your hunched over from everything that has fallen on you shoulders.
As you already know, one sunset means one completed cycle of the seasons. You also know, — the new friends told you in secret, — that weddings have become more frequent during the changed sunsets. There were many brides, transformed into wives, now enjoying their married life. Perhaps, by exceptional beauty they mean your human belonging..?
Having reached the Place of Bonding, you're transported to another dimension — you haven't seen waterfalls even in pictures. Grandeur of the streams falling from the heights and the noise of drops crashing on the surface makes a strong impression on you. Having looked around the lowland, you cannot hold back an admiring exclamation. Decorated with luxurious bouquets of flowers of various shades, this place looks fabulous.
To top it all off, apes of all ages sitting on the hillock begin to play pipes carved from hazel and the same drums, that they beat in a cheerful rhythm yesterday. You feel uneasy, the memories that were brought, back threaten to return. You want to run headlong... Starting with a guttural call, the female chimpanzee sings a song, that drives away your anxiety. Song has no lyrics, but its message is as clear, as today's cloudless evening. This song is about happiness.
Over the murmur of waterfall and the soft melody, a horde of cubs that Anaya was looking after, calls out to you. Some of them are just babies. Tiny and cute. They crowd around you, you ruffle hair on their playful heads, their smiling faces.
"Barely... dealt... with these bandits!.." Anaya laughs, catching his breath after games. "Get ready, echo. You awaits... an attak!"
"Y/N! Y/N! Today you are even... more beautiful!"
"Y/N! Today you look like... a real queen!"
"Like... a real... Mistress of Birds!.. Right, mom?.."
"True, my tadpoles. How could it be otherwise? Today is... a very-very important... day for Y/N" Kantis winks at the kids, who are not going to leave your side. Picking up her cubs, Nober and Febri, she tries to protect your robe from their inquisitive little palms. "One of the most important days... in your life... Isn't that right, Y/N?"
At her question you nod absentmindedly.
Babies, sitting in their mother's arms and meeting their father, who along with other strong chimpanzees brought some paraphernalia for the ceremony, manage to engage in conversation their teenage aunt. Teu, Ogun's younger sister, for whom everything human means everything hostile, frowns — but examines every detail of your complex outfit along with her little nephews.
"Echo truly does... look... beautiful" reluctantly admits Teu, touching the necklace, that shimmers around your neck. "Today... echo has... a reason... to shine. But... not to get cocky"
"Out of the mouths of baby speaks truth" — that was how your blood mother said, with an easily reproducible gesture and the explanatory voice of your blood father. Children really do tell it like it is.
So your human origin has nothing to do with it.
So, here you simply began to blossom.
Thought blurs, prevents concentration, disorganizes the mind. Isn't it natural to blossom, where there is no place for stinginess and aridity? Isn't it natural to fragrant, where there is abundant watering?..
Eventually, while waiting for Elders to arrive, your friends manage to inspire. You keep up the cheerful chatter, fragmentarily and distractedly, as best as you can. You can't switch to girlish chatter or childish babble, no matter how hard you pretend — conversation with Noa, a long, led to nowhere, doesn't leave your head. Three months ago he saved you from death. Two months ago you were afraid of him to death. A month ago you almost decided to kill him. Today, in a semi-dark room and semi-intimate proximity, you talked more, than you ever talked to anyone. Conversation was also like a painful death.
Death has followed you relentlessly. From your earliest years. Through your youth. To adulthood. Here, the shackles of death feel less of a burden. Here, the shackles of death have been replaced by rebirth. A dubious one, but still.
Instead of stingy demands, Noa has done you an invaluable service.
Noa has offered you peace.
There can be no talk of any certainty in such a union. But Noa doesn't pursue the same goals, that motivated those, who drove you into the ravine. Those, who would have knocked out your teeth. Would have broken your legs. Your arms, too, just in case. So that you would not resist their blows, their encroachments, so that you would be humble before their vile mugs... What prevented Noa from taking possession of you in his own nest, pinning you between animal skins and the weight of his body?
What prevented Noa from doing what marriages, devoid of their original meaning, are now performed everywhere for? What prevented Noa from showing you the only function, for which you are fit? Incapacity of the offspring doesn't exclude the desire to receive pleasure from the sexual act. Even if this act ends in nothing, remaining without an ending.
Moreover, you are a curiosity to him, a representative of another species. Earlier you made a sarcastic remark about it to his face. It is noticeable.
No matter how hard Noa tries, you see his stares.
He always looks at you with amazement, with interest. With a vague, but obvious desire. You curse yourself mentally with all the curses you know, when you admit, that you will not be able to look at your future husband as if he were a wild animal, hating him, denying his masculinity. Noa — not just an animal that frightened you, fierce in its nobility. Noa — a young male of the closest biological species to humanity, a young man. It is no one's fault, that his masculine nature can desire your feminine nature.
Having existed long before civilizations, wars and truces, intuitive desires can bring not only destruction, but creation too. The primordial, indisputable truth.
Noa shouldn't have to settle for platonic bits of a full-fledged relationship.
And neither shouldn't you.
And that's perfectly normal. It causes a tsunami of disagreement in you, but that's perfectly normal. No matter how much you hated all men, you hoped to meet someone, who you didn't want to hate. Hate was methodically draining your body. You needed symbiosis. You are a young, fragile woman. In this troubled world, you have repeatedly wanted to cuddle up to someone's broad, shielding shoulder. Hiding from fears, from injustice, from everything bad...
"Why would... the Master of Birds... betroth... to... a rootless echo? He can choose... any... woman... from the clan. A hunter. A gatherer. A healer"
"The leader did not hold... the Choosing ceremony... to choose this... hussy? To bypass... the rules?"
"To be left without... descendants? What nonsense. He acted, like a... reckless fool"
Unflattering whispers of the chimpanzees group, who not so much shaming you —you are merely mentioned disparagingly, —but specifically shaming Noa, are hurtful. Discussing the likelihood of reproduction with someone, who is about to become your family — is one thing. But discussing the likelihood of reproduction of your leader, behind his back — is another. It is petty. How can they talk like that about Noa in his absence? Indignation seethes inside you, you want to intervene, take a step toward them, pushing through the growing crowd. Intervenes, before you, Noa. Covered in feathers, slathered in the same paint as you, he measures them with a warning glance, not being generous with verbal warnings.
When gossips see him, they immediately stop their discussion mid-sentence. Hypocrites are everywhere. It's funny.
Multitude of emotions are mixing inside you, creating a cataclysm. But your face is calm. So as not to give away everything, what you are worried about. Instead of worrying, you give Noa a restrained smile. Now, more than ever, you are glad to see him. If he hadn’t stood right in front of you, blocking the gossips with his body — you would have either intervened in a verbal altercation, or fallen into the ground from shame. Neither would have worked to your advantage.
Arrival of the Elders is marked by a change in melody. Musicians play louder, singing female chimpanzee all turns into a voice.
Boar carcass is roasting on the fire. Noa's chest is pierced by a hastily treated, fresh wound. His body, hidden by a robe like yours, is littered with smaller wounds, bruises bleed. But he smiles at you relaxed. He didn't steal easy prey to maim, tie up, and gut — no, he fought his prey in a fair fight.
Caught by your friends on both hands, you don't have time to say anything to Noa, who is also caught in the same manner — you both are led to an arch of logs, towering over the hills. Crowd showers the Elders with greetings, escorting them to the newlyweds. That is, to the two of you, standing at the place where the Rite of Bonding is being held.
"Children of my... Today Water, Earth and Sky will see... your vows. Today you will merge to... be together... always. In the light... and in the darkness. In peace... and in war. From life... to death. Relentlessly" when Dar begins the ceremony, accompanying the words with eloquent gestures, everything blurs before your eyes. You hear as if through the thickness of water, coming to your senses, when she already moves on to the obligatory question for the wedding. "Do you... son of my...take this woman as your wife, to... guard her?"
"I take. Name her... as all worldly blessings. Swear to keep her... faithful, and to protect her... from all evil" Noa makes a vow without thinking, looking at you patiently.
"Do you... daughter of my.. take this man as your husband, to... revere him?"
"I take. Name him as all worldly blessings. Swear to be faithful to him, and to honor him completely" there is no time to think, you humbly echoing the vow, given to Noa.
Crowd looks at you, who managed to live such a momentous moment with dignity — who pronounced the unfamiliar oath without fail, thanks to the instructions of the Elder Wives and repeated mental repetition, — with hundreds of eager eyes. Ah yes, the exchange.
Taking a few steps towards you, Noa removes the dark-blue cloth from his shoulders. Now there is less, than an inch between you two — and Noa puts his robe on you. He puts his supreme status on you. He claims his right to you not defiantly, but delicately. How many times has he done this already? Hides you from the outside world, from outliers?..
Taking just one hesitant step forward, you take the cross off your neck, asking Noa to bend down — so, that you can put your cross on him. From now on, everything that was important to you, belongs to him. Faith was the only value for you. You don’t feel sorry to hand this value over to Noa... But not it in vain?..
Amidst the stares and congratulatory screams, Noa's palms find yours palms.
"Council of Elders blesses your aspiring... children of my. Now, may... the Sun, the Moon, and all the stars, that see the exchange... of your hearts... bless your union. And may... the path of your love... be long" Dar finishes his speech, praising the inscrutable Nature and tying a ribbon around your wrist with Noa's, so that this evening you will hardly be able to separate.
Part of you, with carefully concealed panic, expects Noa lean to your lips for another one important aspect. For a kiss.
You know, that this is a mandatory step to sealing a marriage. In the settlement, this step was completely devoid of romantic — but the men gnawed and licked gums of their newly acquired wives, like scraps from plates. In poetic, languid novels, this step was described as something tremulous, passionate, something pleasant. Everything inside you turns over, when Noa really leans to you... To touch foreheads.
You breathe out in relief, looking into Noa's green eyes without fear. Your union with him is not forced, but allianced.
Having showered you, motionless newlyweds, with devastatingly loud congratulations, crowd breaks into a dance to the whistle of pipes and the clap of drums. A wedding here — is not the observance of formalities before committing obscenities behind iron doors. A wedding here — is a shared joy. Some apes stand with sour faces, some are distorted with cynicism, but mostly everyone is happy for your future happiness. After all, everyone thinks, that your union is dictated by maturing love.
Nobody knows the background.
Everyone is waiting for the newlyweds' dance.
Noa lifts your palm, tightly connected to his palm, to the level of his shoulders. His free palmNoa lays behind your back. Not touching your waist, or your lower back. So as not to cause you the slightest discomfort. Assessing Noa's efforts, you squeeze the fur on his forearm with your free palm. Barely noticeable. But enough to tell him, without saying a word, that his touches don't cause a negative reaction in you. To reassure him, without saying anything — everything is fine.
***
Returning to the common hut in the dark, when the night lights up the constellations, you wonder — where did the milky-white sheet come from on the blanket of skins? You look at Noa, confused. You untie the knots of the robe. You unbraid your hair.
You unbutton the buttons on the virginal-white dress.
"It doesn't matter, that this is... how it is. We can do without it. We can not..." Noa explains apologetically, shifting from one foot to the other. "Y/N, I understand... if..."
"Don't make excuses, Noa... I know, what consumption is. Everything is fine" you grab hem on seam of your dress, continuing to try to undress. "The first wedding night without this will be incomplete..."
"No. Y/N... Please, stop..." catching your stubbornly pry up your buttonhole fingers, Noa accidentally touches the bare patch of your skin, right above your belly button. You jump back, hiding in the unlit corner of the room.
The dread of what, that Noa would never do still comes over you like a crushing wave.
You hug your knees, rocking back and forth.
"You're as scared, as you were... when I found you. Until you... stop... being afraid of me, we can do without this" Noa assures, making your heart clench.
"It's not you I'm afraid of, Noa" you smile bitterly, realizing, how far your husband is willing to go in self-sacrifice. "I'm afraid of letting you near me. I'm afraid of the closeness, that will never cease to make me wary. The closeness, that may never happen between us"
"This morning you said, that... in couples not customary sleep... separately" he recalls as if by accident, coming up to you on all fours. "If... that closeness, you fear never happens... between us... It's enough for me, to... fall asleep and wake up... next to you"
"Yes, that's right..." you smile involuntarily at Noa's remark. "You've done too much for me. I would really like to change my mind, so that someday I can allow you more. If only it were possible..."
Duck behind the canopy, fluttering in the night wind, to avoid awkwardness and pull off your dress. You change into a change complect shirt and trousers.
You hesitate. You doubt...
You don't want Noa to sleep on the floor again. It's just not appropriate to spend your nights like that, when you're in a legal marriage... But are you ready to sleep with Noa under the same blanket?
Casting aside your doubts, just as you had, when you accepted Noa's proposal, you climb into bed. Noa, snoring and frowning, is apparently already asleep — and sleeping, unlike in morning sleep, soundly.
A warm wind blows out the few lights that illuminated the bedroom. Noa's measured breath reaches your cheeks. So as not to wake him, you don't make unnecessary movements. You lie on the edge. You examine his face. The expression lines. The brow ridges, the eyelids wandering in dreams. You don't notice, how you set off on a journey through dreams. Later, through nightly creepy visions, you hear a noise. Wheezing and growling, Noa tosses and turns, leaves and returns — you sleepily wonder where he was until dawn?..
In the early morning, you find yourself shattered by yet another nightmare, turning away from the still sleeping Noa, crawling away from him. Nothing happened. No vile advances. His hands don't grab you, don't letting go.
You look at Noa again, peering. In the daylight now.
You try on status of the Master of Birds wife, wondering, what to do with this status. You wait for Noa to wake up — and, embarrassed by the length of his gaze, you flutter outside. So as not to sit idle.
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Warnings: violence, mentions of blood and injuries, mentions of death, swear words
🎧 Jurii Kirnev — Prelude
Among the perennial trees with their branches reaching up to the sky, you don’t see or hear anything. There is only darkness and silence around. Clouds floating across a foggy sky. Twinkling round moon. Stars hiding behind leaves. Animal screams. The flapping of bird wings. An echo floating above the forest.
And bubbling fear squeezing your ribs.
If only they didn't find you.
It’s impossible to catch your breath or shake off anxiety. No matter how you try to calm the convulsive sighs, they endlessly escape from your chest, precariously covered by a torn shirt.
Dirty in someone else's and your own blood, you hide among the bushes, tearing the remnants of your clothes with every careless movement. You're stuck, but you're not trying to get out. After all, here you, crouched to the ground and holding your ragged breath, are not so easy to notice. Your trousers and tank top, torn by the tenacious claws of the branches, barely cover your skin stained with bruises and abrasions. Here and there, wet leaves and clods of dirt stuck to your trembling knees.
There's a knife hole in your right shoulder. There are flashes of torches before your eyes, and you don’t know where to go as the day approaches — but everything seems unimportant. After all, as soon as the moon rolls down over the hills, as soon as the first morning cloud falls along the coal sky, and there is just a little time left until dawn, you will have hope...
You're thirsty. So much so that from the temptation to stick your head out and taste the muddy water from a small puddle, you pull yourself back only when you feel someone else’s presence.
There is a noise behind your back.
The sound of cutting air reaching your ears. You don't know and don't want to know what it could be. You are just sinking into the still damp earth, after the rain that passed in the evening, under which you were thoroughly wet.
Your screams remained far beyond the forest, but it seems to you that you did not run away. And you weren't saved.
Without making a sound, you crawl deep into the thorny bushes. You cut your cheeks and neck just to remain unnoticed. With your shirt sleeve you cling to a crooked branch sticking out of the ground. Trying to escape, you tear both your shirt and the skin on your hands into rags. If they hear even one sob, they will not spare you. They were furious when you compared them to animals — but they were hardly human.
People are hardly capable of what they are thinking of doing to you. People are hardly capable of what they do to everyone who fails to escape. The wound in the shoulder stings. All you need now is to survive this night here, among the leaves whipping your face. And under no circumstances cry from pain...
You don't breathe, merging with the forest. But the noise overtakes you in your flimsy shelter.
You hope that they will not see you and will pass by — after all, they do not know this place and may get lost in the dark. You desperately praying for this. But you almost burst into tears when you immediately remember all the stories that you once heard or overheard.
What if you were found by those who know this place like the back of their hand? Those who can wander here by touch, relying on animal instincts?.. The sound that comes rips screams from your mouth.
The crack of branches breaking above your head.
It was impossible to hide here... This is truly, as they said day after day, the territory of the apes clan. Surely they prowl, around every night, killing everyone who ever wanders here.
Screaming when the sharp blade almost cuts off a strand of hair stuck to your face, you crawl on all fours, feeling your way. You grab onto the grass and tree trunks to escape pursuit, but from another blow from the blade, you fall into a ravine strewn with cobblestones.
Lying on your back, punctured by stones, you see your tormentors.
Unable to move, you bleed and cry. It would be better if it were the apes from all these stories.
Cause, they'd would kill you quickly.
"Good job. She doesn’t need legs anyway, but she won’t be fussy anymore"
"But it would be better to knock out this little bitch teeth, just to be sure"
Voices that make you choke with blood filling your mouth. Vile, deafening laughter.
They found you.
You're scared. Despair covers your barely beating heart, and the salt of flowing tears stings the scratches on your cheeks.
Blood is gushing from a fresh wound on your thigh, and you try to touch the cut flesh — but your hands are limp, like a rag doll.
When they descend into the ravine, grab you and pull you up by your elbows and ankles, almost tearing you to shreds — you squint and scream from the unbearable pain piercing your entire body. You are trying to free yourself, to slip out of the hands that cripple you. Your wrists crack and break just like cut branches. There is no escape from this trap, from these snares. You want to die here.
You want to avoid giving them disgusting joy.
Because you know what they want to do to you.
You saw and heard what they were doing in the now foreign settlement with all the girls. You grew up and realized that they had all come to terms with it. They all accepted their fate without even trying to change anything.
People, generation after generation, living, begetting other people and dying without any meaning.
Locked iron doors. Men's blows. Women's screams. The cries of newborns, children deprived of love and care. A dungeon with blackened walls and no chance of seeing at least one more sunrise... That's all that will happen if their hands grab you now.
But it cost you too much to escape for your story to end like this.
Wasting your last strength, you kick one in the groin with your health leg. He yells, cursing you and grabbing the bruised body scarp with both hands.
Dust gets under your nails and falls on your face when you almost get out of the ravine and see the sky again.
But the other one immediately throws you back onto the cobblestones, hangs on top and strangles you. With all your anger, you hit him with a sharp stone clutched in your hand, turning his grinning face into mush. You spit in his face and hiss, but his dirty, slippery hands only tighten on your neck. You are suffocate, beads of cold sweat glistening on your forehead. Scatterings of stars in the waking sky blur in your eyes.
And you think that all this, all the years of miserable life filled with beatings, insults and abuse, is finally over.
Trying to exhale every nightmare moment, you come to terms with your death. With probably your only freedom.
You imagine where you will go when you fall asleep forever...
Suddenly, the grip on your throat weakens in an instant. The sounds of brutal fighting and incoherent swearing. Wheeze, full of pain. Your lungs take in air again and you cough. Two dull thuds. Silence reigned. It’s so quiet that you can hear the blood spreading. Not yours. Raising your head and looking around, all you see is the men who tormented you lying among the dirt, earth and stones. Motionless, breathless. A trickle of blood and a quiet laugh flows from your dry lips... You notice a shadow in the grass surrounding the ravine.
Holding your throat with a weak hand, you peer into the rustle of steps and movements.
This is not a human.
But you don't care anymore.
The shadow mounts the horse. You climb up. You shiver from the cold night air, piercing to the bones and eating into your body, riddled with cuts. You stand on your feet, unsteadily. You look at the shadow, taking a step back. Small pebbles search your bare feet. You listen to the breathing of the shadow, hoarse and echoing. You feel a shadow looking at you. You back away.
Limping hopelessly, you try to run away.
Pulling on the reins, the shadow gallops on horseback behind you —and in the pitch darkness you see the green of the ape’s eyes.
With tormented palms, clutching the moss on the trees and their sharp paws, you run, not making out the road. You stumble, spitting saliva and blood, but don’t stop.
You can't hide from the ape. More are trotting in the distance. The clatter of hooves sounds ever closer as you scurry helplessly along the path.
When the sun rises, illuminating the visible plain with its rays, the earth disappears from under your feet and you fall. On your back, again. Curly shoots entangle your palms, making their way to your forearms - and it suddenly seems to you that your skin is not dirty and cut, but smooth and untouched.
But the pain returns, intensifies.
Your body seems like a sieve smeared in blood. Your heart is pounding as if it’s about to fall out at your feet. You don’t have the strength to run away, you don’t have the strength to breathe... The ape — must be a chimpanzee, if you correctly understood at least some of the stories about these animals, — dismounts, standing up to his full height, approaches you with wide steps and bends over your scratched face, knitting his eyebrows.
Right now you can't see the thoughts in the ape's pupils.
All you can see right now — is a male. And you're scared again.
Where the wound gapes on your thigh, only threads remain of the fabric of your trousers, exposing your vulnerable skin.
All you can do now is desperately cover yourself with what's left of your shirt. So that he doesn’t see how the blood flows from your neck to your collarbones, and from there to the valley between your breasts. But he sees. And his gaze is almost no different from other men predatory gazes.
You look up at him and press yourself into the tree trunk. You look like a small cornered animal.
“I won’t hurt you...” he says, sitting down on the ground and extending his hand to help you up. "Who are they? Why are you... in blood?"
Huddled in patches of wet grass, away from the outstretched hand, you tremble.
Even your eyelashes, which have absorbed the moisture of the coming morning, tremble.
“Noa” he gestures to himself, looking at you expectantly. He sighs as you curl into a ball, tucking your knees to your chest. "Do you have a name? Home? Family?.."
He saved you from a long and inevitable life similar to death - and it seems that he does not intend to kill you... But why?
How could your deceased parents, who protected you from all evil that exists, be mistaken in human actions? Could a woman who protected you at the cost of her life lie about ape's earth? Could the legend passed down from mouth to mouth be just a fiction to keep women within the walls of the dungeon? Why he help you now?..
And is this help? He killed them. This means that he can easily kill you too if he feels like it.
His hands are just as stained with blood as yours. One of them pierced his palm with a knife, which remained in the ravine. His fingers almost touch your languishing in pain shoulder. Why would he, ape, help you, human? Why is he still holding his long, furry hand outstretched?.. Closing your eyes and biting your tongue so as not to answer his questions, you shake your head.
You will not say a word to any one of the men, or any one of the males.
After your silence, that ringing louder than chirping insects, calloused monkey hands lift you from the damp ground. You fight back, squeal, scratch in frightened agony... He growls threateningly, but holds you carefully. His fur is soaked with blood from your wounds. You whine in despair.
"You have a strong spirit" his chin ends up on the back of your head as the ring of his arms wraps tightly around your shoulders. You try to free yourself again, but he is strong and stubborn. "But the body... is weak. Need help"
You feel the words he said on your tangled hair.
You can hear two more apes riding up on horses, talking about something with the male who holding you. You can see, this is also a chimpanzee. It looks like they were here for no reason. But at night?.. You try to listen to what they are saying, but you feel that you are about to lose consciousness, that you are about to fall into the abyss.
Only fragments of phrases reach your ears.
"The echo only brings danger... Destruction"
"Should I have left her? To be eaten by scavengers?"
“But why is the echo here?.. How did she escape from them?”
"And why did they want...?" the alarmed question hangs mid-sentence, amid the dawn and dew.
One of the apes — is female. And you look at her while a barely audible rustle sounds on your lips.
"Knock my teeth out?" you asking, continuing her question in a whisper. "Because I bit off the finger of one of them, and the ear of the second. I can also bite something off for them inadvertently” you assure her, shaking from fear, cold and the grip on your shoulders.
Your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth after the words are spoken. The sound of your voice makes the male who won’t let you go hooting. You feel the muscles in his neck move.
Water, at least one sip of water — is all you think about...
"Why does the echo speak to Soona and silent to Noa?" asks the third ape without any malice, only with curiosity.
The pain beats in your temples without stopping. If they are talking about you, then why do they call you "echo"?..
“Stupid Anaya,” the female shows an unclear gesture, slowly approaching you on all fours. Almost the same as you did when you were hiding. "Don't you see? She's scared"
"I saw... their faces. Without pity. They would have killed her... What else could I do?" you feel how the hands of the male holding you cover your body, stronger than before. "I don't know who she is. I don't know where she's from. But how to help her if she... Is silent?"
The annoyance in Noa tone is almost as palpable as the welt that will soon appear on his palm. But you keep your mouth shut.
"So what's your name, echo?" Looking into your eyes, swollen from tears, Soona asks.
“...Y/N” You answer her. Although you still apprehensive.
They're, surrounding you worriedly, say a lot more. They apparently intend to take you to their clan - while you rest your humming head on the ape's fur and watch the clouds change colour from purple to yellow and scarlet.
The fear and ignorance of having nowhere to go disappears. All the colors of dawn fade before your eyes, turning into ripples.
The morning light doesn't help with the darkness and fog in your eyes. At this moment, you are grateful that the ape's hands are holding you, and you will not have to fall again. You smile at the sun's rays, unable to object and almost no longer feeling your numb leg.
Taking your hands in his, Noa helps you to your feet. He grabs you by the waist, placing you on the horse. His movements are gentle — you hardly feel any pain, even when he holds your still bleeding shoulder. You can barely keep your balance, so as soon Noa sits in front, you unconsciously wrap your arms around him. Soona and Anaya are still constantly discussing something. With arguments and gestures whose meaning you don't know.
Why do you remember ape's names?..
Behind the lush crowns of trees you can see a flowering valley, which seems like paradise to you.
The last thing you hear before you close your eyes from fatigue — is Noa's voice. In the thick fur on his back you sleepily bury your nose, when he says that the road will be long, and tells you to hold on tight.
"Creation" Masterlist Noa x Fem!human reader (updated 30.04.26)
Synopsis: Watching the seasons change, the Moon and Sun circle across the sky, and your mistrust disappear, Noa waited for you to let him into your heart - just as he kept you in his from your first meeting among the blood, silence and leaves. A feeling grew between you two. Sometimes it was painful - but day by day it brought closer to something beautiful... Like the universe itself.
Songs for series:
Purity Ring — Begin Again,
Mother Mother — The Sticks
~Prologue
~Chapter 1. A scream that almost sounded
~Chapter 2. Moment that stretching out for minutes
A/N: I realy really really apologize for making you wait for two days... Publication of the chapter was complicated by a boil in my eye. Right now, there is still no use in treating it. Yeah, I'm becoming a regular patient at the local hospital, what a hell... But I couldn't keep putting it off. I hope I was able to live up to expectations and pleasantly surprise
Word count: 5,4K
Warnings: indirect insults, blood, brief references to murder, oppression of women and children, themes of slavery and parenthood, post-traumatic memories, perverted religious motives, killing of an animal, fear of men, beating, attempted rape, veiled intimate prejudices, implied xenophilia (forcing the events seemed to me simply a necessary tool after so much forced narration — the rope is tied in an unexpected knot! And then — more. But gradually ...)
🎧 Joel Sunny — Luminary
Bustle and hubbub fill the Eagle Clan so suddenly, that you don't even have time to blink. For the last week, certainly, you've noticed preparations for some unknown holiday — but now that summer has come into its own, everything and everyone has become a jumbled mess.
Everyone seemed to become a single, coherent mechanism.
And you seemed to became like an unnecessary, defective detail.
Because, no matter how much Suna, or Kantis and her husband Ogun in two voices, or omnipresent Anaya, tried to explain you what the essence of the holiday was — to you didn't become clearer. It seemed that the very concept of the celebration needed to be explained to you anew. With patience and deliberation. After all, those celebrations that were imprinted in your memory — obscurantist and didn't bring any joy to anyone, except those, who reveled in the annual harvest of cruelty.
***
The vines, woven into intricate garlands, exude an unfamiliar sweetish aroma. Children rush about, hanging them everywhere. Lum, Lup and Elan, with six small nimble hands, help you decorate your home with vines, which is gradually acquiring a lived-in appearance.
Every now and then the kids ask you, vying with each other, about the things in backpack. About things from your blurry past, next to things from your equally blurry present. When you're done with the decorations, you tell them about the purpose of each thing. About the almost unfaded photographs and the events captured on them. About the spools of thread and rusty needles. About the calligraphic inscriptions on the worn-out pages of a prayer book. About the tiny mirror, that only fate hasn't broken. About the broken comb. About the slightly chipped camera, waiting for new pictures. About the grumpy patches on the clothes and the backpack itself.
About everything, that consisted of, and still consist to that day, your best memories.
It's unusual to be in the narrator's place.
Kids listen to you, cuddling the rabbit that has recently stopped being afraid of hands. Now not the rabbit without a name — but the rabbit, that you named Daisy.
For some reason the name seemed to suit brown fur.
You're sitting on the floor, right in front of the spacious cage Noa has built, your hand through the bars. You're stroking the rabbit's sides, still skinny — and at the same time, you're ruffling the kids' hair... When suddenly someone places on you a fragrant, elegant wreath.
“Now you look like... a princess!” remaining standing behind you, Kaidy claps her hands.
"Natural princess!.. It's good that here are no evil dragons!" Paco laughs, flying like a whirlwind into the hut with a lot of tangled vines and curved branches, tied with intricate, hand-woven ribbons.
"Indeed, exactly the same as" You pick up the childish delightful exclamations, adjusting the thin droping branches. "And a young knight would definitely protect me from the dragons, right?"
And, taking the decor, you wink at Paco. He immediately nods, proudly — and Kaidy, not missing the opportunity, playfully pokes him in the nose. Boy gives in to her, allowing girlish mischief to prevail. Now they are already running from corner to corner, running outside. Somersaulting in the june grass. Threaten each other with tickling. Sincere, sparkling laughter fills your house and the emerald-lit lawn nearby, making you forget about the sad memories that had already flooded in. Having called the breathless mischiefs over and seated them, you ask about the ribbons. They are directly connected with the approaching holiday.
It's your turn to hear stories about the purpose of things. And you can't hold back curiosity.
With children this is not necessary at all. And it encourages you.
The explanation, that children use — understandable intuitively, although it's blocked by an insurmountable cultural barrier.
Looking back at the recent past, you had already forgotten, that gratitude could be dedicated to an entire day in the season and on the calendar.
"This is a holiday of gratitude... for everything... Whatever you decide to thank";
"Elders thank nature... for the sent gifts... For a good catch of fish or for the quick sprouting of shoots";
"For a winter without winds... and for a summer without drought";
"We thank our mothers and fathers... Brothers and sisters... Grandmothers and grandfathers... Whole family... For that we have them. For that we are... together";
"For that we able to quickly learn something... or grow up";
"Also, those... who are older, thank... their wives and husbands...";
Answers came out, as in cornucopia. Everyone, who could be considered an adult, gave much more succinct answers — like, you yourself should understand what to what.
But how should you understand without explanations, if this holiday, with its laudatory ceremonies, is too different from the holidays, that celebrated in the settlement?
There, the derogatory, disregardful traditions became an integral part of a colorless life long before you — and more others, like you — were born. There the scum, calling themselves men, amused themselves with bloodshed and misogyny.
Do apes, living on land unspoiled by other faiths, know what meaning "misogyny"?..
If you yourself know this term only from books about the vague science, that studies the human brain.
You can't just go and spill out, like from a leaky sack, those customs, that there called "ceremonial".
No, of course, there was no female circumcision or anything worse. The physical harm was constant, and don't need to be set aside for a separate day. Instead, at the beginning of the festival, women, girls and young women, who were already someone's property, were given shameful collars. And, driven like cattle into rooms, they were locked with all the locks until the end of the festival. On the second day, all the girls, who these boors call ownerless, were brought out to the main platform. And they moved on to the sacrifice. One of the horses — one of those, that remained tied up at the top, — was tied up, eyes were gouged out, ears were cut off, hung up, and then ripped open so, that the blood oozed out and collected in a huge jug. Or did you, looking around furtively like a mouse studying the corridors and tunnels, assume, that there horses were, because the neighing, snorting and clattering of hooves often came from above. But if the horses for this numbing ritual were obtained from other, neighboring settlements...
You felt sick every damn year, because couldn't not show up to this flayer spectacle. Just as couldn't turn away.
Those who turned away were ripped open in the same way, as sacrificial horses.
When the jug was full — contents were given to those girls, who's came of adult in that year. Those girls, who were obliged to go into use of men and begin to fulfill a debt that no one needed. Slave labor and carrying future slaves in the womb.
On the third day, the girls were prepared for the first night. They were fed the meat of a killed horse, soaked in something unbearably stinking. On the fourth day, the girls were taken behind iron doors, which from behind could be heard maddening screams, blows and crying. On the fifth day, the girls came back out, already women and already broken. Beaten until their internal organs bleeding and having lost the will to live. Sixth and seventh days passed like a bad dream, with a din of blasphemous prayers and dancing of cackling scums with limp rag dolls. That's all... Apart from this holiday, which lasted a week, all the others were celebrated casually.
No Birthdays, no Christmas, all other holidays were as forbidden.
Except for this devilry. By misunderstanding called God's Feast.
You won't be able to talk about feasts and games, which they have entertain with there, under the meters of earth and rust. If you dare to talk about it, you will be considered as perverted, as those who came up with it. Otherwise, why would you talk about something vile, unnatural?..
It's like a dome of soul-sucking memories hangs over your head. You're transported back there, to the main platform, a year ago. You're seventeen and you're frantically looking for something to look at — to not look at the endless streams of blood from horse's belly.
Then they threatened to rip out your guts and feed them to those, who wouldn't turn away. Now you're eighteen, and you're not going through the circles of Hell.
And you don't know, who to thank for this.
Five little chatterboxes shake you by the shoulders, finally bringing back to reality.
"So what would you thank for?.. And what?.. Or who?"
They are curious without any underlying reason. Like all children their age. But you don't answer them right away, pretending to be much carefree — so as not to frighten them with your dejected look. If answer with all honesty, then you're grateful to God for sending Noa on the path, that you were walking without hope of salvation. You're grateful to Dar and Elders. You're grateful to every mother in the clan, because they all trusted you with their children. You're grateful to every child in the clan, because not one of them was afraid of you, an stranger.
But above all, you are grateful to Noa. Even though you don’t know how to express this gratitude. Even though the circumstances are favorable now, for Noa you're none of the things the children have listed. So if you say, what you said in the middle of the frozen plain a few weeks ago again, in front of so many eyes and ears, it will be taken the wrong way. Or not seriously. One is no better than the other, however. Touch the cross hanging around your neck, you ask yourself a very strange question.
How can it be that you grateful to God and Noa almost equally?..
"I would like to start by thanking you. For being my assistants in everything" After a short pause, you saying, smiling broadly for the first time in the past few months.
"Because with you... it's always interesting!" the cubs smile back. "Even doing boring things!.. And else?"
"There are still many things and many people. I would like to thank my family. But, unfortunately, I can only thank the memory of my family..."
Why? With your family happen something... bad? Kaidy gasps. The smiles instantly slip off the children's faces, when you find the strength to only nod.
Mischief on children's faces gives way to compassion.
Just at that moment Noa's voice is heard from outside the door.
Without the fears, as it was before, you allow him to enter and ask, why he has come.
"Just wanted to... help with decorate the house... And with nest" Noa looks from under brows at the wreath that hugs your hair. Noa looks at you for a long. Not at all, like he usually does. "You're like a queen in this... crown"
"Oh, right!.. But this a princess's crown. Queen can't rule without a king" looking away and laughing carefree, you clarify. "Maybe you'll sit down?"
Hanging an awkward silence. Is this a coincidence, nothing much more?..
You don't know, how to hide your commotion. Is Noa really serious? You thought, all this talk about the ritual of raising a companion — was nothing more than just covering up the gaps in your knowledge. It turns out, that this apes ritual concerns you, a human, directly.
In Noa's hands is a pile of branches, vines and... fluff? Nests in the bird pen, where the tiny chicks, just hatched from their shells, are kept warm and well-fed, are lined with exactly the same material. You heard, that everyone in the clan, upon reaching adulthood, undergoes initiation by proving responsibility for their own bird. Does this mean, that you are allowed to stay not out of pity, but as an equal?.. But then first you need to find the egg yourself and watch over it tirelessly. You weren't rushed with this ritual — and now Noa has literally provided you with all the necessary supplies. All that remains is to build a nest, as Soona and the other females taught you. Perhaps, being here, this is the only thing, that you have learned to do correctly...
And, probably, after that you will have go to the eagle's nesting place on the rocks?
In an awkward silence, Noa lays out everything he brought a short distance from your bed. Then he sits down, an arm's length away — so as not to trigger the anxiety, that's still gripping you by the scruff of the neck — and scratches Daisy behind the ear.
Meanwhile five pairs of children's eyes are looking at you fixedly, waiting for the continuation of the untold story.
"With my parents happen something very bad. And someday, later, I will definitely tell you about it..." but you're looking not at the children. It is too early for them to hear such monstrous details about the far world.
You looking at Noa. Was not was. Maybe, that's a good way to hint at how important to you were his actions?
After all, what else, expect honesty, can you thank him? He deserves to know that about you.
And you're almost ready to share it with him.
And he imperceptibly nods to you.
"But now I don't want ya'll to be sad. So I'd better tell you who else I would thank..." you take a deep breath of morning air, to satisfy returned for children curiosity. "I would thank Nature and the Lord. For being able to be here. To look at the sun, the moon and the stars. I would thank the Elders. For sharing their wisdom with ya'll and being indulgent towards me, who doesn't know, how to do anything that is customary here.
"Not true!" Paco exclaims, and the others immediately echoing him. "You already know everything, that should know... a real ape! You plane... spears and beams on par with Master of Birds!.. And mess around... with the little ones no worse than their mothers"
Immediate praise makes Noa smile at the corners of his lips and move a little closer to you, chuckling.
"By the way of the little ones. I have to go to them, while their mothers are busy. And ya'll, I have no doubt, will turn this hut into real royal chambers by the time I return" you feel your heart warm from what you've noticed. And you laugh quietly, when you see the enthusiasm of the five assistants.
Ask Noa to stay with them — while you, according to your recently habitual routine, go to look after the babies of the mothers-gatherer.
Mothers will return only in the evening, bringing berries, roots, and medicinal herbs. So during the daytime hours you — a full-fledged nanny.
And this new status, this necessity is flattering even after fusion with responsibilities.
***
Soared into the twilight sky sparks fascinate you. Official, if it may say so, part of the celebration came to an end — all the gratitude was carefully absorbed by the crimson evening. As for you, you plucked up the courage to say thank not only to the sky and the earth, but also to name all the names. Elders, impressed, remained on the logs that resembled perches. Noa, — Master of Birds, confused by your sincerity, — having listened to you, answered the same way, as he answered all the others who spoke, if don't count smile from ear to ear. True, he immediately left the field back towards the huts. And promised to return later.
Your knees were shaking, when you spoke. But, even those who hadn't had the best opinion of you before highly appreciated this step. Isn't this a success, albeit a minor one?
It gives you confidence — but not so much, that you join in the general, strange to you, fun. You look at dancing crowd through dancing fire. Movements to the accompaniment of huge drums are so outlandish, chaotic. But not grinning. As in, it would seem, human society. Dance is like fooling. Although very frivolous, but fooling. Without any vulgar subtext. Well, unless this context was desired by the dancing couples.
Yes, only couples danced. Married, heading towards marriage.
Or friendly teasing. Like Soona and Anaya, for example.
So you, sitting on a fallen log, enjoyed strung on a peeled twig mangoes, leaving the dancers aside.
Was unnecessary to put on a parade dress, only to feel uncomfortable in it now. It wasn't that much parade. Gray, washed out. Wreath still adorned you — and it was the only thing, that calmed you down in the motley mess. It was fun to watch. But you didn't want to take part in this mess. What, if you did something wrong?
"Why are you sitting here... alone?" Kantis sits down next to you. Must be, she upset, that you're not with the others.
"The scar on my leg still hurts" you lie with all your might. But don't keep quiet about the real reason. "Besides, I've never danced in my life. My clumsiness could ruin everything."
"Is that... such a problem? Let me... help you find... a cavalier, who won't be afraid of your clumsiness?" she giggles, putting her arm around your shoulder in a family-like manner. But then she falls silent. "...Or is it you're afraid of something..? Right..?"
“Yes,” squinting from the smoke from the fire, you sigh. “Not here, in the clan. Place, where I grew up, was different. In a bad way. That’s what I’m afraid of"
Smoke spreads in the gusts of wind, and you wrap yourself in the sky-blue fabric over your dress, so that you feel like a caterpillar. It takes Kantis less than a second, to hug you tighter, realizing your words. She says nothing. She rocks you from side to side, like a frightened child. She says nothing, because she understands, what you mean. That's why you're was silent as a fish.
Waving his hands and laughing, Ogun beckons Kantis — she can’t sit like this for the rest of the evening, saddened along with you — back.
And you move away from the dancers. Maybe, this will be better?
It seemed, like you were alone not in a firelit field, but in the entire forest. But that was okay. A little uneasy. But okay.
It didn't feel, like loneliness.
And would be better if it were loneliness.
Anything would be better, than appearing out of nowhere Jeru. You realized right away, he was the same as the bastards from the settlement, when he opened his filthy mouth and was supported by the embittered jackal and mutt. Over the months of living in the clan, you always managed to fight off his advances. More precisely, there were always those nearby, who could fight him off. Now you only hoped for the favor of fate, so that this bastard would stop bothering.
"I think... if we have fun with you... properly..." drawn-out, mocking phrase makes your soul run to your heels. "No one will notice... the loss"
"Go away. Right now. Or I'll call everyone, to see, how you're enjoying yourself" there's not an ounce of firmness in your voice, but there's plenty of determination.
"Are you sure, that... you... at least someone will hear? Because you're... so far from the others"
You look around in all directions. To make sure that situation is hopeless. Now Jeru is with one of his henchmen, nameless and brainless. They are accompanied by the same intention, with which lustful male hands climbed under your skirt. They reek of the same intention to have fun. One thought is spinning in your head: "Not for anything show fear!" Jeru waddles up to you. Looks you up and down. Calls you muck again. Tears the fabric off you with one greedy jerk. First he reaches for the buttons on your dress. Then he spits somewhere under your feet, shod in worn-out shoes. Four fur slimy hands grab your elbows, dragging you deeper into the thicket.
Wreath of delicate flowers falls, getting lost in the grass.
As you trying break free, you scream. Heart-wrenchingly, to the point of squealing, to the point of wheezing. Loud to the point of madness. Grip becomes crackingly strong. Slap, that Jeru gives you, blazes.
Falling, for a few moments you grow into the ground. You faint from the washed over you icy rain of horror. You decide, which blow would best suit his vile mug.
You clench your fists until dark spots appear before your eyes, waiting for the right moment — you hit furiously, not knowing, what you're doing. Hit the bastard, wherever you can end up. Continue to scream, hitting the second one. Your rage to them, is like a club to an elephant. Grunting like a pig, Jeru leans on you with his heavy body, squeezes your boobs... And one by one, tears off the buttons of your dress.
While the nameless jackal, having dropped down, raging tries to pull off your underwear.
Fire's glow is invisible behind the trees, bushes and moss. Sparks don't fly off. Smoke don't curl.
Tears roll down your cheeks involuntarily. Miserable, ugly tears.
Everything repeats itself.
Bring your legs.
You're kicking.
With his hands around your throat, ripping your dress to shreds and clawing your boobs with a ravenous greed, Jeru grabs your thighs. Everything blurs and darkens, just like that night. Even worse. It's your own fault, for being separated from the celebration. You were out of place there. But there was safe.
In the grass flashes barrel of a pistol. It wouldn't take any effort to reach it, if you won't suffocate.
Knock the jackal off yourself, bite the bloated bastard on the strangling hand — and, crawling away, reach for the pistol. Taking aim, pull the trigger...
Nothing happens. You miss, twice — the bullets grazing the ear of one and the chin of the other, whistling off into the night.
No more bullets. Damn it!.. Shaking themselves off, they pounce on you again. The gun flies off, you can't reach it again. They dig their four hands into your knees. With terrible force. Until crunch. Your kneecaps are probably broken. Only now you feel, how cold in your skin, because there is almost nothing left of your dress. You can't move from the paralyzing pain, but you continue to fight back. So that they, having changed places, don't dare to reach the same place, where tried to reach those insignificant scum. You resist, but the resistance is cut short by a beating, from which your jaws tremble. You bite through your tongue and cheeks. You choke on your own spit and blood. And you continue to scream in despair, as your bones continue to break under the brute force of Jeru and his lackey. Fangs snap in front of your face. You squeeze your eyes shut. Already preparing to accept the fate, that awaited you...
Until out of the blur of night blue looms approaching Noa's shadow. His strides are wide and uncharacteristically fast. Too fast. Noa breaks you free of his predatory grip and swings at Jeru, backhanding the nameless shakal, that has sunk teeth into your thigh. He rains down more blows on them, until they are spitting blood on their knees. Then Noa says something, that you can’t understand — in your temples pounding your own heart. You spit into the scarlet-stained grass. You feel sick to your stomach, the contents of your stomach spilling out in a liquid mess. You can hardly even hold your head up, because you want to lie down and bury yourself alive. You press your hand to the frighful wound on your thigh, but it doesn't help. Noa hits Jeru again, when he tries to continue the fight that just ended. Noa growls at him in isn't his own voice. He utters only one word: "Away." The bastards, indistinguishable from other bastards, evaporate into thin air.
You can hardly see anything through hair, which hangs down like nasty wet straw.
Not hovering, but sitting down opposite you, Noa stretches out his palms to you — stained with blood and rotten earth, again saving. You reflexively put forward one disobedient palm, with the other trying in vain to cover your nakedness — shameful, unforeseen, and almost absolute. Noa offers you to put on the bright blue scrap of fabric, that covered his shoulders during the holiday and that he threw off in anger. Half-dead from beatings and shock, you are unable to do this. The dress hangs on your waist in uneven stripes.
“Can I..?” with this unfinished question, Noa himself wraps you in the robe that just belonged to him.
"You can watch... What now a difference..." you smile without any emotion. It's unbearably painful to extract sounds from yourself. With incredible persistence, Noa avoids looking at your scratched nipples, visible under the fabric.
"If... I do this... I'll be no better than them" in Noa's words are clear both, desire and regret. He again intertwines his fingers with yours. And looks exclusively into your eyes. "But I don't want to be... like them... in your eyes. I want to... you look at me... differently. I shouldn't have... left. Everything... should have been... not that"
Your heart skips a few beats, dropping and pricking like a pin. Just a few steps away from the two of you in the flattened, low grass sparkles a handmade bracelet.
Beads on it are transparent-blue. Cut from precious stones.
This can't be, no-no-no...
These bracelets signify a proposal to become a couple.
This bracelet is thin. Braided to size of your wrist.
All you able to think about — is the overwhelming realization, that you aren’t safe here either. Yes, with Noa to you nothing straitening. Yes, under his robe you’re covered from your neck to your broken knees. But the fabric is immediately soaked with your blood, clinging to your body as you failed try to rise. You can’t stand, let alone walk. A portion of bloody vomit accumulates in your mouth. You shudder. Shrink. Road to the hut is short, but winding. And Noa has just confessed to you it something, that you could hardly even imagine. In that case, how long will Noa, whom you have only recently begun to trust, be able to maintain control? How long will he do impossible, being with you, in this state, so close?..
"No one will hurt you... again. Never. Y/N, I promise you" Noa carefully helps you up. Still trying not to look at you. Although in vain, but causing you to feel a surge of endless respect. "Let's go..?"
“Let’s go...” you can only sob and sound like a bloodless echo, allowing Noa to cover you with wide, warm palms. “I'm so much want to go home...”
Noa could have long ago undress, lay and dishonored you.
Noa could have gnaw off your virginity, and leave you in total darkness.
But Noa holds you so gently. Gently!.. Damn... Tears are eating away at your eyes, and you tossing in Noa's arms, to wipe them away. The fabric bunches up, sticks, revealing the curves and hollows of your collarbones.
You no longer mind, how many inches of your body are exposed to his excited gaze.
For some reason, for some unknown reason, he is not like all the men, who you have met before. He doesn't harass, but almost begs. He expresses sympathy, crush, which you only knew about from fairytales.
For some reason, even more mysterious, inexplicable reason, even if you had the strength to defend yourself, you wouldn't. He doesn't give you that spine-crawling anxiety, that you're used to.
If time had been kind to the two of you, Noa could have become your closest friend. You've called him friend out loud more than once in the past month.
But to become a couple...
What does Noa know about you? Does he know, why you were so hostile? Does he know, that you were subjected to attempted rape more, than twice? Does he know, that you can't always tell the difference between the stretched from the past nightmare images and the real events? Does he know, that you thought of him as a dirty animal, even while acknowledging his nobility? Does he know, that you were seriously prepared to kill him in the middle of a fragrant plain? Does he know, that your hatred of the man kind has only begun to dull thanks to... he himself?
Barefoot walking on rocks and branches is unbearable. You barely move your feet, hoping to see your lost shoes.
Stumble, you grab onto Noa as tightly, as you had, when you staggered in the saddle. Just like yours first met...
His cleared long glances still don't added up into the puzzle...
When and why did he think of you in that watercourse?..
Is even possible that union?..
"Wait..." the seconds seem like years, when you, almost falling, pick up glittering in the light of the scattering stars bracelet. You would have fallen, if Noa hadn’t held you on.
"So that... none of them... ever try to..." Noa pauses, but doesn't let go of you. His gaze is focused on the bracelet in your weakened palm. "You... can... become not my mate, but... my... woman?" he speaks so quietly and so decisively, that you are almost afraid, having misinterpreted his words. "I will not touch you... Will just... live under the same roof. I will always... protect you. I swear"
Everything happens fast. Too fast. You don't know, what to answer to the asked question.
You have never before talked so much.
This is unusual.
Harassment will continue anywhere.
Because women have become valuable commodity, important trinket, everywhere. Wherever you go. Besides, you have nowhere else to go. And you scarcely get far. A worthless cripple. That's who you are now.
Of all the things, you've had the misfortune to endure, Noa — isn't the least of your evils. Noa — is a blessing. And you don't want to hurt him by refusal. Even if agreement will lead you to an unpredictable future.
Noa looks, like ashamed of his own suggestion.
Noa looks, like he stabbed by a dagger.
"Can we... pretend? No one will dare look at you like a... thing. We can live not as... husband and wife, but... as allies..." you feel so sick, that the treetops curl into spirals. Sensing something is wrong, Noa holds you tighter.
"We can pretend, that concluding marriage. But we know, it won't be a marriage..." It feels so awkward to talk about, so that you sit back down on the ground. Halfway to your home. "I don't know, what prompted in you that thoughts, Noa. I don't know, how I can be useful to you."
“It’s... I want to be useful to you, Y/N” determination comes from Noa. He breathes on the top of your head, adjusting your hair. Your world turns upside down. “For you to stand behind my back, Y/N... I want to be... your man"
"If you become my man, what will be the condemnation of your own congeners?.. You deserve another union. Truly. We're different..." bowing your head, you sigh deeply and hopelessly. Laugh. Tremble. You look at Noa for a long. Completely different, from usual. "If we return to the clan with this intention, we will condemn each other to eternal loneliness..." what is happening seems unreal. You give him all your secret thoughts. And your wrist. "But if you intend to help me, I will help you as much, as possible. You are the only one, who I trust completely. I owe you my life. Therefore, I entrust my life to you. Whatever the consequences"
"Shall we ask the children... to weave a new crown?" turning it into humor, Noa actually giving you time to change your mind.
"As soon as king takes queen back to chambers" you answer this question with consent too, smiling. And without changing your mind.
Putting aside doubts, you present to Noa your claw scarred wrist.
Putting aside doubts, Noa places the bracelet on your wrist unacceptably carefully.
***
It's impossible to challenge taken decision.
It's too late to retreat.
All that was left of fire is a handful of ashes. All that was left of dancing crowd is a handful of those, who were not tired yet remained — and looked at Noa, who was leading you not into your, uninhabited, hut, but into his own, the leader's hut, not with suspicion, but with acceptance. Someone called the healers.
Ground tilts, heaves. Unaware of yourself from the pain, you press yourself into the wool on Noa's strong shoulders. You, falling, fading, are caught by reliable hands. Everything plunges into darkness, emptiness, oblivion.
"Creation" Chapter 1. A scream that almost sounded
A/N: It was difficult in a good way. No more, no less
Word count: 4,2K
Warnings: Brief descriptions of murder and death, mentions of blood and injuries, swear words, child kidnapping, hints of rape and sexual harrasment (oh Jesus...)
🎧 Senn — Lone Wanderer
The wind blows the twittering of birds across the endless plain. Its gusts are benevolent, soft - but instead of bird trills, you, having woken up, hear heart-rending cries.
The ones you heard every day for almost a twelve years.
The ones in which you yourself risked losing your voice very soon.
Still not daring to open your eyes, you involuntarily wrap your arms around Noa again - after all, you have nothing else to grab onto except him. You exhale a scream that almost sounded.
If you weren't sitting in the saddle now, you would curl up into a small, unnoticeable ball.
Like that morning.
***
It was not yet dawn when they burst into your home on a hill that was probably now trampled. A dozen men in dirty uniforms, weapons at the ready. They killed your silent mother, who loved you unconditionally - and her every gesture became a voice in your ears. They killed your fearless father, who protected you with strength and wisdom - and his every word became a silent anger flowing through your veins.
But then you were too young to see your parents die. You were too young to fight.
Running to the attic, closing your eyes and curling up in a ball in the closet, in a pile of clothes - all you could do while strangers mockingly talked to the bodies of your parents.
Just a few minutes ago they were alive... And now they were getting kicked by dirty soles.
A single sob gave them away where you were hiding. The wooden closet door shattered into splinters. You shuddered as they told you in a disgusting chorus that you had a cute face. One of them twisted your arms and you burst into tears. He covered your mouth with his cruel palm and blindfolded you, ordering you to be obedient.
Even then you wanted to bite off the rough fingers that touched you.
Tied up tightly, you shuddered as one of them, then another, scooped you up and put you down in God knows where. You knew from the sound of the wheels on the gravel and embankment that it was a cart. It was impossible to tell where they were taking you. You had lost the way to the house where the memory of all the good things that had happened to you. And that made tears roll down your cheeks again. But you cried silently, so that they wouldn't hear.
In the dungeon, the blindfold was removed from your eyes - but you saw nothing more. Only blood and the glassy eyes of your parents.
There you were given to people for training.
But these people, contrary to the laws, became attached to you. And were as kind to you as possible. Your foster mother taught you to adapt to the present and the future, whatever it might be. Your foster father taught you to use your inquisitive mind and defend yourself from encroachment.
After a few months, you were given work - you sewed and patched clothes in a cramped room.
And everything you were taught came in handy.
The times of day and seasons here, many meters underground, were indistinguishable. And only by the holidays marked on the distorted calendars nailed to the walls, you could count how old you were.
The numbers were becoming increasingly frightening. Not only you. There were many such stolen girls here.
Here, working as assistants, you had no time for chirping girlish conversations. You had no time for friendship. If you managed to talk to girls like you, it was only about the danger lurking around every corner. Older and younger than you - they were all afraid of the blood that appeared on their clothes every month.
It meant only one thing - sufficient "ripeness". That's what they called it. Then they took the girls downstairs, locked them there, tied them up and raped them. Sometimes they involved their sons in this. Sometimes the girls they abused were their daughters who had been born and grown up here. When you found out about this by accident, you were bitterly glad that you had no relatives in this decaying pit.
They glorified the human race, they wanted to revive God's plan. They shouted about it through megaphones. The screams coming from below were unbearable... You don't know a single prayer, but you know - it was blasphemy.
It was Hell, depriving you of reason and dreams.
The first time you saw the red stain spreading on your skirt, you wanted to cry. But you couldn't cry. Just as you couldn't go up to the blessed world. Just as you couldn't refuse food that looked like scabs. Just as you couldn't know too much. Just as you couldn't find a way out of the iron leper box.
Having propped up the door of the sewing closet with a wooden box, you burst into tears from helplessness in the face of your foreseeable future. You prayed that your tears would remain among the needle cases and junk. But, damn, one of them heard and swung the door open.
He didn't do anything then. He just remarked on how pretty you were when you cried. You wanted to bite off his omnipresent ears.
Months and years now dragged on like centuries. They had long ago noticed you.
They circled around you like a pack. Only drool did not drip from their beards. It was scary to work and return to the assigned room, through the hooting and darkness.
When one of them sniffed you lustfully, lifted the hem of your dress and grabbed your thigh like a meaty game - you pierced his prickly, bristly cheek with a needle. Blows rained down on you.
From now on, when you heard the approaching shuffling of boots, you hid anywhere.
Under the bed, among the hanging, matted sheets. Or in the kitchen, among the pots filled with stinking brew. Or among the things that their previous owners would no longer use... Sometimes it helped against the peals of men anger. Sometimes - no.
Then only running away was your salvation.
The dungeon was a labyrinth, and as you ran away, you remembered, studied each corridor. The flickering dim light. The turns leading to nowhere. The room, from top to bottom filled with sharp objects - suspiciously clean among everything that was happening in every corner.
They found you from everywhere. But they wouldn't look for you there. Knowing their intentions, your foster mother told you about this room. She worked there with several other women - those who God did not give their own children. Those who had a lot of time for this frightening place that smelled of caustic alcohol and poisonous solutions. Children conceived on the lower floor were born there. Wounds, burns, suppurations were treated there. And too severe beatings. Entering there without orders was strictly prohibited. You understood what would happen to her if you violated this prohibition. You avoided this room.
Until the ill-fated day that crossed out everything. That day they chose you. They told your foster parents about it. And killed them, having eloquently thanked them before that for their contribution to the development of the commune.
They, these inhuman people, took away your childhood. Growing up. Learning. Twilight, glare. Joy. They took away the last thing from you.
You had nothing to lose. Except for your damn virginity, which they decided to feast on without haste. Dumb boors. You won't give it to them.
The accumulated anger that filled you to the brim finally spilled out.
Reaching the glass room was a miracle. Opening a similar glass cabinet and taking out scissors from there - not at all like the ones you used to cut the tough fibrous fabric - was a gift. Stabbing one of them to death was too insignificant. Yes, it was he who sniffed you, letting out dirty jokes. But it was not he who squeezed your body until you had bruises, who pulled the knot of the bandage over your eyes. It was not he who killed everyone you loved.
Confused tracks in the crooked corridors, you did not even notice how a sharpened kitchen knife pierced your shoulder. You did not notice how you bit into someone else's slimy skin with a squeal. You did not notice how you spat out someone else's disgusting meat and rushed into battle with a vengeance.
Desire to get to the surface was stronger than you yourself then...
***
Inside, from the throat to the stomach, it’s as if small bones are scattered, scraps of food scraping the insides - it’s so painful... You simply fell asleep from the shallow but numerous wounds eating you alive - but it’s as if you’ve returned back to the dungeon. Into the darkness.
From the tormenting memories, you almost fall off the slowly walking horse. Your stomach is twisted with a frightened spasm, horror crawls up your spine. Noa palm catches your slipped fingers at the very moment when you remember that now you will not return to the dungeon.
You convince yourself that this will never happen again, and now the past can find a loophole to you only in restless dreams - and you don’t trust your own convictions.
The horses walk slower. So, the clan, scraps of conversations about which you heard, is already nearby. Many dragonflies with bright wings flutter near the lake spilling in the shadow. Before, you had only seen them in a colourless, time-worn children's book - you had looked at the pictures so often that the pages had turned to dust under your curious touch. Now these strange insects are so close, and you are enchanted by their shimmering dance.
The apes are talking about you again. Worried about you. They don't say a single bad word about you. You try to read between the lines - but there is no hidden meaning in their actions. And you don't know what to think.
"What will the elders say? If they... refuse?" listening to Anaya's words, you understand that this is indeed an important question.
"But who else can... help this echo? And if so... What will we do?" Soona answers him, looking at you with compassion.
"Even if they refuse her to live... among us... she needs to be cured. She needs food. Clothes. Weapon" Noa's voice is quiet, but determined. You do not understand his actions at all. "To avoid being caught by them. To survive here"
An echo glides across the crystal water of the lake.
You, now an echo too, have many questions in your head. And they torture.
There must be more people nearby. Lost and wandering in the pouring rain, you came across huts and asked for help. You knocked on boarded-up windows, peered into the huts inside. You screamed at the top of your voice, you begged. No one helped. But these people are not your family. You are a stranger on this earth, so why would these people should let you in?..
Are all people like this?.. And why then did you so tirelessly cherish the hope of someday meeting people better than those who keep prisoners locked up by force and public humiliation?
What would have happened to your body and soul if you hadn't managed to escape? If they had caught you, knocked out your teeth, dragged you downstairs and tied you up? Or if death at their hands, soaked in the blood of so many innocents, had overtaken you in the ravine?.. They wouldn't have been averse to having fun with you anyway. You know that about them, too. You don't need the answers to these questions anymore.
After all, neither your lost tracks, nor the drops of yesterday's rain, nor the blood that flowed down the stones mean anything anymore. The earth has absorbed everything.
These two of them who took both your families set out to chase you. The realization that Noa killed them gives birth to gratitude in your soul. Now the impossibility of revenge will not gnaw you from the inside.
But what has now been decided by the forces of nature,
who have left you alive?
What will happen where you are destined to end up? Surely, grins and reproaches? Primal hatred directed at you? Mistrust, contempt? What use could you possibly be to the apes? Do they treat people as human stories say? .. What if this salvation is just a deception, akin to human lies? Besides, now you, almost mute, dirty and frightened, resemble an animal much more than they do. So why shouldn't they eat you, their easy-to-catch prey? Or stuff you? ..
Or why shouldn't they have fun with you?.. Carnivorously. Carnally.
Just as the guards of the dungeon from which you escaped straight into the monkey's paws would have been amused.
And now, no matter how hard you clench your hands into fists, you will not be able to break free.
You are shaking as if the wind has become winter.
Noa's calloused fingers place your twitching hand almost at his heart, just a little higher and to the right. Broad shoulders rise from your coldered breath.
All this, his words and movements, seems like... a desire to protect you? But you are a human. People and apes have been feuding for so long that no one can answer how the feud began. But it is ineradicable. So why does he need you not to get hurt or trampled?
Be that as it may, you do not trust anyone or anything.
The fur on Noa's back - where you press your scratched cheek again - is wet. Probably because your temperature has risen. You don't know why he helped you. You are afraid of him no less than the men in the hopeless settlement. You look at him with gratitude, with a doubt tearing your throat... You want to believe him. Because there is no one else to trust in the world that you are getting to know anew. But you will not ask him questions that soak you with fear and foreboding. Just as you will not be able to tell him words of gratitude.
You are hot. And you are overcome by an unbearable thirst again.
The lake, reflecting the sun's rays, is left behind, replaced by a meadow, deciduous trees and fruit-bearing bushes. The berries that you tasted only in your too-short-lived childhood smell sweet. Has their taste changed as much as you have changed over the past years?
Bees scurry around, and their buzzing calms your restless thoughts.
Somewhere in the distance, where Noa directs a long glance, the wings of iron birds are visible.
They are planes, it seems. Old, rusty, forgotten. You have seen them only once. Blueprints on worn, yellowed paper. Then they were like fiction — alien, huge structures that could touch the clouds. And now these piles of metal, embraced by ivy, are like an extension of the forest. Noa looks at them as if they might one day fly again.
How long have they been chained to these ruins? Have they flown over other distant lands?
What would it be like to soar into the sky?..
You are shaking. Everything you see - trees, grass, and the sun hanging somewhere impossibly high - floats and spins. Your mouth feels like it is full of hot sand.
The glitter of dew. You think it looks like gemstones.
You're swaying from side to side, and you're clutching the fur on Noa's shoulder with cottony fingers. It's not helping at all.
Noa huffs as he realizes you might fall again. He squeezes your fingers tighter, now on the very spot where you can feel the unwavering thump. Warm blood still seeping from your hand is spreading across his chest.
If you could think of anything other than the dew scattered beneath your feet, you'd try to figure out — was it any different from a human's, beating in ape's heart?..
Consciousness is slowly returning to you. The unknown world, stretching for many miles, stops spinning.
Through the sweat running down your forehead and the tangled hair stuck to your face, you peer at each thread of the huge canvas above the horizon. With delight, trepidation and awe.
And with unspoken fear. With your last breath, you are still thinking - where to go if the apes rightly decide that you have no place among them? And how to escape if the apes decide to deal with you?.. But nothing betrays the apes's bloodthirstiness that you have heard so much and so often about.
You are just a stone's throw away from buildings you have never seen before.
Gusts of wind blow around you, embracing you. Morning flows into day, the forest flows into a built-up village humming with routine.
The beaten path along which the apes take you leads to surprisingly well-equipped dwellings, towering above the earth heated by midday. And these dwellings are not at all like the walls, floors and bars from which you emerged. There are no cages and tools designed to force submission, and there is no torture chamber.
Families live here. And these families are not molded from circumstances, as if from clay. These families — are blood families. Kinship among those who talk and those who are silent, imperceptible to the eye. It feels different.
Here the industry is seething, here and there the noise is heard. Here is unity and freedom.
Houses on the surface, life on the surface, among the clean air and the many-faced sky seems incredible...
A smile touches the corners of your lips. Your palm reaches out to outline the place in front of your eyes - but then falls back, squeezing the wool on Noa's elbow in the approaching fever.
"Echo needs help getting down... to the ground" Noa assures, freeing his long arm from your weak grip and dismounting.
His hands reach for your waist to help, and you squeal in protest and dodge.
"Is something... wrong?" Soona, who is walking ahead, turns around worriedly.
"I can do it myself" you say hesitantly in response, stroking the horse's mane. "I don't need his help"
When your body was overwhelmed by the pain that clouded your consciousness, Noa had already done so, helping you to mount. And you, unconscious, held on to him for many hours on the road. Feeling him so close was not scary. It was necessary. Like grasping at a straw. But after a terrible dream, you don't want him to touch you... No, not now.
Stepping onto the ground from the back of a snorting horse seems easy to you. But without the slightest idea of how to do it, you fail.
Anaya hides in one of the dwellings when Noa gives him a sign that seems vaguely familiar to you. Soona remains nearby, ready to help you - but she is unlikely to be strong enough to cope with this.
The sign language of the apes differs from the one you are used to only slightly, and with the help of this language you repeat that you will manage without help.
Without support, you risk flying like a tiny leaf from a branch. You grab the reins and the horse's mane in vain attempts to get out of the saddle. The horse kicks. The cape you're sitting on slips - and you, trying so hard, almost fall backwards.
Stuck in the stirrup, you don't even have time to squeak - Noa catches you, when you almost hitting the ground with your shoulder blades. He holds you almost the same way as when you were exhausted in his palms, in the middle of the plain.
"I told you. You need help" A disgruntled growl escapes from his chest.
Only now, as Noa releases you, your bare, punctured feet finally meeting the ground, you can understand what in the stories about the apes were right.
Is it how different they are in their wild nature. And their size.
Even Soona is taller than you by several inches. Not to mention Noa, towering over you like a mountain range. The wind picks up the many voices and the rattling of abandoned work. The apes emerge from their homes and stop working. Their humming and whispering makes you uncomfortable. The wounds immediately remind you of themselves with a dull ache. You look through the crowd at the neatly laid roofs, bathed in rays of sunlight.
Noa lets out a wheeze and hides you behind his broad shoulders. He asks you to walk beside him and be quiet. You follow him without complaint, and because of his furry back you can hardly see anything - except for the feathers in the braided bracelet on his forearm, shimmering in shades of blue.
Step by step, you make out the expressions on the apes's faces. Some of them are confused, some do not hide their irritation. You see a lot, but you do not see malice. Only this calms you down when you stop at a spacious structure and dozens of monkeys look at you with an unspoken question and a respectful bow, directed straight at Noa.
Now you understand that he must be the leader of this clan.
And his action is not presumptuously, but magnanimous.
An approaching hostile sounds. Noa assumes an obviously protective pose, and you press yourself into the fur on his shoulder again. This time consciously. After all, it seems that you were wrong not to see the malice.
"What is this? Another echo?.." the voice of a stocky male chimpanzee is heard, drawing level with Noa and casting an appraising glance at you. There is something unkind in it. "Did the animals batter her? Or did someone... play with the curiosity?"
"Let her go back... to the pasture" the female picks up his intonation, letting out a nasty laugh. She looks like a hanger-on, not a companion.
"True" another male grins, clearly younger and trying to assert himself in this way. "There... is her place!"
They hardly guess, reveling in their slander, but for you, everything they spew — pointless. You were never part of the whole. You shattered into pieces, long ago. You became a fragment with broken edges.
That's why there is no place for you anywhere.
A shirt, sticky with rain, blood and weeds, torn at the seams - your only refuge.
"...She swallowed her tongue?" you hear, insulting and goading, somewhere in the distance.
Soona, standing next to you, gasps at the insolence of her fellows. They laugh at your helplessness, continuing to curse. You regret that you cannot lash them with curses now.
Listening to their rumble, Noa straightens his back. You are almost invisible behind him.
"This echo is wounded. By other echoes. They wanted to... play. They lose" After Noa's short and clear words, bewilderment is visible in the apes's eyes. Baring his fangs, he finishes. "And she will not return... to the pasture. She will graze here"
The phrase is sharp. Noa stands his ground, his nostrils flaring menacingly. This, of course, silences the ill-wishers. But you feel the sediment prickling.
What if they'll treat you like a thing here too?..
You can hardly breathe. The lead of a frightening assumption presses on your collarbones. You take a step back from Noa, upset and ready to break from the despair that has washed over you. It takes even more effort not to recoil from Noa when he turns and leans towards you. He had to say this to stop the vile discussion.
His green eyes apologize to you for what he said.
Something in his piercing gaze tells you to trust. It speaks louder than his answer to the clan, who doesn't stops talking and doesn't notice.
Five baby-chimps run up to you, distracted from their game of tag.
The first thing you do — is sit down so that you are the same height as the children who are asking you questions. They reach out to you, and the pain that has been increasing with each passing second becomes unimportant. Soona follows your lead, her actions clearly supportive. The growing rebellious tension disappears, as does the hubbub that has surrounded you from all sides.
Seeing that you are kind to the clan's most valuable treasure, the apes stop arguing and return to their work. Only the adults who are looking after the little ones do not leave.
Even now, laughing, Noa is still ready to rush into battle.
The children are impressed, but they don't understand what is happening - and you are undoubtedly happy of their attack. It seems like a serene meadow in the chaos that is playing with your fate.
"Are you hurt?" a very small boy babbles, tilting his head to the side. You nod.
"What happened to you?" a girl who looks like this little one like two peas in a pod timidly puts her hand on your wounded shoulder.
"This echo fought... With opponents and the forest" Soona tells the curious cubs.
"Did you get a scar in battle?" an older boy looks at you with surprise.
"This battle could have been my last..." you begin your story like an instructive fairytale. "But the journey was worth it"
"So who hurt you?" seeing the sparkle of tears in your eyes, the liveliest boy asks, putting his hands on his hips importantly. "Do you want me to protect you?"
"You already have a protector, right?" a smart, dark-eyed girl looks at you and Noa with mischief.
Not expecting this, Noa freezes. He looks at you, captured by the curious crowd. He still shields you with his back and his presence. He smiles indulgently - which you can't help but notice. He is confused. But you are not taken surprise by spontaneity, but are warmed.
"Yes, and he is very brave" you agree with the girl, expressing gratitude to Noa at least in this way.
"So who did the Master of Birds save you from?" everyone is curious in one ringing voice.
When Noa sits down next to you, his weight almost touching yours for the umpteenth time in the day that has just begun, you don't move away.
"From evil, cunning... predators" playing along with the fictional plot, Noa ruffles the children's heads.
Staying with you and naive chatter, Noa still helps you tell the fascinating truth. Having plopped down nearby and forcing Soona to snort good-naturedly, Anaya returns to the company.
While you are enthusiastically answering the children's questions, you do not immediately notice female chimpanzee in venerable years approaching you. Only when Noa raises her head, still sitting on the ground, do you see that everyone is moving aside. Her robe, like the feathers indicating Noa's dominant status, is a deep blue.
"Time goes by... And you, my son, remain the same" hearing both reproach and pride in her words, you cannot help but look down.
Who else but parents could say that?..
Noa rises with a gesture that you will not confuse with anything - this is how you asked your blood mother for advice.
The children say polite greetings, holding on to you like tenacious little crabs. You don't know what to say - and cannot make a single sound.
"Nobility is sometimes worse than vices" sadness sounds in the voice of another, an elderly female chimpanzee with a wooden cane. "With her, to our homes comes... troubles. Again."
"...Is she hiding something?.." the young female asks impatiently, taking her two cubs away from you. The male calms her down in a way that husbands never calmed wives in a settlement unfamiliar to you.
The unknown frightens them as much as it frightens you. It hovers in the dying wind and the sparks from the fire crackling in the distance.
Squinting from the sun and your exhausted appearance, Noa's mother sighs.
"This soul is innocent" she looks at, it seems, every scar and every aspiration. "Come here, child... Your path has been... thorny. You need to rest"
"Thanks..." you whisper from the bottom of your heart, when her palm touches your burning forehead.
Taking Noa's outstretched hand, you rise. Your hideously cut thigh, under the equally cut leg of your trousers, pierces with pain. You whining through cracked lips. The children don't want to let you go, but you promise that very soon you will tell them an even more fascinating story.
The smell of smoking fish tickles your nose. Everything tilts and fades...
***
You dream of water dripping from holes in the basement pipes - rusty, almost red. Streams flow down the cobblestones from grinning skulls.
Their eye sockets are empty. Worms have settled in their decaying bodies, laying larvae. Their hands reach out to you. They strangle you, they tear your dress. Their toothless mouths shower you with stench and obscenities...
***
Waking up in the hut, you scream. Indistinguishable from the animal cries that echo in the twilight. Your eyes are filled with unshed tears. Dreams have been cruel to you for as long as you can remember. The dreams of future nights, you are sure, will be merciless.
And there is no way to escape this.
The bed you slept in resembles a perch. Someone is scurrying around at the head of the bed.
The woven nest creaks as you jump up, drawing your knees up to your cheeks. You are not wearing a shirt - only a T-shirt, trousers, and a viscous ointment applied to your exhausted body. And animal skins, serving as a blanket.
Turning around at the noise, you see Noa with two bowls in his palms. He places them closer to you, and you pull the blanket up to your neck. The contents of the bowls smell pleasant. In one of them the same ointment that burns and heals your injuries. In the other a lake fish, large and ruddy. Your stomach rumbles. You forgot about hunger - and now hunger is devouring you.
When Noa's large palm reaches for the blanket, you crawl away to the edge of the nest in panic.
"When they were treating your wounds, I saw you without... this" Noa admits, taking out your shirt among other things. "It will hurt, inside... Take that"
Pointing to the thin sky-blue robe, Noa explains with a gesture that it will be safer this way. Then he insistently brings the bowl with the fish to your closed lips.
You coudn't refuse food. You learned this rule over the years of life on a leash - a hearty meal was a reward for following commands and orders, and starvation was a punishment for disobedience.
You was only punished. So you use what you learned from your foster mother.
The fish in the bowl dissolves into a scent in a matter of moments. And only now do you respond with gestures that it would be safer if Noa left your assigned dwelling the same way he came. You don't believe in the security provided. You admit that you're scared. And you ask if Noa has taken you in as a curiosity pet?..
If you said it out loud, you would cover your mouth with both hands in shame.
Noa slouches and turns to go outside. His steps are sharp. The wheezing in his heaving chest is low and abrupt. You look at his back, expecting anger and insults. He stops, looking at you and the untouched robe.
"To heal, an echo needs sleep... A lot" is all Noa says before leaving the hut.
You scold yourself. You admire the fabric of the robe flowing between your fingertips in the dim light.
The sparkling hanging lights lull you to sleep. All you want to do — lay down, as like fetuses laying in wombs, and forget about all the nightmares you've experienced in reality or in broken dreams. But you, without closing your eyes, stare at the glow.
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A/N: I hope the surprise was a success. This chapter is a bit short, but the next one, I promise, will contain more paragraphs and events
Word count: 3,4K
Warnings: not much detailed descriptions of nudity, voyeurism, brief mentions of murder, death and violence, swear words, a pinch of adult thoughts (a veeeery small pinch, bunnies...)
🎧 Sleeping At Last — As If in a Dream
The splash of troubled waters. The glare of a yawning crescent moon. The chirping of forest dwellers. Everything fades and becomes silent in one second.
Only the curves of your body remain.
A graceful neck – and marks of strangulation. A sloping shoulders – and cuts. A thin waist – and a healed wound. A narrow back – and traces of a whip. A rounded hips – and a fresh scar of a knife wound. Hair falling in waves. Shiny drops running down the skin. Plump lips closed in fear...
Noa can not take his eyes off you. No matter how hard he tries.
Your body is exhausted, but despite all the pain, all the suffering and torment you have endured, your body radiates femininity. A completely different femininity than that of the females in the clan. You are a ringing echo, a blossoming human girl. And of course, you are different from the female chimps. From the top of your head to the tips of your toes.
Noa intrigued by you.
***
It had already happened when Noa first met people on the way he was taking. It had interested him then, as everything unknown interests him. Then another human girl had disappeared from sight as suddenly as she had appeared, taking a different way. It was regularity. People need other people, they seek out colonies of sane survivors – and they live completely different lives. It had been an accident then, for rethink the present.
And then Noa could not imagine that his path would once again intertwine with the path of the echo. With the path of the human girl who does not disappear, but remains.
Because this human girl cannot go back to people — after all, only a painful, perverted death awaits her there.
It was a measure of coexistence then. To have a shared experience, to say goodbye, to exchange the last important words – and never meet again because of different aspirations. Different truths. Then the echo went to other echoes. Noa hopes she found what she was searching.
But you will not living to next to apes, among echoes like you. You are going to live with apes. That complicates everything.
What are you aspirating for? What is your truth?
Certainly, that you were not aspirating for a life among all that was alien. And Noa has already learned part of your truth from your eloquent, caustic gestures. Noa does not condemn you at all, and even more so, does not feel offended — how else can you defend yourself?
Back then, Noa was solve people out without understanding them – and that interested him as a conundrum. As a task that requires a strategic solution. Now, that interests him in a different way.
All, that Noa knows about you — is your name. Trying to solve you out yields nothing but vague guesses. Maybe it will be like this in days, weeks, months. No answers to questions. No one tactics help get closer to you. Honesty breeds more doubts in you. Acts of kindness make you distance yourself. Care makes you choke on sobs. What did they do to you in the place you managed to escape from? What did those from whom Noa saved you do to you? What did your past do to you?..
Understand you — is to choose the path that leads into the unknown.
Noa tries to understand you, and when he succeeds, even just a little — it is attracting.
It is tempting. And it is impossible to resist.
Your fragility enchants Noa.
And it is unlike anything he is ever experienced before.
Noa justifies himself by that he is obliged to protect you, so fragile — and only for this reason is he glued to you, as if sticky resin.
Knowing that you were defenseless against all the dangers lurking in the light and in the shadows, that could break you again, Noa followed you. The whole way you traveled, he protected you. Even if without your knowledge. Otherwise, you would not have allowed it. If you knew that Noa was coming for you, you would again break your voice in begging to leave you, not to touch you, not to look... Not to care...
But who knows, maybe there are other ruthless men hunting for you?
Having learned how vast and multifaceted the world outside his home was, Noa now explored the forests and plains to find lost, dusty knowledge. These were the remains of human science, human creativity, and human culture. A legacy, not worthy of oblivion.
Staying late one evening, Noa saw you. Wounded. Consisting of a scarlet mess and hopeless rags.
You shook and cried, scraping your skin against the thorns of the bush. And the scavengers stalked your trail. Noa had heard everything, all their foul intentions. Noa had heard that they had decided to use you, torture you to death — but before, fulfilling every lustful desire. Not the desires that were part of courtship and mating rituals. Not the desires that offered fidelity and asked for reciprocity, no. Obsessive, base desires. The human curses they spat out, and the way they guffaw as they discussed their cruel pleasures was incomprehensibly vile.
Noa did not believe that someone's mind could be so corrupted. But they reveled in the upcoming reprisal on you — and Noa could not remain idly.
Noa learned how senselessly cruel the world can be, when two monsters threw you into a ravine.
Prepared to attack and heard you fall, Noa scolded himself for hesitating. That, you did not die there from your broken bones right away — miracle.
Attacking them, who mocked you, taking away your almost cut-off life, Noa seemed himself like a monster.
Noa hated himself for the way you saw him that night. Killing two and looking like an sinister angered shadow.
Their dead bodies were a nightmare. Even as they took turns trying to deal Noa the killing blow — he did not want to kill them. He wanted to send them back to where they came from. To keep their smell from being in a place where the soles of their boots should not be. When Noa's palms turned crimson, he regretted.
But if Noa had not done this, he himself now would be dead.
And you would be dead. But first — vulgarized.
Why did they want to abuse you, huddled against the ground and cobblestones with hopelessness frozen in your pupils, so filthily? Noa thinks that killing two scavengers — is not the same as ruining two souls. But the justification still seems insufficient, guilt scratches at him from within.
Guilt that also for that now he is no better than them in your eyes.
That is why, as soon as you regain consciousness, you always recoil from Noa, like from fire. You are afraid of what you saw that night. You are afraid of what you ran away from - and you are afraid of where you ended up. Fear takes root in you.
Something tells Noa — someone from the past you left behind can still cause you irreparable harm.
And you will not be able to save yourself alone, running away and trying to be brave. Your trembling, the tears shining in the corners of your eyes and your racing heartbeat are noticeable even in the short moments when you forget about everything that scares you. But then you go to the lake alone, and the evening falls on the forest like a darkening blanket. What would you do if the events of that ill-fated night were repeat? What would you do if Noa had not followed you like a silent shadow again? You are so improvident, that Noa would like to say everything he thinks to your face.
The determination to do so would have prevailed - if at that second when Noa thought of everything that could happen, you had not hastily started to take off your clothes.
If Noa came to you now, you would dismiss his behavior as instincts.
Taking a deep breath, Noa straightens his back. Every his muscle, every vain tightens.
As you untie the scraps of your shirt, Noa nods to himself, remembering your recent words in the bird pen. This is why you came here. As you pull down the shreds of your pants, leaving the robe he gave you on the sand, Noa approaches on two legs, bristling his fur. To protect you if necessary.
Lying to himself — is shameful and pointless. The excuse Noa gives for every thought that comes to mind, sounds out of place in his own head.
***
Even if there was no need to protect you, even if you were not hurt and could handle it yourself, Noa could have not leave. The grass around Noa’s feet is tangled in the coastal grass — and as much as he wants to turn around, walk down the beaten path, and go back to his usual business, leaving you alone in the darkness, — he cannot leave.
Noa admires you as a graceful, flawless work of art. But the admiration is mixed with something else, unknown and inexpressible, beyond any definition Noa knows, no matter what he tries to find.
When you take off your shirt, soaked in blood and healing ointment — Noa gets on all fours, furrowed his brows and swallows.
So as not to lose balance.
If you turned even an inch, Noa would see your firm breasts.
When you enter the water, Noa cannot control his breathing. The world freezes, everything seems like an unimportant backdrop. You turn around, covering with your hands, looking up at the trees that are growing in a solid wall. Flowing strands of hair fall on your collarbones. The smoothness of your hands and wrists, framing your breasts, takes the ground under his feet. Standing right beyond the treetops, Noa gasps for air, unable to stop the mad knock that pierces his ribs.
You appear to him absolutely naked.
This should not have happened. Fate is playing tricks on him, like a fool.
Although, why would fate fool Noa, if he had already fooled himself?
Allowing himself to stare too long, Noa chides himself. But it is no use. He cannot move, mesmerized by you. The way the water embraces you — so pure, so vulnerable, — takes Noa back to the moment when he once saw human art celebrating beauty.
Drawned in pencil wonderful woman with a fish tail, holding a baby in her arms. Also with a fish tail, but small. She seems to be looking out of a drawing, overflowing with the joy of motherhood. Peace, care and awe emanate from the graphite strokes. The immaculate beauty of the moment envelops the paper, barely touched by time. The woman holds the child in such a way that the loving, tender touch seems not depicted, but the most that is real...
Must be, people call these amazing entities mermaids.
This is a myth. People have invented many myths. Good and evil. Instruct and absurd. Seductive.
Noa thought, he knew what that word meant. Delightful lie, that could never come true.
But seeing you now, Noa realizes that he was wrong — what else were you now, if not a myth in reality?
As you dive under a boulder, Noa imagines the how the azure scales on your feet and ankles shimmering. How the fins wriggling along the lines of your body. You are surrounded by an aura of magic and innocence. Noa feels like if he takes one more breath — you will immediately dissipate into a mist. That kind that spreads along the surface of the water in the morning.
In the spring, the evenings here are especially long. They come in all shades of pink, red, and gold — before the darkness takes the place of light. Noa sees you shining, wrapped in the rising stars. As bright, as if the brightest hour of day still lasts.
Can Noa look at you like this? Can Noa gaze at you, in the spilled moonlight, like this?
Can Noa admire you?
Swearing under his teeth, Noa curses himself for what he feels.
You circling like an underwater nymph. Hiding, you disappear like a fairytale vision. Noa exhales awe that permeates him to the bones, to the heart and to the pain.
Above the water only your eyes peering into the april twilight.
Noa looks at you from a distance of two outstretched, clasped hands.
You heard a presence. And you were scared.
Looking for a place further away, a place to hide, you swam up to Noa. And you did not realize it yourself. Cause you do not feel his smell.
Breathing in and breathing out, Noah smells you too clearly - you smell like lake coolness, fragrant flowers, and something else... Something that seeps from his nostrils straight into his consciousness. Something that confuses.
Your concern? That, should be, what it is.
You are truly worried that someone will attack you again. Hearing every sound, feeling every touch, you are afraid of new blows and encroachments. But Noa voluntarily laid responsibility for you on his shoulders, how can he not keep you?
No way. From now on, Noa will do anything, to make sure no one dares to even think about breaking you. In any way. No matter what it takes.
You — mermaid, almost caught in a net. You — flower, almost crushed to crumbly. But Noa would not let anyone catch you and crush you. Not for anything.
Noa assures himself, that he does this out of an unspoken duty. Out of principles. Out of justice, after all.
But Noa's thoughts are in mess.
Noa's thoughts are feverish. Like he is gravely ill, like he is dying. Like Noa knows he is going to have a disappointing outcome. And it does. Noa places his hand where his heart beats — where the memory of your weakening touch is still fresh.
To think that, Noa touched you. His hands touched almost every curve of your body — almost everything he is so absorbed in right now. It seems unreal now, when you are seems like a maddening miraculous illusion.
You are beautiful. More beautiful than anyone or anything, that Noa has ever seen.
You are so beautiful, that Noa feels, like in you merged all the things that can inspire veneration.
And if all the thoughts that flashed through Noa's head were obvious, not requiring comprehension and acceptance — with this thought, filling his mind quickly and irrevocably, Noa cannot come to terms. You charmed Noa at your first meeting, despite the circumstances. Covered in blood and dirt, tearful and scared, but trying to fight... Holding you in his arms, Noa saw the fading glow. You no longer hoped for anything, and the glow faded into a lonely ember.
That morning, Noa hoped that the glow emanating from you would not fade, but flare up brighter — but Noa was not prepared for the fact that now, washed from all troubles, healing, you shine even more unbearably beautifully.
Noa close his eyes so you don't blind him, like a fallen, blessed star.
Must not, Noa must not look at you. For now it is only the absorption of your image — but later, Noa is sure, he will think of you something, that he will desire and be ashamed of. Something, that is an inherent part of nature intent.
Noa does not know how to deal with the thoughts of you, that are rushing through him turbulent current.
All that Noa knows — he has to stop right now. Has to turn away, forget about this. Wait until you're dressed — and then follow you, still silently, ensuring safety.
And Noa certainly should not become like a scavenger. After what happened to you, you are free to not let any man touch you. The lingering thoughts about you — that what will only make Noah feel worse right now. He is not even a human man. He is a beast that you will continue to hide from, no matter what your life in your new home is like.
Noa rely — if he does not indulge his own fantasies, everything will remain the same.
World sounds and moves again, but the rhythm is completely different. The dark silence is filled with repercussions and undertones. Noa watches as you peer fearfully into the leaves rustling from his strained breathing.
World will never be the same for Noa again.
Noah curses himself for his uneven thoughts, as your wet hair shines, clinging to your tempting silhouette.
But he is obliged to hide all thoughts more reliably than you hide, again clutching on boulder.
In order not to disturb you, not to make a single unnecessary sound, Noa clenches his jaw. His larynx is constricted with frustration. What is he hoping for? He is an ape. You can hardly trust him. You have absorbed the fear of apes, probably, from the moment of birth. People teach their children to be quiet and afraid, so that they survive this invisible, multi-year struggle. People teach their children both to avoid battles and to fight apes.
Noa feels captivated by your beauty. Losed in this battle. And the strength he used in the fight will not help him free himself from this captivity.
Beauty shimmers in every your fleeting movement, in every flutter of your eyelashes. Beauty is at your fingertips. Beauty is in your voice, when you threaten the thick evening, assuring that you are armed.
If it were anyone else here right now — these would be the last words left on your lips.
From your body and your soul would have be nothing but scraps. You have just literally pointed the hunter to you, the victim.
Listening to the melody of your voice, Noa almost falls to his knees — as if you finished him off, relieving him of torment. Listening to your voice, when it is full of confidence and shoreless, just as the lake enveloping your body is shoreless now, is a blessing for Noa. Unexpecting. In response to any action of Noa you hide, scream and cry — in the short time spent with you, he got used to this and decided that for his ears you will not sound any different.
But you talk to the forest in a way that makes Noa petrified. He would give anything, for you to talk to him like that.
It seems like a dumb wish — Noa would do anything, to you say something to him. At least even just one word, eye to eye.
But what needs to happen, for you do this?
Perhaps, even if snow covers the slopes in the middle of summer — inside you nothing will grow instead of fear. Noa laughs in vexation — no matter what he does, you will always feel like you are a little cornered animal and someone's gaping maw is about to eat you up.
Standing unacceptably close, Noa growls gutturally. Unrecognizable — so that you decide that the forest beast has taken you for prey. So that you think about how to protect yourself on your next willfully foray. Because, obviously, you will go off alone to who knows where more than once.
***
Noa leaves the worst, most menacing thing in him in a growl that resound for miles. He barely recognizes himself, but he continues even more louder — so that you do not guess anything.
You will never know he saw you like this. So enchanting, so pristine.
Because you are destined not for his gaze.
You turn your head back and forth, making splashes. Water hits Noa's bristling fur, sobering him up. Silently retreating step by step, Noa thinks, this is conveniently. Otherwise, he was not have been able to cope with the unknown feeling you have kindled in him. He walks away to the glade, where the flower petals shared with you their scent.
The leaves, surrounding the lake, no longer rustle.
***
From the thundering growl you afraid to drop your heart to the bottom of the lake. You count the seconds, until the inhuman noise stops. You wait - and dive into the depths to reach the shore unnoticed.
At first, heard breathing among the trees, you thought — they has come to kill you.
Damn bastards of the settlement. When you were a child newly trapped in their rusty dungeon, they punish with death a woman who had climbed to the surface. Said she was infected, cursed by demons swarming the surface, that she would bring death to all unless she was gotten rid of. Shot her. Carried on, as nothing had happened, their fanatical blathering, as if it were the for edification.
That terrible event deprived you of any desire to escape. But you kept inside you your only truth.
They lied and jeered. Hell was there. Find a way out was impossible.
You would have accepted your fate sooner or later, like everyone else living here. If they hadn't done the same thing, that you hated them for, once again. When you were so small you could barely pronounce your own name — you could't help your blood mother and father. And even as an adult, you couldn't have time to save your foster mother and father — there no way you could have overtake two fired from a pistol bullets.
But you were able to find weapons there, where you weren't allowed to enter without order.
You were able to kill one of them.
You were able to escape so far.
If it were them — you would have to pray to God, that death would take you before they could carry out the punishment, that awaits you for every broken rule.
But when the growl rang out, you felt that anxiety dripping from you along with the water.
Anything more stupid, than rejoicing at the growl of a hungry beast, you can't even imagine.
But they are cowards. You've heard a lot of their dead drunk talk while exploring the dungeon corridors. They know where the prey is found, and where the predators is found. And they've never hunted where they could be attacked by those who rightfully own the land above. It means, they sure don't turn up over here.
So, whoever made that deafening roar — you thanked fate.
Approach the shore, you reach out to the light-blue fabric to quickly put it on and tie it around yourself. All that remains is to wash the dirty rags, which you do in a hurry.
Still, Noa asked you to come back before dark.
Darkness descended the forest without warning. Your tank top and shorts are drying right on you. From barely squizzed shirt, that you've wore over the thin fabric, dripping drops. The wind is pulling your hair in all directions, heralding a cold night to come.
Along the way, you look back to wish the flowers survive the badweather.
The path leads you to the apes's huts. To your hut, where you have to settle in and tidy up. The dwellings are visible, hanging lights show the way. All the work for today is done, everyone is probably heading to the nests. You yawn.
You look ahead. The routine arranged by the apes is boiling, just as it was when you came here as a stranger. Surely, you didn't hallucinated, due to wounds, exhaustion and cold exposure, and life here flows peacefully?..
You turn carefully to tap your look at the doe with her little deer. They seem as like hugging.
They not afraid of you, not at all.
They see you, and they don't hide in the forest, as you take a few short steps toward them. You stretch out an open hand, and with your fingertips you stroke the doe's honey-brown fur. You know from books, that deer are not easy to see. They wary and unnoticeable. Why then does this forest mother like speak to you about something? Her dark eyes look at you and the top of the fawn's head. She allows you to caress her baby, and it cuddles into your palm.
You smile, transforming all yourself into a carefulness, so as not to disturb them. You would stay in this moment forever, standing next to the doe and fawn.
It's similar to what were taken away from you twice family warmth.
The glade illuminating, as if it were a sunny morning. Embracing you in-deer maneer, the mother and child leave. You know for some reason, that you will see them again — after all forward there are many sunsets and sunrises.
Seeing your hut, you walk faster.
Questions that were scurrying through your head this morning are still scurrying. The clan's abutments still seem strange to you, because you yet know almost nothing. You are healthy, but still weak. But now you feel a warming hope.
And in any case, you cross the threshold of a new home, thinking not about yesterday, but about tomorrow.
"Creation" Chapter 4.2. Forest filled with fragrance
A/N: The battle with the time deficit was obviously unequal. In addition to the main ideas, side ideas appear, brazenly storming the imagination. And to manage everything at once is quite a challenge. Of course, I can do several tasks at once — but right now I feel a little burnout
Word count: 4,3K
Warnings: several mentions of death and murder, mentions of children dying, a continuation of the theme of female oppression and slavery as well as a continuation of the theme of parenthood, a wounded animal, fear of men in general, musings on sexual forcing and prejudice (and yes, this is the last chapter, focused on thoughts — for next I will focus on the event, that will tie the rope, that was twisting, into a knot)
🎧 Power-Haus, Christian Reindl, Lucie Paradis — Hel
Yellow sunset. Poison soaked forest. Squealing exhausted rabbit. Returning to alarmed branches birds. Hanging in the air words.
You are overcome by a belated, desperate desire to bite your tongue again. To chew and swallow.
To lose the ability to speak forever for sure.
It borders on bad habits, disappointing diagnoses, insanity. You want to fold your palms in prayer. You wrap your palms around rabbit feet.
***
It's too late to retreat and repent. You broke the oath you gave yourself... The fact of what happened falls on you like a crushing weight. Your shoulders sag guiltly, and at the bottom of your soul toils guilt and ineradicable fear. The desire to kill yourself on this very spot, piercing your neck with a sharp wooden peg, grows with each passing second. This seems to be the only right decision if you are unfaithful to yourself.
Having broken an oath, even though there were no witnesses, you have become disgusting to yourself in an instant. You seem to yourself a frivolous traitor. You seem to yourself unworthy of the things, that you went for — the things, that preserve your faith and principles. You seem to yourself unworthy of anything but self-abasement.
An unbroken oath would've been worth nothing, if you had kept silent, allowing Noa to deal with a defenseless animal. If God remembers your oath, he will also see the reason, why you resisted yourself. And, perhaps, God will even grant you forgiveness... Rabbit's paws shake, the squeak turns into a snort. The spear that you clutched in your hand rolls into the dusty hollow. There, too, where Noa's spear fell when you screamed for the whole area.
***
“Or maybe someone is hunting a deceitful ape?” you suggest, unable to contain the regret in your trembling voice. You look at Noa with reproach. And immediately look away.
Biting tongue would've definitely been better than saying that.
The words that escaped seem to you unforgivable. And you expect the worst.
"The apes come... here... by a different path. But the echo... didn't know about it" Noa chooses words with such difficulty, that you can hardly read, if he is lying now. He looks at you, as if apologizing. You don't believe anymore.
"It turns out, I didn't know about too many... Such as, that you finish off animals that are caught in a vice" Nuisance mixed with anger don't allow you to remain silent. It's as if a dam has burst inside you. Noa approaches you one step closer, which seems like an intrusion. "Don't come closer!.. I have one more spear. Unlike you, I will admit to duplicity right away"
To prove your point, you pull out from the tight knot of sky-blue fabric on your hip unsharpened spearhead. Still holding the rabbit, which is poking its nose into your recently healed shoulder.
"...Does I... done you any... harm?" In Noa's green eyes betrays confusion.
Looking into his face, you find the same bitter niusance that sounds in you. You turn away. You feel disgusting. You point the tip at him, unable to take back what was said with any words.
You make it worse, by releasing a sudden, gnawing from within resentment.
If you had your hands free — you would cover your mouth so, that the extra exhale wouldn’t seep.
But your hands are busy with a tossing, blood-smeared little animal.
"You said that hunting only helps in harsh winters. You said that you can't hurt anything living unless it's necessary... Why did you point a spear at the rabbit?" You break another vow you made to yourself when you feel tears streaming down your cheeks. You sob in a fit of helplessness. "He was already bleeding. He would've died a natural death in this trap..."
"When I saw you... You were bleeding too. You would've died a natural death too... trapped. Even... before you were... ruffled... by the scavengers" As your sobs turn to sobs, Noa makes another attempt to come closer. "But I didn't want your... fate... to be like this"
The reminder about that you tried so hard to forget these months hits your knees with frenzy. Over the golden, warm evening layers dank, freezing night.
Thoughtless rapid steps, Noa comes to you contiguously.
In your ears, instead of the birds chirping that begin again, whistles a cold wind.
The distance between you is so insignificantly, that you feel, Noa's ragged breathing making your hair slightly sway — and then you jump back stunned. Having planted the spear between Noa's ribs and accidentally drawing a cut on his collarbone with a trembling hand, you unclench your clenched fingers. You screaming, shaking your head. The spear falls.
Gasping and coughing, you falling onto the dusty, yellowing grass.
Like an paltry speck of dust.
"I swear. I... wouldn't kill" Noa puts his hands together, in a gesture that means an appeal to the heavens. How ironic, that this gesture is the same in all faiths.
"You killed two" You state, struggling with the impenetrable emptiness before your eyes. The streams of tears from your eyes don't stop and don't dry.
"I killed to... save. To... pull you out of... filthy jaws. And I... regret. But if here again one of... them... Second time i would've cost... without regret"
Something in Noa's words brings calm back to the disturbed forest.
Something, that makes you stop crying. You gulp in warm — not the deathly-cold, as of that terrible night, — air. You look at the thick, orange feather beds of clouds. You soothingly stroke the rabbit's tummy. You soothing the worried scars. You pray incoherently. You swallow the lump cutting your throat. You straighten your shirt, which has slipped and come apart at the seams finally. You rush between hysteria and devastation. You remember about your backpack. Your gaze catches on a scrap of gray fabric, visible in the grass.
You rejoice mentally. But not for long.
The backpack should've been on the other side of the bridge. Not here, not in the clearing. Many meters further. For the animals thing wouldn't was handy, so there's only one conclusion - Noa is right again.
And the footprints are such, that you, even if you wanted to, would not confuse them with any other footprints.
***
They were here.
They lured you out.
And it would be better if you fell into the trap set. Certainly better, than a new portion of Noa's suspicions of uncharacteristic motives and an irreversibly worsened relationship with him. If, of course, many days of boycotting can be considered any kind of relationship...
Shame bites into harder than fear. What was bound to happen, has happened. You don't trust anyone anymore. You've out of practice to be human. You've out of practice to be yourself, living among people who turned out to be demons, who don't wearing horns. This is an irreversible process. These are conclusions that are not supported by anything other, than the pain from your past. When Noa is honest, you feel like he's manipulating. When Noa is sincere, you feel like he's still manipulating. Just more skillfully. And that's problem — only yours. After all, it's unlikely that Noa fully understands, what exactly you're accusing him of.
This problem — your personal, rooted in the subcortex of brain. Your mistrust has nothing to do with Noa. Almost. The only argument, that you use to justify your uncontrollable panic — he is a man. Not a human man, but in your clogged consciousness that doesn't matter. It makes no difference what race Noa belongs to. You see him wrong, the fractured perception can't be changed. You can't erase the horror, hammered into you by the nails of past misfortunes. The bullying, in which the boors from the settlement are not lacking in cunning, knocks in your memory like jackhammers. Dozens of looks strike lustfulness, thousands of words spitting out misogyny, cuffs, slaps, smacks, twisting of hands, tearing off clothes, stealing honor, appropriating a body, depriving of any glimmer of hope for salvation... You know men are like this.
In your thinking there no room for other options. Noa saved you. Noa keeps saving you, but you expect him to screw you over — and when you don't, the momentary surges of anxiety give way to assumptions.
Occupying all night long assumptions, multi-component, and even more anxious.
Clan in fact — is also settlement?..
In none of the rites, that the apes told you about, you didn't see even the slightest resemblance to the distorted rites — supposedly the fulfillment of God's will — that were performed annually there, in the blasphemous cramped grave.
In none of the apes families you didn't see wives unrecognizably changhing from signs of violence.
None apes child don't look appears to be soulfully crippled and prematurely grown-up.
But you still suspected, that the calm and certainty that reigned in the clan had a dark, unsightly side.
The weapon, that Noa aim, confirmed your suspicions. The round dance of thoughts was stamping, cackling in hundreds of mouths. "Which was to be proved", "Everything was clear from the beginning", "There was no need to even try to trust him" — the spurring echoes in your head changed, one after another. Yes, everything at that moment was reduced to the other side. To a double bottom.
Until you saw the marks of rough soles.
And until you remember, so by the way, one interesting observation.
There, in the rotting dungeon, the brave soldiers most often sent youngsters to spy. Who knew absolutely nothing about defense. Unable to defend themselves even from angry bees. Unarmed and unprepared for the harsh reality. Most of them didn't return back, down. Then you thought, they simply ran away, having received the opportunity... Now you understand, how ented lives of boys taken from their mothers. Now you clearly see — they received wounds incompatible with life. From spears, from hands, from teeth. And from accidents.
No wonder, that youngsters were killed. The desire to defend territory can dictate monstrous decisions.
Sometimes these decisions end up hurting those, who pose no danger.
But Noa didn't know, who he was dealing with. He was ready to defend you a second time, protecting you from armed soldiers. He was even ready to accept death at your hand, if you decided to strike a blow in his heart...
The curved line of blood you traced, running down Noa's collarbones, seems to be a dividing line. Only, perhaps, neither God's eye nor Mother Nature's design don't knows for certain, what that line divides.
A mixture of gratitude and numbness is pricksing.
You don't know, which of the two feelings outweighs the cup.
"Even if you didn't want to stab the rabbit..." wrapping the squirming little animal in the hanging sleeve of your shirt, you whisper, carefully hiding all emotions. "You wanted to stab the child."
"A child?.." bending down to lift you to your feet, Noa freezes. On his face froze the question, that he doesn't express. And worry, that is also the same in all faiths.
"Yes, imagine that. Where I grew up, they kicked in the ass very young boys out on reconnaissance missions. If a scout comes back, it’s not that dangerous. If he doesn’t come back... It’s one less mouth to feed" The story comes out of your mouth, as if you hadn’t realized this truth a few breaths of wind ago, but had always known it. "They can easily be expended. After all, they have slightly fewer functions than wom..." You stopped, flashing at Noa still distrustful look.
Not about that. No, no, no.
Every, glowing with the coming summer, tree heard — you spoke to the one, with whom you swore never to speak. And the sky didn't open up, punishing you with lightnings.
From now on you don't have to be burdened by an oath, that borders on paranoia. Your mind will be healed from it, just as your body was healed from the ointment.
But none of Noa's acts, none of his causing respect traits, don't means you'll ever tell him about your deepest traumas. Nothing, no matter what he does, won't make you dare to that storytelling.
It happened inside you, it lives inside you.
And it will die inside you.
No one needs to know about it — and you won't let your memories, good or bad, be known to anyone.
Looking down at you, Noa holds out his hand to help you up. You look through his outstretched hand, through the grass and bushes. You look through the sky, melted from gold to platinum — and you pull back, sighing, but don't move. You sit on the rotten ground, clutching the wheezing bunny as tightly as you can.
Taking another step, sound quieter than the previous ones, Noa sits up, so that he can see your eyes. Noa says nothing, he just looks at you. In the sunlit green of his gaze is no self-interest. He doesn't pursue any personal gain. He doesn't devour your body with his eyes. He doesn't search your body for a target to release his anger. All the looks at you, even before you came of age, were either lecherous or derogatory. Noa's look is different from the looks, that you scraped off yourself. Tears fall as hail. The tiny animal nuzzles your weak palms. Your arms hug the rabbit in a kind of rabbit hole. You smile through your distressing thoughts.
An animal, unpredictable and dangerous. That's what Noa seemed to you before.
A predator, that softly lays.
And anticipate, when he will break the back of a herbivore, like you — it's impossible.
Before Noa seemed to you part of a cycle, consisting of a stalking hunter and the stalked, doomed to be eaten prey. Tearing flesh fangs, death grip on the neck... When suddenly the wheel of the Universe staggered, stopped turning.
The cycle has resumed. But too unusual.
It was like that, and when Noa's gaze met your gaze in the eagle pen. You didn't want to admit it then, but you can't deny it now...
Noa's look is unlike anything, that you fear.
"Hope you... will always talk... like that" saying this simple phrase, Noa placing his palm on the place, where restlessly beating your heart. You want to fall through. You are sure, that Noa hear this beat.
"Hope, I never say that much again... To anyone" You don't even know, how explain to Noah the reason for your suddenly broken vow. "Sorry, and... Thanks"
After everything that has already been said, only these two words seem to you appropriate.
Silence tangles in the strands of your hair as you close your lips. Gratitude is finally expressed. Relief washes you over. Looking at you, Noa doesn’t change the position of his broad, callused palm. His fingers remain resting on your heaving chest. “Pawing” — is what you would call his gesture, if you continued feeding your fears. It is what would feed the worst, that you could possibly think. The worst, you have seen. The worst that was waiting for you between iron walls. But Noa’s fingers don’t grab your boobs, mocking — though should, given his background… Noa’s fingers touch your heartbeat.
The rhythm of thoughts is knocks so loud, that your ears are clogged. You want Noa to stop, to take his hand and his compassion away, but something you can’t find a name, holds you back from this instinctive demand. Without moving, and without resisting, you wait for the ending of this moment.
The sky changes color once again, spreading like honey.
The arch of the bridge, leading straight to the human crypt, remains behind the ape shoulders... The symbolism seems far-fetched.
Noa's touch feels awkward. Not nearly as offensive, not nearly as ignoring moral, as the touches you wish you could cut off along with your skin. Noa's touch feels interrogative.
Cutting off any extraneous thoughts — enough for today, — you turn away from Noa. You look first at the bunny curled up in a ball, then at the backpack lying near the bridge. And at the large palm, resting on your heart. You remember how, through the dizzy, you listened to Noa's heartbeat that morning, when he rode you into an uncertain future. You were cutted and exhausted, unable to stay in the saddle, and you held on to him. Like a straw... Noa jerks his hand away, as if waking from forgetting.
"You came for... bag? Why are you... all alone? Echo... it's dangerous... to be alone in the forest" Noa asks. And abruptly, but in a familiar careful way, he lifts you by the elbows.
“Why are you so suave?” you burst into a new flurry of bewilderment. “How do you know why I came? You were watching me, right? So that I wouldn’t get lost or hurt myself?.. Why?”
Ability to small talk has never been your strong point. Inability to keep your mouth shut time and again has cost you dearly. You said so many unflattering things, before you apologized and thanked Noa. And you didn't skimp after... Everything in you was preparing to consider him a traitor — obviously, you hit him. But he doesn't show it. There, where you ran away from, for the words were sometimes beaten three times harder, than for the actions. Women defended themselves from harassment and humiliation in the only way they knew — with a sharp word. Women and girls of all ages spat out blood clots the size of small fish heads, after enraged men took their revenge on them in full... Nothing guaranteed safety — the fragility of children's joints, bruises that had not yet faded, pregnancy, postpartum weakness...
What are the punishments for men, who want to wean their women off the blade-cutting words, in other scattered settlements?..
And what kind of self-control must Noa have, if all your defense mechanisms, borrowed from the dungeon, didn't make a gap in his armor?..
“So that no one gets hurt you” Noa’s answer is so succinct and clear, that you can barely keep yourself from going on the defensive.
You have nothing to answer him.
But you want to argue with him. You are capable of protecting yourself, you are disgusted by surveillance. You don’t want to call it protection, much less care. Because it can’t be that. Because never, after the death of your parents, blood and foster, have you felt any care. The fact that Noa cares about you, is something that comes with great difficulty.
The care is not greedy — like protecting things, from breakage and theft, — it is friendly.
It's something from children's fairy tales about mutual assistance, about support. And about everything else, that you never had.
You never had friends.
When did Noa become your friend?..
When did Noa become anything other, than your savior? And can that change anything?
***
Blue of the sky encircles shine of the clouds. Evening changes into day for a minute.
You, unable to utter a single sound, and clutching rabbit feet tighter, set off for the backpack. Knead the dust and dirt with your bare feet. Almost reach out for the frayed strap. You freeze halfway — Noa blocks your path, picking up the backpack warily. While he stands with his back to you, turned away, you concentrated invoke and listen to your inner voice. How does Noa know, that you will not use the perfect opportunity to hit his skull with a rock that comes to hand, to jump on him from behind and strangle him, to press his eyes deep into their orbital basins?..
You wouldn't for nothing do that. After all you owe Noa.
And you have no reason to deal with Noa like that. Even if that owe didn't exist — Noa isn't someone, who you could kill without a guilty conscience.
But why is Noa so improvident? Does he really trust you that much, after only half a spring and a handful of summer swelter?
***
Setting sun and impatience dry your tears. Noa hands you the backpack, still looking into your eyes. Quickly counting the contents, you put it on and... freeze. In the distance, on a withered branch hangs cross. Looks like the rosary beads, that bastards carry with them. They recite prayers, drunkenly shuffling the words around. They shuffle, when they are nervous about the approach of retribution, which they themselves have molded from double standards and cardboard idolatry. They give them to youngsters. For luck, damn them... What is this, if not a sign from God? You need this cross, to heed the aspirations of your soul. And you take this cross off the extended as a serve branch.
“What is this?.. An echo ward?” Noah suggests with such precision, that pull you out of your silent veil.
"Yes, a ward. In my religion, that wear to protect against misfortune and temptation" You nod, not trying to hide your joy at the find. And, putting the cross in your pocket, you complete the answer so frankly, that immediately reproach yourself.
What is the probability, that Noa understands the meaning of the word "temptation"?
If so, isn't the meaning, implied by humans, different from the meaning of this word among apes? Why did you even mention that?.. It was easier to remain silent, if only because silence saves from different interpretations of the same thing out loud.
"If... this is bait?" Noa questions, as you zip up your pocket.
The fresh blood on his collarbones turns crimson.
If the wound had been even a millimeter deeper, you would have needed both threads and bandages. You would've had to stitch Noa up, as if he had just returned from a grueling battle... What a nonsense!.. It would've been the healing females, not you, who would've had to stitch Noa up. They, might, have allowed you to join their cause, but they would never have allowed you to take control of Master of Bird's health. They would've hovered around Noa in a line. They would've fussed about him in a crowd. And, unlike you, they would've considered this an honor.
"If so, we'll be gone faster, than they can catch us on the hook" you say without hesitation. Your arms are tired from holding the rescued animal and the backpack filled with priceless things, but it's a pleasant weight. "So which path do the apes take? I want to get home, before it gets dark."
It would be weird to apologize a second time. That's why you chose different words to apologize.
After all, until now you've called the clan your new home only mentally. Putting that thought into spoken form feels like something meaningful.
And the word "home" is pleasant to pronounce.
Fluttered from your lips question and wish made Noa smile faintly. He point to a winding path, hidden in the thickets of a plant, that familiar to you from the impeccably preserved 21st century botanical reference book, filled with handwritten notes by your foster mother. Against the spreading leaves of the plant timidly press wild strawberry. Almost the same, as that one you learning how to pick in a basket by your blood mother. Well... Many miles from the places, where you were born and grew up, a message from your most reverently treasured memories unexpectedly winked at you.
Forest filled with fragrance, that flowing into you.
Journey takes only a few minutes. The landmark is a full-flowing river, along which Noa walks, taking your hand - telling, that you not to fall behind. You don't resist another his touch. You don't argue, because you are exhausted, and don't want trouble.
Count in your mind the things, you've reunited with — to distract yourself. And not to think about Noa's fingers, tightly intertwined with your fingers. Blancet of a clouds, meanwhile, covers the forest from bad dreams.
***
Night blows through your hair, as you follow the noise, coming from behind the logs. Right from behind that place, where Noa taught you how to make fancy pegs.
Looking around, you find Noa from carving on some sturdy rods, tied together similarity to cage. In the dim flickering light of the torch, Noa's sitting back to you again — but as you mince closer, trying to remain unnoticed, his shoulder blades strain under dark fur. Now you know. His animal nature is one way or another always aware your precence. You wrap yourself in the rags of your shirt, when he turns.
"A rabbit can't... hop around in your... house" The lighting is so meager, that you almost trip over the wooden debris. But you notice, that Noa is definitely smiling again. "Need... a rabbit house."
"Rabbit houses are in holes... It's good, that your tribesmen didn't offer to send this poor back" In not imaginary, but real darkness, you allow yourself to smile, sitting down opposite Noa and studying the construction.
"Not tribesmen, but... the arsonists... suggested that I... expel you. Don't give their barking... weight. Apart from them, everyone... is glad, that you appeared here" Noa's voice is hoarse, affirmative and almost tangible in the crackling of the hanging fire.
"...Can I take this house home, right after you finish?" your voice, on the contrary, dissolves in the measured crackle, the thick night and the glow of the constellations.
Wait, until the painstakingly constructed cage is ready, need not long.
It means sitting next to Noa. In directly closeness, what would have seemed unacceptable to you just this morning. But the day has been edifying, expounding you — not everything is that, as it seems.
In the middle of the leafy plain, your thoughts were tossed between the possibility of Noa's kill at your hands and the possibility of giving him first aid with your hands... Both originated thoughts seems equally absurd. But if fate played a joke on you, and you had to choose — you would readily choose not a stone, but bandages and threads.
A lot you have to rethink.
After just one fragmentary conversation it's hard to be sure of anything. But you're sure — insde of you has begun a slow thaw, gradually catching up spreading through the forest vessels warmth.
"Creation" Chapter 4.1. Forest sprinkled with poison
A/N: I got behind schedule because of an unexpected feeling of illness, loss of consciousness and a visit to the city hospital... The adventure was so-so. I will monitor my health more carefully so that this does not happen again. I hope the events of the chapter will justify me
Word count: 4,1K
Warnings: brief mentions of death, hints of rape, sexual oppression and abuse, use of children, themes of parenthood and breeding, mentions of blood, injuries and mutilation, swearing, animal torture (oh... it will be fine, I promise you - because I consider the last point inhumane and it is only necessary for the plot twist)
🎧 Power-Haus, Christian Reindl, Lucie Paradis — Gefion
Crystal-clear sky. White with a dash of blue and grey. Not a cloud, but the feeling of mischievous rain is hovering in the air.
You were three or four years old then, not more. You didn't pronounce letters well, were distracted by this and that.
And you keep this memory far, far away in memory, like a ward.
Sitting on your father's shoulder, you hold your mother's hand. You point your parents to the strawberry patch visible at the fork in the paths, like an experienced lookout. Your parents take heed to your babble with laughter, your father lowers you onto the short grass, flattened by the summer breeze, and your mother hints you how to pick berries from the bushes. The handbusket you hold is filled in a matter of minutes.
Happy, with your plump palms stained with berry juice, you hand the dainty to your mother — a gesture, that she praises your efforts, is full of pride. She ruffles your unruly curls. Lifting you into the air, your father places you back on his shoulders.
Parents questioning you about the recently learned words, asking you to name everything you see — you swing your legs and name every grass blade, every bug on the way home.
Scarcely the slanted, moss-covered ruins could be called home. But here you lived the brightest years of your childhood.
The door creaks as you stomp inside, hallooed out to your mother and father. They are standing behind.
The sun is hiding, but the rain doesn't drip.
Parents look at you with a love that you will never be able to forget — and will barely find anywhere else.
***
The turned-down edge of a yellowed, worn book. The letters on the pages are ghostly. The illustrations are bright.
Your foster parents always encouraged your curiosity — for your seventeenth birthday you received a book about the world structure. A book about all the phenomenas and inhabitants of a planet that has been continiously changing — there, upstairs — for many billions of years.
You kept book with carefully and cautiosly. Just like every story told by your foster mother, imbued with wisdom. Just like every instruction from your foster father, aimed at save you from scourges.
A year later, running away, you didn’t manage to take a single thing. Not a single memory.
These parents also look at you, buried under layers of metal and earth, with love. It's a different feeling — but just as eternal. And that you'll also barely some day find.
***
You wake up with a naive gust to get at least a little warmth of your mother's hands from your hair. Straighten out yourself, lying in a nest warmed by the sun — this warmth can also be settle with. Albeit with a creak, even with aching sadness.
Since your blood parents died, have passed thousands of days, filled with darkness. Since your foster parents died, have passed months, and your heart is howling.
The book was left there, in the rotten underground prison. One of the bastards dropped it on the floor of your room. In a fight where life was at stake, you still managed to take the most valuable things from your involuntary home. Only one was mattered — hide, strike a blow, and get out of the shackles to the surface. Had to sacrifice the book, in order to run without looking back. The pages and the binding were probably already trampled. While they were prowling, sniffing out your footprints.
However, the grey backpack with one strap, in which you had raked the remains of the past, also remained somewhere not far from their lair. You held it to clouding tightly — until fell off the bridge.
Rolling tumble, smearing in mud, you prayed — if only they wouldn't find what belonged to you. If only they wouldn't plundered it, wouldn't messed it.
If only backpack remained lying somewhere in the grass.
You'll have found it, you'll have be able to... If it hadn't been mortally dangerous to go back there.
The guilt that you were unable to retain even one complete memory of your former life rises in your throat. Everything is lost there. Your daily, worn-out clothes. Your comb with bent teeth. Your locket turned into a bracelet. Notebook. Prayer book. Drawings of how you remember your blood parents. Photo album of how you remember your foster parents. Old camera with several empty rolls, that could have been used to capture something important... You had to try to catch at least something... But what is lost cannot be returned.
You look at the rising sun.
Providing your face to the rays crumbling across the hut.
Tears don't flow, eyes don't sting. And lungs don't cramp in desolate spasm. Maybe, this is what means reconcile.
During the time you spent in the clan, summer had almost blossomed from the spring buds. The daylight hours had increased, the working hours — too. It was strange to realize this. You had asked only to wait out the cold night, without hoping for anything more. Now you've lived here for the rest of the cold spring.
The shades of the seasons, while you were freezing among cruelty and heresy, did not change at all. Spring remained elegant and tender, like a wreath woven from wild flowers. Summer remained playful, like many-colored pebbles glittering on the lake bottom.
Raising your head to the sky, admiring its palette — and look around, searching for differences from the past. Except for your broken growing up, everything is the same. Like in distant childhood memories. Can't even believe it.
Everything is exactly the same. Even the feeling warmth of mother's hands.
The warmth of a mother's touch, carreeing through the roofs of the huts and through the space under open sky.
Through the past, the present, and, definitely, through the future.
A touch that came before civilizations and wars. A touch that cannot disappear as long as families exist. Unforgettable, unshakable. Repeated in a multitude of meanings and forms... Once upon a time, these were the hands of your own mother, who silently told you all the basics for a child's mind necessary.
Now these are the hands of a female chimpanzee lulling her cub.
Yes, the same one who hurried to move away from you, saving the most important she has - her children. Now Kantis and her husband (it's incredible, but in fact, apes unions, bonded with rituals, and not with spots of seals, are mostly stronger and durable than humans), who perceived you with hostility, are much more favorable. As you managed to find out by chance, the age of people and apes is calculated nearly the same - which means that Kantis was a not much older than you. But at first, with grumpiness, she let you under her wing. Like an unfledged chick.
You admit, that this is how it is.
The shells cracked on you just as they did on those eaglets you watched with awe among the sticks, rods and softly carpeted perches. Even if those shells were not visible, you were afraid to climb out of the egg.
You needed help, from start to finish, to feel like you weren't out of place. The decision was made unspoken. When both Kantis's little cubs, Nober and Febri, who can only slither and babble, took their first clumsy steps towards you... More and more often you visit them, for a short time or for many talkative hours, to remember the feeling of family, unbreakable kinship.
***
The cuts healed, leaving almost no scars. As Dar had said, you no longer dragged your feet, but ran like a little deer. Together with the apes children, having memorized all the ringing names. Especially the names of the five mischief-makers who attacked you with curiosity and naivety. Insightful as adult Kaidy, modest Lum and her little brother Lup, thoughtful Elan, and, of course, brave hooligan Paco. Answering their pouring like rivulets questions, you found real joy. Forgetting about the bothering wounds, you played unknown games with them — and taught them the games you knew. It was an honest, pure exchange.
The apes children were no different from the human children — and you were both a strict adult and a noisy child with them at the same time.
Uncorked yourself from the iron jar just recently and re-learning the outlines of everything familiar, you responded to many things with the same childish delight as the five apes cubs. They didn't draw out dark secrets out of you — they only asked for exciting stories and catch-ups. It was easier for you to find with them a common language.
Watching the incessant, peaceful flow of weeks, you yourself sometimes questioned them with genuine curiosity.
This seemed to you that, what would make you happier.
As much it possible while hidden from everyone mourning.
In the dungeon, too, in your free time from back-breaking work, you did not miss a single chance to mess around with the children. Here you eagerly awaited the moment when you could bring at least some slightly advantage. But this moment never doesn't coming.
Everyone was busy, but the Elders were in no hurry to assign any businesses to you. Even though you yourself asked for responsibilities. Even though the crumbs of kindness that you kept within yourself and joyfully gave to the cubs, softened the initial sharp edges. Still, even though you received shelter here — mistrust outweighed virtue.
Mistrust settled in Vikima's blind, transparent pupils. She not drive you away. She called all people grief-sending spirits. The teen-chimps, who adore her stories of the past, told you of the fresh grieving that lay in her wrinkles. She had lost three sons and a husband. Fault for that — human and the disfavor of fate.
Without daring to express it, you shared her sadness. And, as if seeing what was happening in your soul, the Elders replaced their disguised, justified anger on mercy.
Once you've adjusted and healed your wounds, assured Dar, you'll be able to do work that you can handle.
You were flattered.
You were guessed, that Dar means taking care of the children. Just as like you dreamed.
And then, maybe you'll join the healing. Elders know about this your skill. The opportunity to mention it already presented itself, when one of the cubs got a splinter and you helped to take it out, without a single childish tear. But it's better not to rush events.
***
So far, under the constant, mentoring supervision, you have learned to live as is commonly in the clan. And surprisingly, you have done well.
The traditions of the apes, maybe, been foreign to you — but their culture and beliefs were certainly not about vandalism and widespread wrecking. They revered Mother-Nature and all her bountiful gifts, lived in harmony with her powers. In contrast to the settlement where you could never exist. There was no respect for anything that existed. The teachings of that place hummed: tear out, hack away. Destroy.
Resounding in a bass voice heartless choir. Consisting of hundreds of pests, tormenting you in nightmares, and only occasionally interspersed with pictures of an unblemished childhood... Here this raging choir died down, giving you brief moments of peace.
Finding yourself in the womb of forest, among strangers who were being vilified by gossips, you seemed to breathe for the first time in many, many strained years.
Let in not air, but entire grassy expanses inside yourself, your consciousness.
You couldn't know in advance, that what evil tongues were telling might turn out to be true.
You couldn't know nothing, until you convinced it personally.
This, of course, would require many more seasons. But despite their wariness, the apess welcomed you with cordiality. And when you were about to leave, gathering your meager belongings — Noa suggested, that you stay until you found a better place. And you, and he knew, that such a place simply didn't exist — and from anywhere you would be like a patch on a cloth that did not need to be patched. This was an offer not to huddle as a guest, but to settle down forever. With this wording between the lines you agreed. Here you were not subjected to any violence, not even an indirect hint of violence. Here you were granted, to some extent, freedom of thought, speech and action. In the settlement, leniency was granted only to slaves, living commodity as a reward, when the slave owners achieved whatever cruel aim.
There were not many aims and needs for which girls, young women and women were needed there. Only two. Small, painstaking labor and childbearing. If your escape failed — you'll would have suffer, like pretty, until one of these men who had no right to be called men disgraced you in the most painful way. The rapes would have continue until your womb bore a child. If it were a girl — she would be left in your arms, waiting for her to become a resource. If it were a boy — he would be removed to a compartment located just below the surface as soon as you finished feeding him with breast milk. It is difficult to determine which fate is worse. A doll for plaything or a mannequin for huntmastering?..
Children were born rarely, but there they meant nothing. Children were just instruments.
Attachment to children was conditional. Parental love was frowned.
A crime against all the precepts that has bequeathed God... Aimless childbearing and equally aimless labor. If from the chosen victim could be obtained neither of these — or if the result did not satisfy the tormentors — victim was thrown into the garbage. Exhausted and used. It was a hellish cycle. It was written in blood and flesh law...
Regarding life as burden, you had never before considered, whether you would ever want to have your own children. Here you thought about it in the silence of the night, ringing among the animals calling.
There was no point in looking around too intently. In every hut, in addition to the nest that served as a bed, there was something reminiscent of a cradle for newborns. Your hut was no exception. This uncurtained cradle distracted you from your work, all your thoughts circled around the cradle... You know, there are more such seeds-prisons scattered underground, made of an alloy of cold metals and glass. These seeds will not germinate through decades or through centuries. You are doomed to loneliness, cutting yourself off from imprisonment — and from human men.
Maybe, it's for the better?.. What life could live children who were born not for unconditional love, but for the preservation of a morally fallen race? Hardly a happy one.
This aim was disgusting to you, but understandable. The desire of the bastards, who got what they deserved, to possess you was at least explainable.
You were already a working unit, serged and darned for days. And you would have become a good mother, even if you had no chances to give your children a childhood with a clear sky above their heads. Now you are deprived of the chance for motherhood...
But, given the theoretical possibility of helping in the apes manger, would you be so useful? Several generations of females manage this perfectly well without you. Your help is as great, as a grain in a sack. Not to mention that here you are useless as a vessel for conceiving and bearing offspring. Everything in you is breaking under the weight of questions and breaking through, for the first time in months, selfishness. If you stay here, you will inevitably end up an old maid. No matter how you look at it, are you needed here for any aim?..
But, otherwise, why would Noa teach the stubbornly silent you everything he himself knew?.. Obviously, he made your stay in the clan easier. He shared with you the tricks, necessary for survival — as he himself let it slip, the second time luck will not save you.
Indeed, it was not luck that saved you, but he, Noa. One of the apes. One of those, whom people admitted as evil incarnate. One of those, who did not drive you away, when all the people around were deaf to your despair. So, you were convinced only that the slander is a lie. Because you see in apes much more humanity, than in the hateful dungeon, teeming with unhappy people and inhuman cruelty.
And, living side by side with apes, you want to strengthened in this conviction.
You would like to thank Noa even, perhaps, more — only thanks to his contradictory act you see, what this whole world can be. Only this act of his already roots your withered, eaten away by fear, like parasite, hope. But the oath, that rumbles in your head, prevents you from saying just one word. The fact, that he is not a human, does not cancel your prejudice. You will not utter a single word, intended for a man. Even if his thoughts are pure.
It feels wrong to use gestures for explaining — but your tongue feels like it’s falling into your stomach, when you try to even imagine a conversation with Noa. And your lips feel like a needle is piercing them, pulling tiny stitches of a nonexistent thread.
At your silent request, Noa tells you what these strange, small wooden blocks are that have caught your attention. It's sort of ward. You can find them in every hut, as you noticed when you looked in on Soona. Trinket with a mystical meaning. And everyone in the clan makes these blocks for themselves single-handedly.
Tiny blocks laid in a row in your hut were made by Noa.
Without knowing why, you get in earnest angry when you find it out — and you ask Noa to take them to his own home and teach you this skill. So that there in your room will be nothing foreign.
If you said it out loud, would sound absurd.
But even from the crumpled gestures, your hands nervously twitched.
It was further proof of Noa's good intentions towards you, which you couldn't be angry about. But you couldn't pacify the vague indignation. How and the crudely expressed movements of fingers.
To your sincere surprise, Noa once again does exactly as you asked. By sunset, not a single wooden trinket remains in your hut. The next dawn, Noa begins teaching you how to handle wood.
If you dared to ask for such a stupid little thing there, among the boors seething with anger and bile — on your face would already be turning blue hematomas.
Here you shake off the sawdust, use one of the gestures you learned over the spring to ask Noa if you’re doing well — and twirl in your hands a crooked short peg.
A snarky laugh is heard. Jeru and Nigig, who's else, damn...
They are no better than what is happening in the place you fled from. They have been trying so hard to ridicule you, to vomit more vileness at you since the day Noa brought you into the clan. No matter what they say, you remain silent. Not because Noa insisted on such tactics, although you did listen to his advice then. You just do not consider Nigig a representative of the female kind. You could have answered her a hundred fold more painfully, but there is no need.
Jeru keeps Nigig around not as his woman, but as his empty-barking henchman. He treats her like a mutt. She behaves accordingly, indulging in his unreasonable attacks.
Listening to their dry conversation one day, you are perplexed. They have nothing to talk about, if not to insult. They are united only by malice. For a brief moment, you wonder — why do they live under the same roof, if their union is based on the desire to verbally mock someone, and not on the desire to while away the evenings together, to raise offspring together?..
Such abscesses are present on the body of any society, you suppose. Without them, good treatment wouldn't be appreciated.
Spending even a sound on them both — squandering. You put the unfinished trinket aside, folding your arms across your boobs. You close yourself off from the male's gaze rummaging your body, and don't understand, how his companion allows it. You involuntarily step behind Noa's shoulder, he growling, bristling fur and losing his patience. You look through their grimacing foreheads.
"In a long time haven't seen... such muck" Jeru laughs, grinning. And you can hear from his intonation, that he's not talking about your unskillful work, but about you.
"Don't amuse me... What else is capable of this... bedding?" Nigig looks at you dismissively, stretching out the last word into syllables.
"I'll pretend that you... didn't yipedd nothing. Now get lost" Noa replies, shielding you with his back. The indignation in his voice makes you stupefied.
Wooden block fall to the ground, when Jeru tries to grab your wrist.
Without a second thought, Noa knocks him down. You scream and stand rooted to the spot, and Nigig's trail went cold. Who would doubted it.
The second time Noa fights is because of you, damn him. You take a step back, toward the wood chips and shavings. You beg to stop, as splashes of someone's blood are drif apart. Sound of crushing bone. Noa stands up, shaking himself. He's unharmed, save for the blood trickling from his nose. Beating he gave Jeru, on the other hand, was more than serious. Tucked tail, that's what he lacks.
Your impressions of what happened are controversial. There is no one here except you, Noa, and the future wooden amulets. He clearly didn't get into a fight to maintain status, his or yours.
Noa protects you selflessly. With arguments and fists. In every way. From that night, appearing as a saving shadow, and to this day. Even if this aim is not voiced — now it is understandable to you. But why?..
It takes a few moments to indecisiveness, but you hesitate, for what feels, like a whole summer. You walk up to Noa, quickly wiping the blood off his face with the back of your hand. And run so fast, that you can't catch your breath, when you get back to your house. Those are still not the words you want to say. But at least it's something.
***
You dream of a backpack. Nothing but a backpack and the area where you dropped it.
A steep hill right behind the lake, surrounded by thin-armed trees. Cobblestones, small pebbles. Tenacious bushes. A bridge...
***
In a dream the realize, that you went back for your backpack and lost it again very close to the place where Noa found you, gives you unprecedented strength.
You'll find. You'll be able.
You run at your two legs, as if on a galloping horse. Along the way you fall into the dried on sun mud, suffocate in a column of rising dust. You see a stone bridge in sight. You run faster, hoping to meet the almost lost memories...
Hear a squeak, from which your heart is ruptures.
Like sick infants cry. Only more shriller. As if death was breathing down neck again, pacing somewhere nearby...
Beneath a low-growing gooseberry bush, rendingly screaming a rabbit. Its hind leg caught in the jaws of a trap. Noa towers over it, aimed a spear.
"Hey, owl!" you yelling at the top of your throat. Louder than the poor rabbit. Louder than the birds flying in all directions. Louder than a weapon falling with a crash.
Hands down, Noa looks straight at you, turning around. You're holding a sharpened spear. You're learning fast. And you're filled with dissapointment.
"Yes, Noa, I'm talking to you! It was you, who spoke of owls and rabbits. So you were feint? Well, I'm glad, that I saw your deception with my own eyes"
Forest sprinkled with poison of your words.
These weren't supposed to be the first words you spoke to Noa. Not at all. You rehearsed them in your head, wandering through the swirls of ornate phrases — waiting until you were ready to speak them without fear. Now you're waiting to see if Noa will pick up his spear and if you strike a blow again.
Leaning down towards the incessantly squeaking lump, you open the trap with incredible effort. When Noa tries to help, you don't let him near and hiss.
"Or you move away, or I'll stick your hand there!" you say in a weak, loud whisper as he reaches for the rabbit you pick up. "You wanted to kill him..."
"I wanted to kill whoever... set the trap. Look. Too big for... a rabbit" Noa says confused. You hide the wounded animal in your hands, seeing yourself as if in a reflection. "Someone is hunting echo"
