He finished eating and handed the bowl back to her.
As they rose to their feet, he asked, “Do you still dream of home, Addie?”
She blinked in surprise. “No.”
He nodded and took her hand. “Come. Stay with me tonight.”
“What about Oh’nil?”
“He won’t mind. When we fall asleep, I want to feel your body next to me.”
Chapter 38
Preparations for the marauder-eradication campaign got underway the very next day. Women ventured out to gather light provisions that would sustain the warriors on the road. Scouts scattered to gather intel on the marauders’ movements.
Hunlath recruited two handy-dandy warriors to help him reinforce and sharpen the existing weapons and manufacture new ones.
Men began training in earnest.
It was decided that a large party led by Zoark and Vuskas would carry out the mission, while the chief, Shur, Klarm, and a handful of younger warriors would stay behind as a skeleton crew to protect the women and children. Addie got the impression that Net’ok would rather go than stay, but the High Counselor insisted.
Along with the others, Addie gathered and prepared food, weaved fabric from pliant flax fibers, and made pouches and belts for the warriors. She also prepared strips of fabric to use as bandages.
“I don’t care what you think, and what your buddies’ opinions are on the topic,” she said as she handed Zoark several tight rolls of the bandages and several pouches with herbs to be used on wounds. “But you know that we, Earth women, believe in this medicine stuff.”
He smiled out of one side of his face - the other was still stiff and bruised. “I know. I’ve been treated by them before.”
“Alrighty then. Keep this as a first aid kit. Oh’nil can carry half of the bandages - I’m sure he won’t mind.”
Zoark struggled to keep a straight face. “I’m sure he won’t.”
Addie saw little of Chele during the busy days of the preparations, and when she did, their interactions weren’t pleasant.
“Why do you bother returning?” Chele asked once when Addie came to their teepee during the day.
“Why? I live here.” She no longer slept here, but she kept her things there, and she wanted to spend time with Oh’na. But when Zoark returned from the war - and hewouldreturn, safe and sound and victorious - they were going to split off and set up their own house.
Addie’s baby moved inside her consistently, and she noticed the first sign of a distention to her belly, making her impending motherhood real and exciting and scary. She felt very sick in the mornings, the fact that worried Zoark as morning sickness wasn’t a thing for For women, but Addie felt calm. Things were progressing as expected. Not that she’d ever expected to be expecting, but barring that little surprise, her pregnancy was developing at a normal rate. Soon, she’d need to start preparing for the baby’s arrival.
Her baby. Hers and Zoark’s child.
She smiled, lost in her own world.
“She’s smiling! What cause for celebration is there?” Chele’s sour tone drew Addie out of her daydreaming. “An ugly battle is upon our men, and she’s smiling. They will not all return, you know? All of them might yet die, and if that happens, the marauders will come and ransack our tribe.”
Oh’na stopped moving about, a frightened look creeping up on her face.
Addie leveled a death stare at Chele. “Do you have to be negative every single time?”
“I see things as they are, Addie. You see them as you want them to be.”
“You can’t see what hasn’t passed. No one can see the future.”
“No, but you can imagine it so you’re prepared when it’s upon you.” Chele narrowed her eyes. “What if that crippled warrior of yours doesn't return? What are you going to do then, eh? Alone, with a baby on the way?”
“He will return,” Addie said firmly, refusing to fall under Chele’s gloom. “As will the others. And when he does, we’ll build our own home.”
Chele snorted. “He’s been sleeping with you at his brother’s side, everyone knows that. Unmated! Goes to show his character. No decent man would invite a woman to stay at anything other than a home he built for her. Shameful.”
