Stone Age Mama

Chapter Fourteen - 3AM Tears

-Summer-

After dinner and the small time spent cleaning and patching up their wounds, the remaining light was spent adding to the storage building. They would need somewhere to put the dried lamia meat, after all. Mohniit even helped, bringing handfuls of sticks for them to weave into the floor and walls. No one really wanted to stray too far away from camp just then anyway. The children were still quite shaken up. Eefim had a scowl on his face that could rival any cold-hearted CEO. He kept rubbing at his chest, too, so much so that the tan skin reddened.

By the time the light finally died, they had the walls in place, along with the door lashed in place. The only issue was that the roof wasn’t done. Belbet did the mental calculations, and it would take several weeks for them to make and dry enough roof tiles to finish the roof. If only there was a way to speed up the drying process.

“Mama-” Dahnei tugged at Belbet’s arm while she was in thought staring at the tiles in the dark. “Mama, I had an idea.”

Blinking down at her sweet daughter (I almost lost her, Dahnei almost died today-Belbet cut that thought off), she reached out to pull her into a swaying hug. “Hmm? And what is this idea, my sweet girl?”

Dahnei giggled and leaned into the soft dance of her mother’s hold. “Well. You made the smoker by making fire inside the clay, right?” She was doing so well learning all the new words Belbet was teaching her. “Could we dry the tiles around a fire too? Make them faster?”

Belbet thought about it, keeping up the little dance she danced with her five-year-old. “Hmmmm… You know, I think it could be worth a try. Let’s get some of the tiles and set a fire up, Okay?”

“I can make the fire!” Dahnei shrieked in excitement, tossing herself off her mother’s hold and towards the wood-pile. While Dahnei dragged sticks over to form a pyramid, Belbet gathered up twelve of the tiles that were already made but weren’t dried yet. Once Dahnei’s little fire was roaring, she stood the tiles up around the fire, hoping none of them would fall over. Two of them did almost immediately. Belbet figured out a system of sticks that managed to hold them all up in a circle around the fire.

Belbet settled down to wait out the tiles, watching over the camp as she did. Kaion was taking his job as a tile-maker quite seriously. He was still bending sticks and patting the big rock down with ashes so that the clay tiles wouldn’t stick to it. It was interesting, to watch his thick fingers work the clay into a smooth surface, to place the hooked catch on the squares, She tore her eyes away, lest she be caught staring again.

Deenat was spending the evening weaving rope from the grasses they were drying, and Eefim was carving and creating spears for each of them with the already made rope. They were sitting closer together than usual, so perhaps it wasn’t just Belbet who felt the effects of their almost-loss that afternoon.

“We should take the night in shifts, so we can dry as much of the meat as possible.” Deenat declared. She carefully didn’t say it was because she was worried about being attacked again. Belbet heard it anyway.

“Sounds good. I want to check on the tiles through the night anyway.” Belbet explained, taking a deep breath. “I’m not very tired right now. Deenat, why don’t you take the first sleep shift. You too, Kaion.”

“I’ll stay up too.” Eefim declared, squaring his shoulders.

Belbet frowned, “Children need their sleep.”

“I’m not a child! I’m a hunter!” Eefim snapped back at her, and she gaped.

“Still a child.” Deenat declared, frowning. “Child and hunter. You can be both, and you are. But you still need sleep. You worked hard today, slaying that snake.”

Eefim’s face turned ugly, the fire throwing harsh shadows on his crinkled nose. He started rubbing at his chest again, frowning. Deenat reached out, taking his hand and pulling it to her lips. She pressed a soft kiss there and then tugged him into a hug. Eefim relaxed enough that his shoulders no longer surrounded his ears.

Belbet chewed her lip watching the two of them. She took a deep breath and sighed, “We’re all tired. We’ve all had a bad day, and we were lucky no one was seriously injured. Eefim, you did amazing, slaying that thing. I’m very proud of you, and I know everyone else is too.”

Children need a lot of positive reinforcement to build a good self-image. Victoria knew this from watching her siblings parent their own children, and from the various videos and articles she had read on parenting and childcare. Had to be a good auntie, after all. Well, now she could translate that into being a good mother.

The malaise of the day seemed to settle around everyone, and finally, Belbet couldn’t take it anymore. Something had to be done. But how could she cheer everyone up? Delicious (in their experience) food hadn’t done it. The surplus of food hadn’t done it. What could cheer up a group of despondent, down-on-their-luck people?

“We survived-” She started, pulling the syllables into a song. She patted her thighs in a basic rhythm, and sang. “We survived another day. We lived, we fought, we live still. Today there is fresh food to eat, tomorrow there will be too. We survived.”

It was a simple song. Stupid, honestly, compared to some of the compositions Victoria had heard in her time. But it caught everyone’s attention, and soon enough had the children patting along in a clumsy follow of the rhythm she’d set up. Grinning at their enthusiasm, she picked up two sticks, handing them to Dahnei, miming how to tap them against a stone, watching as she discovered this new sound.

“We survived!” She crowed, loud and sharp, and Deenat’s voice echoed just behind it. “We survived another day! We lived, we fought, we live still! Today there is good food to eat, tomorrow there will be too. We survived!”

Soon the others picked up on the lyrics, and little Mohniit babbled along, singing whatever words his young mind caught on. Belbet started clapping along to their little beat, adding a counterpoint to the sharp sounds of the sticks. Soon, Kaion caught on, and started copying her little one-two-onetwothree clapping rhythm, and she could drop it to focus on keeping the lyrics going.

A few minutes that felt like soaring hours passed by like this, with the lyrics changing as others sang bits. Eefim hummed, Dahnei drummed, Kaion clapped, and soon there was enough of a beat that Belbet felt uplifted, twirling around the fire in a strange, uncalculated dance. In the arc of it, she picked up Mohniit and swung him around, dancing with him too, while crying the words, his little croak of every other word coming back to her. The dancing was contagious, and Deenat pulled Eefim into a dance too, spinning and swirling and calling the words to the sky.

Energy crescendoed into a slow-releasing wave, and soon, the exhaustion of the day caught up. Their swirling dance slowed to swaying, and the words cawed and crowed to the sky turned gentle, soft.

“You survived.” Belbet sang, low and reverberating, a lullaby now. “You survived, and you lived. And tomorrow, there will be good food, and forevermore.”

It was here, she let the vibrations of the song end, die out into the night. She patted Mohniit’s little back as he leaned heavily into her hold, clearly sleepy if his little yawn against the skin of her throat was anything to go by. She led the children into the hut, Deenat following up as rear-guard.

Laying Mohniit down in their bed, she gestured for Dahnei to curl up with him too. She hummed the tune of the song a little more, stroking a soft finger down her daughter’s nose. The girl’s eyes tried to follow it, before fluttering closed and huffing out a gentle breath. “You survived… You lived. And tomorrow… and forevermore.”

She sang, soft and gentle over the sounds of Deenat putting Eefim to bed as well. And if she sat there a little longer, to watch her babies sleeping, the swell of hurt, unshed tears behind her eyes, who was to say.

Belbet left the hut feeling worse than she’d gone in. Her breath shook with the effort of making it. She tried to focus on firing the tiles. When that chore alone didn’t work, she turned to finishing the loom. She carved out a shuttle, the process painful. She kept nearly knicking her fingers with the sharp stone knives. A huff of frustration sent her dropping the crudely done thing next to the sticks that sort of resembled a loom. Turning her frustration to crafting a drop spindle next. A heavy piece of clay not even hardened yet, on the end of a stick was her first try. It took a few attempts to get the right weight on the end, and each successive failure hit her hard.

When the clay fell off the final time she couldn’t help the pained cry that left her throat as she tossed it onto the ground. It bounced, (an absurd moment that would have made her laugh) and she collapsed into actual tears.

“What am I doing?” She breathed through her sobs, gripping her upper arms tightly as if to hold back the flood inside her. She whispered, a part of her ever aware of Kaion asleep just a little ways away. “She could have dieeeed-” A crack in her voice drew out the word, hot tears spilling down her cheeks in slow, itchy tracks.

She tried to quiet the sobs, but they echoed in the dark night, and she was too tired, too frustrated to care. She’d almost lost her children today, children Victoria had never even had. But they were family now, the only family she had in this place, those kids and Deenat and Eefim. What would she have done if one of them had died?

Victoria had been so sheltered from death. The closest she’d ever gotten was her grandmother’s funeral when she was barely old enough to remember. She hadn’t been there, though, when the woman died. She hadn’t seen her death throws, or the blood spilling from her throa-Ah. Victoria’s grandmother had died of cancer, not of- She choked out another sob stifled behind her hand.

Death was so much closer here, so much more real. It was around every corner, and lurking in the cold, icy claws of the coming winter. There was so much to do, so much to prepare, her breath grew tight just thinking about it. She cried herself nearly into breathlessness, her cheeks slick with tears. She could barely breathe, her nose stuffed and her mouth covered to hide the sound of her breakdown from her children.

Her eyes flicked once again to the only other person she could see at the moment. Kaion, sleeping in his lean-to. She couldn’t see much of him. Just the tip of a dipped ear, his shoulder, and the broad muscles of his back. Her breath hitched again, and she closed her eyes. Could he hear her? Was he listening to her crying right now, wondering why this weak woman was sobbing next to the camp fire?

Did he even feel the closeness of death? Did any of the people who lived here? Belbet hadn’t. And look what happened to her. Victoria had been forced to come in and take over. She tried to breathe deeper, to force the sobs to stop. She needed to think about something else. She needed to distract herself. She turned her focus back on Kaion, thinking about him, instead of death loomed over her shoulders, ready to take her.

It’d be nice to have someone strong enough to lift heavier things, she supposed. A weak thing to think, and she felt weak thinking it. She and Deenat were no slouches, of course, but honestly, she doubted the two of them would be able to lift enough big logs to build a proper bridge across the river. And who knew, maybe as a sheep spirit, he’d be able to herd sheep really easily. If they had sheep, she could spin wool, instead of tree fibers. She imagined putting a wool sweater on Mohniit, and how his little nose would crinkle. But he’d be warm, for winter.

She sighed softly as her tears dried on her cheeks, closing her eyes and rubbing at her temples. A headache was forming, and absurdly, she thought of Victoria’s mother. She’d always said, ‘If you cry too much, you’ll make yourself sick.’ Standing up, she went to the punch-pumpkin and scooped some out. The sweet drink helped, but not enough to be comforting. She turned to the fire, and saw that there was still some willow bark tea left. She added that to the cup of berry punch and sipped. Not bad.

Belbet turned to look at the spindle and quickly determined she wasn’t going to be able to keep working on it like that in the dark. So, she moved to another project, putting together more clay tiles. It was hard to screw up clay tiles, even in the dark. It also reminded her to check the ones still being cured around the fire. The fire they’d made was nowhere near going out, so she went back to making little forms, and then filling them with clay.

She lost herself in the work for a few more hours, and only when the fire popped harshly, nearly out to embers, did she realize she’d almost passed the entire night this way. Standing up again, she rubbed her face to rid it of the last bit of tears. Her eyes felt swollen and she still sniffed occasionally. She sighed, stoking the fire again, and then heading into the hut. She gently shook Deenat awake.

The woman snorted herself to consciousness, and Belbet whispered, “Your turn to watch the tiles.”

Deenat groaned quietly, but got up, leaving her son alone in their bed. Belbet took a moment to stoke the fire in the hut too, before laying down next to her children. The both of them wiggled to get comfortable with the new addition to their space, before settling back into a comfortable sleep, and Belbet’s heart cracked at the feeling of their furnace-hot skin against hers. She gathered them closer, making little whines sound from sleeping mouths, and then let herself close aching eyes and sleep.