Chapter 7: A Mate and a Wife

Neta made a large production about serving me dinner at “our” fire. It was standard Riverperson evening fare, although with a bit more meat and a noticeably larger serving. I had a chuckle at Neta clearly trying to impress the others around our fire with our “surplus” of food. I made a note to tell her not to endanger our stores with petty boasting, but for the moment I’m sure she was just excited and wanted to make me feel welcome. This was the first meal that Neta shared with me at the same fire, and we spent most of it in halting small talk. She was apparently unfamiliar with talking during meals, at least to her mate, something I was going to break her of. The rest of the natives had been giving me looks that ranged between indifference and outright contempt, so I didn’t expect many other conversation partners. Mostly I asked her who various people were, and what their roles in the tribe were. I wasn’t able to commit much of the information to memory, but I did notice a few curiosities. Everyone had only a single name and usually a title, like “Warrior Jako” or “Chief Nobu.” Those without titles were either the young or very old. Both of those groups seemed to try hard to make up for their lack of position. There also seemed to be a tradition of giving children names that started with the same sound as their father’s. Neta and Nalto were children of Noby; Jako had a brother Jacey and both were children of Jenco. Jacko and his mate shared our campfire which is why it was one of the few families I remembered. He was less than talkative, merely giving me and Neta the evil eye when he came up in conversation, but Neta filled in the gaps. Jacko was one of the better warriors in the village (which seemed to be a synonym for “hunter” in their culture) and was friendly with Nalto, another notable hunter. Their father, Jenco, had a confusing role in the village. He was one of the older natives and had suffered a badly healed broken leg, this made him useless at his old skill of hunting, and so he had little respect in the eyes of the others. However, when he was young, he had been the village’s best hunter and the confidant of the previous chief which gave him considerable “residual” honor. The Riverpeople had a sort of cognitive dissonance when it came to him, sometimes speaking with great reverence and sometimes implying he was a drain on resources. The natives’ focus on honor and independence made them some of the most resourceful and proactive civilizations but had some definite drawbacks. I felt bad for their “discarded” elders, but the little probing I made on the matter was met with outright confusion.

I hadn’t quite come to the realization of the plan this would lead to, but I was unconsciously forming a list of things I could change or introduce to their society. Respect for their elders, especially those who had contributed extraordinarily during their salad days. I never was a blue-collar worker, but as an engineer, I had a pretty good idea of how most of the modern society worked in theory, if not in practice. There were several technological advancements they could make today if I could figure out production. For example, their tableware consisted of large hip bones and conveniently-shaped pieces of wood that looked to have a shallow dish sanded into the surface. They had conquered stone blades but hadn’t graduated to handled tools like axes. Most of what they produced required a great amount of labor and not a small amount of luck to create. My ax and saws alone represented several leaps in both production and construction. I’m sure I could catapult their culture by several thousand years, but given their response to simply asking about how to improve Jenco’s situation, I figured discretion was going to be the watchword of the day.

We talked long after the food was finished, the “plates” cleaned, and most of the other villagers had retired. It was a beautiful night, clear and crisp, and I was enjoying the clean air in my newly refurbished lungs while sitting next to a beautiful young woman. It was not lost on me that our relationship would be considered taboo, and possibly even illegal, if I was back in the modern era (lacking a calendar, the Riverpeople didn’t celebrate birthdays or track ages, and at best some of them could tell you how many winters they had been mated for). Neta had been mated to Tal for three years, so I was guessing she was 18-20 or thereabouts. She was definitely of age, but without millions of dollars to my name, my 40-something mind wasn’t used to a woman that young hanging around.

Eventually, Neta had enough of my relaxation and urged me into the tent. No one had gone over the details of their mating customs, but I got the clear idea that in Neta’s eyes at least, we were mates in every respect and she expected all the benefits thereof. After washing up from dinner, I turned around to find her kneeling on our furs, completely nude. Consciously or not, I took several moments to take in her form. I had seen her several times at the river, but there was something special about this moment. It might have been the darkness, the shared tent, and animal skins, or the campfire light peeking through the entrance flaps; but it was probably the clear expression of desire on her face. Once I made eye contact with her, she smiled and dropped to all fours, pointing her shapely backside directly at me. Clearly, she was used to getting straight down to business.

We hadn’t done much physical activity during the day, but this time and place weren’t exactly clean. At least that’s the excuse I’m using for what I did next because the only other reason would have been to use even my limited modern knowledge of sex to become this world’s Lord and King of All Carnal Loving. I grabbed the piece of soft hide we used as a washrag and stood her up. I silenced her confusion with one hand, while I started to wash her skin from the neck down. I took my time, mixing gentle strokes with light kisses. By the time I reached her middle back she was breathing heavily, and I found myself more than ready as well. I spun her around to face me and met the lust in her eyes.