Chapter 15
Settling In

Gabrielle arrived at Tala's village just barely before sunset. She was greeted by the man that had argued with Tala when she'd decided to leave with Gabrielle. He didn't appear to be upset at her visit and Gabrielle realized he'd probably just been worried about Tala going off by herself with total strangers.

Gabrielle introduced herself and spoke what little she knew of his language to request Tala's presence. He gestured to himself. "Riku," he said, and Gabrielle took it to mean his name. Then he spoke a slew of words, only some of which Gabrielle understood, and she was able to pick up that Tala had already been alerted to her presence.

Tala came jogging up from behind Riku and Gabrielle couldn't help but smile at the huge grin on Tala's face. Tala greeted her with the warrior's clasp. "Friend," she said.

"Friend," Gabrielle replied. Somehow, they'd created a new formal greeting and Gabrielle liked the idea of having started a new tradition. Maybe their descendants, years from now, would still greet each other in the same manner.

They let go of each other's arms. "May I speak with you in your hut?" Gabrielle asked.

Tala nodded and gestured for Gabrielle to follow her. Once they were inside, Gabrielle made her request.

"I want to come here and live with your people for a little while, so I can learn from them," she told the tall woman.

"You teach me? You teach me fighting and writing," Tala questioned.

"Yes. I'll also hunt and provide for myself, so I won't be a burden to your people."

Tala nodded. She'd seen the huge amount of food Gabrielle had brought with her and having such a great hunter among her people during Winter would be an asset to her tribe.

"Yes. You stay," Tala approved.

Gabrielle ducked back out of the hut and rejoined her Honor Guard. "It's all settled. Make camp for tonight and then return home in the morning. Tell Tristan everything's been arranged and Tala has agreed to let me stay."

The leader of the Honor Guard gestured to her Warriors to set up camp outside the village's perimeter. They left and Gabrielle turned back to Tala. She watched as several of Tala's people started carting away the baskets of food she'd brought. Tala noticed her gaze.

"Gabrielle hungry? You hungry?" Tala asked her.

Gabrielle nodded. "Yes. I've only had trail rations all day."

Tala went to look in a few covered dishes and set to work filling a plate with dried fruit and nuts. She looked in some of the baskets and pulled out a few strips of jerky. She handed over the bark plate to Gabrielle.

Gabrielle ate all of the fruit and nuts and both pieces of jerky. She talked a little with Tala, mostly just working on their grasp of each other's languages. It was an interesting conversation to listen to. Each sentence was spoken several times. The first time was in the other's language and then it was corrected by the native speaker. Then the teacher would become the student and try to translate the sentence into the language of the other, being corrected again. Finally, the whole thing would start all over again with a response to the original statement or a whole new train of thought would be started.

When Gabrielle finished her meal, Tala took the plate and put it back with the others. Then she returned to take Gabrielle to her hut, detouring long enough for Gabrielle to pick up her large leather bag stuffed with clothing and other personal items. Gabrielle stopped just inside the doorway to the large room.

"Should I stay somewhere else?" she asked.

"No. I want you stay me," Tala said.

"I want you to stay with me," Gabrielle corrected.

"Yes. I want you to stay with me here," Tala grinned. She was enjoying the lessons and liked getting the last word in.

Gabrielle smiled and set her bag on the floor near one wall. She sat on the bed of furs in the corner and Tala joined her.

"My hair," Tala said, and combed her fingers through the long dark strands.

"You want me to brush your hair?" Gabrielle inquired.

"Yes. I want you to brush my hair," Tala practiced the phrase.

"Alright."

Gabrielle got up again and rummaged through her bag to find her brush. She'd been half hoping Tala would let her brush her hair again. It had been nice. She found the wooden handle and pulled it out of her bag. When she turned around, she found Tala had stripped down to prepare for bed. Gabrielle inwardly shrugged her shoulders and set the brush down on the low table to remove her own clothes, leaving her shirt on as usual. She picked up the brush again and settled in behind Tala.

She lightly ran the bristles through Tala's hair and slowly worked on the few tangles she found. She kept up the gentle stroking way past what could have been considered necessary. Gabrielle listened for the low humming again. It was there, very soft, but distinct nonetheless. For some reason, that sound gave Gabrielle a thrill. The idea that she was causing it, warmed her heart.

Gabrielle eventually set her brush aside and curled up amongst the furs. Tala turned around to watch her. Gabrielle wondered if she'd done something wrong.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

Tala reached out and touched her hair. Gabrielle's body tingled at the contact and she felt a sudden wetness gather at her center. Tala inhaled sharply and smiled. Gabrielle realized the woman could smell her arousal. Gabrielle reached up and stilled Tala's hand in her hair.

"It's time for sleep," she declared.

Tala replied with several words from her own language, none of which Gabrielle had heard before.

"I don't understand," Gabrielle said.

Tala pulled back the furs and rested her hand on Gabrielle's sex. She said, "Ote."

Gabrielle quickly removed the hand that was unintentionally, or maybe not so unintentionally, encouraging her body's arousal. "Touching that area is off limits without my permission," Gabrielle stated.

Tala studied her for a few moments. "Give me your permission?" Tala requested.

Gabrielle was speechless. No one had ever been quite that direct with her before. She was much more used to the mind games that most people played in their attempts to keep themselves from getting hurt.

"Only the people that I love, and who love me, get my permission to touch me there," she said. It was a complete lie, as far as her past was concerned, but it was an ideal she wanted to live up to in this new life she'd made.

"Love?" Tala questioned.

Gabrielle realized Tala hadn't heard that particular word before. She was way too tired to try to explain it, though. "I'll explain it later. Right now, I just really want to go to sleep," she said.

Tala nodded and pulled the covers over both of them again. She wrapped Gabrielle up in her arms and went to sleep. After a while, Gabrielle calmed down enough to join her.

In the morning, Gabrielle had breakfast with her Honor Guard and Tala didn't protest her short absence. The fare was standard trail rations and was eaten without much ado. The Warriors broke camp quickly once they had filled their stomachs.

"Safe journey," Gabrielle bid them farewell.

They waved their good-byes and Gabrielle returned to find Tala sitting outside her hut, waiting for her.

"Teach me words that stay. Teach me writing," Tala requested.

Gabrielle acquiesced and they walked to their spot by the river. Gabrielle started by drawing the letters of the English alphabet in the moist dirt.

"These are called letters. They represent the different sounds of the words I'm speaking," Gabrielle explained.

"Why do letters make sounds your words?" Tala asked.

"Of your words. And they don't actually make the sounds. They describe them. They tell me what sounds to make and then I can put them together to make the words of my language. Each written word is sort of a picture made from the individual letters. When I look at the word, and figure out what it's describing, that's called reading."

"What picture make sounds of your name?" Tala asked.

"What picture makes the sounds of my name," Gabrielle corrected.

"What picture makes the sounds of your name?" Tala repeated.

Gabrielle carefully wrote her name in the dirt so that it faced towards Tala.

"That big picture," Tala said. "What picture makes the sounds of my name?"

Gabrielle wrote Tala's name under hers. Gabrielle thought about spelling it as 'tall' and 'uh' the way it sounded, but decided she'd have enough problems explaining the double L in her own name without complicating Tala's.

Tala squinted her face up at Gabrielle. "Why my picture small? I big. You small," Tala reasoned.

Gabrielle smiled. "You are bigger than me. But my name has more sounds, so there are more letters to describe all those sounds." Gabrielle pointed with her stick as she read the sounds of their names back to Tala. "Guh-aa-beh-ree-ell. Tuh-all-uh. See? More sounds."

Tala nodded in understanding.

They returned to camp shortly after that first lesson and Tala immediately went to work repairing tears in some of her furs. Gabrielle looked around for a clue as to what she could do and finally decided to ask.

"What can I do to help?"

Tala pointed to the pile of furs near her feet, then to a small dish that held bone needles and dried sinew. "Fix."

Gabrielle got to work. She threaded the bone needle and began making small stitches close together. After a few minutes, Tala nudged her and held out her hand and Gabrielle handed over the skin she was working on. Tala tested her work by pulling on the stitches. It didn't budge. Tala grinned.

"Good good."

"The tighter the stitch, the stronger the seam," Gabrielle replied.

"Show me," Tala said.

Gabrielle demonstrated how she kept the holes close to each other, after each pass with the needle, and doubled back to reinforce the stitch before moving on to the next and Tala reproduced the new and smaller pattern. She tugged on her own stitches and grunted in approval. She got up and walked to several other people working on their own pile of furs and showed them the new stitching. Gabrielle watched as they looked to her then back to their leader, obviously asking questions.

Tala nodded and the small group came over to sit with her. They waited expectantly. Tala returned to her seat and gestured for Gabrielle to show them what she'd showed her. Gabrielle grinned. This was going better than she'd thought it would.

She showed them the better way to sew the tears in their clothing and then they each left to go practice what they'd learned. By midday, Gabrielle had finished with the pile of furs next to her legs and returned the bone needle to its dish. She arched her back and heard a couple pops. Then her stomach growled loudly.

Tala looked up from her work. "Why you not go eat food?"

Gabrielle looked around. "Well, in New Gaia, everyone gathers for lunch, the meal in the middle of the day, and I didn't see anyone do that yet, so I was waiting," she explained.

"My people eat when hungry. Not wait for others hungry," Tala told her.

"They don't wait for others to be hungry," Gabrielle corrected.

"My people don't wait for others to be hungry," Tala dutifully repeated.

"But I've seen your whole tribe come together to eat in the morning and again at night."

"Morning new day. My people strong together. Day. My people strong alone. Night end day. My people strong together," Tala explained.

Gabrielle nodded her head in understanding and got up to feed herself. She went to where she'd seen Tala retrieve the fruit and nuts and ate her fill before returning to Tala's side. Tala had finished with the rest of her furs and was working on shaping spearheads with a hand-sized rock.

Gabrielle watched her for a few minutes and then picked up a shaping stone and a rock to work on and started chipping away. It took her awhile to really get the rhythm of it, but once she got into the groove, it was quite satisfying work. After a few hours, Tala switched to carving out a spearthrower, an atlatl Gabrielle had heard it called in an archaeology book she'd read one Summer.

It started with a stick, about the length of her arm, sliced down the middle, so that it had a flat side. Then the flat side was grooved and one end turned into a hook where the end of the spear could be lodged. By using the atlatl for leverage, a spear could be thrown much harder and farther than one could by just gripping the shaft and propelling it by hand.

Gabrielle used her stone knife to shave out a tapering groove on the flat side of her stick. She deepened the groove at one end to provide purchase for the end of a spear handle. Tala frequently glanced over at her work and nodded her approval. They worked mostly in silence until sunset.

The whole tribe gathered for dinner, sitting in groups of a dozen or so, and they all ate in peaceable silence, though a couple people kept looking at Gabrielle and then laughing. Gabrielle glanced over to where Tala was sitting at what could be considered the head of their group. Tala shrugged her shoulders.

Gabrielle rose to her feet, setting her food on the ground, and used her minuscule command of their language.

"Why are you laughing?" she asked.

The two immediately stopped their snickering and became serious. The one who seemed to be the leader of the two comedians rose to his feet and replied in his native tongue.

"You are too small to be a great fighter, as Tala has proclaimed you to be."

Gabrielle thought over the options she had. Judging by Tala's attitude, she was on her own to solve this particular dilemma. She saw she basically had two choices. She could take the insults and sit back down, essentially giving the impression that they were right. Or, she could challenge both of them to a fight and prove that Tala had spoken the truth. Put that way, there really was no choice.

Gabrielle walked around the center fire and stood in front of the rude duo.

"Fight me. Both of you."

She looked to Tala and saw the tribal leader grin. The couple got up and walked a short ways from the group and Gabrielle followed them. They squared off.

Gabrielle let the adrenaline flow through her limbs and bounced slightly on the balls of her feet and waited. She didn't have to wait very long. They both attacked at the same time and as she dodged one, she kneed the other in the stomach. He crumpled and she turned to take on the second one.

The woman charged and Gabrielle twisted out of the way, following through with a knife hand strike to the back of her neck as she went by. The man she'd kneed had gotten back to his feet and he tackled her, sending her to the ground, but she rolled and flipped him over so that she landed on top of him. She punched him once just above the bridge of his nose and he went out like a light.

Gabrielle got back to her feet a second later and looked around for the woman, but she was still unconscious on the ground from the neck chop. Gabrielle was surprised when she heard cheers rise up around her from the spectators. She listened and caught parts of the animated conversations, as everyone repeated to each other what they'd just seen, commenting again and again how great the 'daughter of the sun' was.

Tala stepped over to her and nodded her head in satisfaction. "You are incredible," she told the small, but very capable, woman.

Gabrielle accepted the compliment with a smile and returned to her seat to finish her meal. This time, Tala sat next to her.

It was soon time to turn in and Gabrielle followed Tala to her hut. Tala undressed immediately and waited for Gabrielle to begin her nightly routine. Gabrielle finished stripping down to her shirt and then brushed out the woman's hair. There were more tangles in it this time and Gabrielle suspected Tala of mussing up her hair on purpose to make the brushing take longer.

Finally, she finished and listened to the low purring sound Tala was making in the back of her throat. One of these days she was going to have to figure out how Tala did that. She laid her brush aside and settled back into the bed. Tala pulled the cover furs up to their chests, but made no move to completely lie down, choosing instead to prop her body up on her right elbow as she positioned herself to watch Gabrielle.

"What is 'love'?" she asked.

Gabrielle sighed. "It's hard to explain," she started. Then she had an idea. "How do people choose each other in your tribe? I saw several couples today. The big man with the scar on his cheek always seemed to be with the woman with the wide leather band across her forehead." She described the features by demonstrating with her hands, a single index finger along her left cheek for the scar, and three fingers drawn across her forehead for the leather band. "There was also the woman as big as you, but her hair was lighter and she spent the whole day with the man that wore the long tooth necklace. Are they together?" she asked.

"Dasan is the big man with the scar. Etana choose him. He fight all others for Etana. He strong strong. Others strong. Etana choose him," Tala explained. "Oray is the man wore tooth necklace. He fight big sharp claws. Big sharp claws fight strong. Dyani fight big sharp claws. Dyani kill big sharp claws. Oray choose Dyani."

Gabrielle decided to try to explain the workings of her own people's customs. "Among my people, one chooses to be with another because they love each other." She realized after she'd said it that she really hadn't explained anything.

"What is 'love'?" Tala asked once again.

"It's a feeling inside," and she pointed to Tala's chest. "When you love someone, it fills you up with a wonderful feeling."

Tala looked even more confused than when they'd first started.

"It fills you up with an incredible feeling," Gabrielle changed her wording, hoping it was just the lack of comprehension of what 'wonderful' meant.

There was no change in Tala's expression.

"I really don't know how to explain it. Why don't we just go to sleep?" Gabrielle offered.

Tala was still clearly unsatisfied, but she repositioned herself for sleep and drew Gabrielle into her arms. Gabrielle listened as Tala's breathing mellowed out and let the natural rhythm lull her to sleep as well. Just before she drifted off, she heard Tala whisper, "Mine."