better would be if it was coffee, but it’s plainly neither that nor tea.
I smile, which I seem to be doing a lot lately. “I think I can guess what that is. How long does it take to make?”
He shrugs. “About a week. This part is almost done. It’s the drying that takes time.”
“Same as with me. I mean, with my experiments.”
He smirks. “Getting you to dry out would probably take years.”
The look in his dark eyes and the ambiguous words have the tingles starting again, down below.
“Probably,” I agree. “If it’s even possible. I hope I never find out.”
“So do I,” he rumbles, and his loincloth twitches dangerously. “I shall make it my mission to see to it that you never run dry.”
I laugh. “Easiest mission you ever had.”
He takes a leaf and scoops hot stew onto it, then hands it to me along with one of the wooden spoons we brought from the village. “And the most pleasant.”
“Oh, you have no idea.”
We eat lunch sitting there, me resting my leaf on his knee, just chatting about nothing in particular. I’ve rarely felt better, certainly not on Xren. Now I have a mission, I have a safe place, and I think I even have a boyfriend. A real one. And a better one than I thought could exist anywhere.
Brank’ox goes to toss the used leaves into the woods, and when he comes back and sits down, I lean into him and allow myself to just exist and relax completely.
“What was the best time you had in your life?” I ask, because if he’d asked me, this would be it.
“The best time? Difficult to say. There have been so many good moments recently. But I think last time we were here. You sleeping with your head in my lap. It was so obviously a blessing from the Ancestors.”
“That was nice, wasn’t it. And before then? I mean, before we met?”
He’s quiet for a while, just thinking. “The day I became Swordmaster.”
“Tell me.”
He changes his position, getting comfortable. “I had practiced for years. The other boys in the tribe would do like the fully grown warriors and relax the whole evening after the day’s hunting and working was at an end. But for me, the day was still young. I would take a heavy bar of pig iron and practice with it. It was much heavier than a sword, and in the beginning I had no sword of my own. I just thought that if I was used to handling that bar, my hand would have no trouble with a blade. I did this almost every day for years. Mostly alone, although sometimes other boys would join me. They soon tired. It is very exhausting. When I finally got my sword, it felt light in my hands. I remember laughing the first time I attended real sword practice and found it much easier than I had thought. The other boys struggled with the blade, while I could easily keep going until the instructor got tired of mock-fighting me. Even when I got my sword, I didn’t stop practicing with the bar. Some time later, my skill was such that they made me Swordmaster. The first in my tribe for twenty years. And the youngest. I was very proud.”
“As you should be,” I state and squeeze his thigh in support. “That kind of focus is rare. What is a Swordmaster, exactly?”
“A Swordmaster is a warrior who is deemed to fully master the sword. It sounds easy, but most warriors never get there. It’s the kind of thing that is hard to describe. I can’t explain what it means that someone masters the sword. But when you see it, you know it.”
I suddenly have a flash of intuition. That bossiness of his, that confidence… “Brank’ox. Are you the chief of your tribe?”
He’s quiet for three heartbeats. “Why do you ask?”
“Are you?”
He sighs. “I went to see your tribe because our own chief was clearly dying. He asked me to take over after him, to become the new chief. But I wanted to see the alien tribe first, to find out if all that was said about it was true and if it did in fact have a real purpose. After that visit, I only briefly returned to my old tribe to say goodbye to my former tribesmen and the old chief. He must be with the Ancestors now, and they are honored for having him among them. The tribe must have elected a