Free Vision of Love by Xssa Annella

Chapter One
     
     
     
    “What are you doing?”
    The voice. It’s Redbush. I didn’t hear him approach. Today his skin glistens with a sheen of sweat, the sun striking him from behind, as though it too loves the shape of his body, the graceful curves of his legs under his loincloth.
    I stare at him, a shy maiden.
    “Don’t give me that. You are as talkative as bluejay.” His tone is humorous.
    “At least you didn’t compare me to a crow,” I say with a sigh. His eyes see through to my inner heat, making me squirm while I gaze at him. I love to admire him.
    “Why the sigh?” he asks. He sets his bow down and squats beside me. His muscles ripple like the sides of a deer. His chin looks as hard as the rock I am sitting on, which is far enough away not to be found by any of my tribe—or so I had thought.
    And yet he is here. Great.
    “I was thinking. I wish for the makings of a new dress. I would sacrifice this one to the gods, but then, what would I wear while waiting for the answer?” My dress is hideous. The wooden beads are broken and worn, the hem frayed. I feel the material for wear, especially across the chest where the decorations are falling off. The buckskin fringe is worn and cracked from too many washings, dancing unevenly under my fingers.
    “Would they listen to you?” He laughs.
    I don’t hit him because secretly, I have always had a feeling for Redbush—as in, I have a feeling declaring my love for him would make him laugh. I’m too shy to talk to him much, ever since he turned more desirable to the young girls of the tribe than any other male in the tribe. His red-fletched arrows stick up above his right shoulder. He carries no meat, I notice.
    “How was the hunt?” I ask, avoiding his question. Do the gods listen to women? I finger a rip at a seam of my dress, the one that connects the shoulder to the sleeve. Grandpa used to say if I made a sacrifice they might talk to me, a woman. He knew because he was a great shaman, and his wife had told him to tell the gods she would give anything for a son, but he hadn’t. When she’d become pregnant, he’d known they’d heard her. When his wife had died during childbirth, he’d known they had taken something. My mother had told me not to listen to Grandpa, to only pretend to listen. But I’d listened.
    “Did you catch anything?” I ask.
    “It was a good hunt. I stopped to watch clouds, to see their beauty. I missed the rabbit.” His voice is casual, that of a man confident in himself.
    I laugh. “Beauty?” I love clouds, but only the dark grey ones, the stormbringers with their many shades of grey, the troubled ones.
    I pull a thread, a long piece of sinew, and the dress unravels slowly, the arm coming loose. Fine. But then the chest starts to fall away and I freeze, holding the thread taut.
    From the corner of my eye, I see Redbush watching intently.
    The air is cold on my breast—cold and delicious like a quick dip in a still lake during summer. My breasts are half covered by shadow, the tops peeking out like sloping mountains, the nipples just hidden by the folded, stiff hide.
    “Maybe you should sacrifice something after all,” he says in a husky voice. He pulls on the sinew, his fingers so firm on mine. When did he grab the tie? I wonder dizzily, even as I watch the thread slide. I hear the gentle puffs of material ripping. I can smell Redbush, so close, a scent of pines and male. He pulls until the thread is free in his hand, dangling.
    My dress falls away on one side, my left breast exposed. The nipple contracts from the cold. I let the sleeve slide off my arm and drop to the grassy ground.
    “What will you do now?” he asks me, dipping his head closer.
    I want to run. Whoop. Jump in a lake. Huddle by a fire. What is this strange sensation inside me, filling me? It’s not hot, but it’s not cold. It’s yearning, but also trepidation, and a deep sense of something potent and old. In my dreams that I tell to no one, this was