Free Aftershocks: Ice Planet Barbarians: A Slice of Life Short Story by Ruby Dixon Page A

fur and then sets him down on his favorite blanket. He crawls about, reaching for a carved bone toy and then pops it into his mouth, biting it.
    “Do you think you can watch him a little longer?” Har-loh asks. “I need to keep working on the computer. It’s a puzzle I can’t quite figure out and it’s bothering me.” Her reddish brows pull together. “It’s like there’s something missing that I’m just not getting.”
    “Missing?” I offer her another chunk of food.
    She takes it with a dreamy expression, chewing slow. Her thoughts are clearly with the com-pyew-tor. “The dates are all wrong. I just…I don’t know. It’s a hunch I have. Everything says that the sa-khui have been here for almost three hundred years, but when I crunch outside data, it just doesn’t add up.”
    “Do what you need,” I tell her. “Rukhar and I will work on the skins.”
    Her mouth twitches with amusement. “He’ll help you like he did yesterday?”
    I grunt. My son is too curious. Instead of staying on his blankets, he gets into things. Yesterday, he got into the bowls of offal that I use to tan a hide. I recently learned this from Hemalo and wished to create a soft blanket for my mate for the brutal season. All of the furs I know how to make are tough, scraped clean but not very soft. Hemalo’s hides are soft like my mate’s skin. I want the best for her.
    But now that Rukhar has spilled all of my tanning fluids, I must figure out another way to make the hides soft. I do not want to waste them. “I will work despite Rukhar’s help.”
    Har-loh’s peals of laughter echo in the strange cave. She gets to her feet, and I do, too. Her arms go around my neck and she leans in close, her eyes soft in the way that makes my cock ache. “Maybe after we put him to bed, you can give me a tour of the furs.”
    I like that thought. “I can put him to bed now.”
    She giggles at my teasing and gives me a kiss. “I will leave you two to your work, and get back to my projects.”
    I brush her arm as she goes, desperate to touch my mate again. Sometimes it is difficult to let her work when all I want to do is grab her and pull her leathers off her body until she is naked and under me. I rub absently at my own bare chest, glad that we are away from the tribe and I am free to dress how I please—in not much more than a loincloth.
    “Da da!” Rukhar calls out and raises his arms for me.
    “I am here,” I tell him, and heft him into my arms. My son. Did I think my life was not complete without my mate? I feel the same fierce love for my small son, but in a different way. He is my heart, just like my Har-loh is.
    My ‘heart’ gurgles at me and slaps a hand on my jaw. “Da-da!”
    “Da-da work now,” I agree, tucking him under my arm. “Come. We make leather.”

    * * *
    W orking with a small kit underfoot is not much work at all. Rukhar has a soft blanket that I place him on for him to play while I scrape the large dvisti skin I have stretched out in the snow. Since I do not have the brains and guts of the creature, I have been rubbing the skin with fat and then scraping it to try to soften it…in between retrieving Rukhar. My son is now crawling and uses every opportunity to race away.
    I retrieve him out of a nearby snow drift and place him on his blanket again. It is a game he likes to play. He crawls away, and I put him back. He crawls away. I put him back. He crawls away. I put him back. Rukhar finds it fun.
    And even though I cannot get much work done on the skins, I also cannot be mad when he smiles up at me, mouth full of drool and his gums punctuated by two small, crooked fangs.
    “Stay for a little while,” I tell him again. “We play game later.” The suns will be going down soon, and I will have to pack up my projects and bring them back inside the cave. It is a messy task and so I do it outside, in the snow a short distance away from the cave entrance.
    I sit down at my skin.
    Rukhar immediately crawls