Abigail's Moon Calendar
The women of the Wagon Peoples, incidentally, keep a calendar based on the phases of Gor's largest moon, but this is a calendar of fifteen moons, named for the fifteen varieties of bosk, and functions independently of the tallying of years by snows. For example, the Moon of the Brown Bosk may at one time occur in the winter, at another time, years later, in the summer. This calendar is kept by a set of colored pegs set in the sides of some wagons, on one of which, depending on the moon, a round, wooden plate bearing the image of a bosk is fixed. (Nomads of Gor)
"You need a cooking pot," Sakmeta stated to me.
"Why do I need a cooking pot?" I asked most incredulously. "Cooking pots are women's things!"
"You need a pot to cook in, Kazhuye. You are going to burn your fingers in the fire, and your vulo will slide off your blade."
She is not my woman, and yet she nags at me as if she is. She seems to believe this is some right of hers. Though I think it more along the lines of a priveldge I have neither given, nor she earned.
I did not hear Necessity sneak up behind me, which he is often fond of doing before lowering his head down and smacking me against my backside with his large cranium. Most people do not even realize that a kaiila is able to laugh. Not the way men laugh. But in a more insipid fashion.
It angered me when my vulo slid right off the blade and landed in the dirt. Not so much because Necessity stole my supper. But because that woman was simply gloating. I told you so, I told you so. She does not understand the first thing about men. Or kaiilas. And we have been just fine all these years without a woman's cooking pot!
I withdrew inside my wagon and shut the women out of my sight. But not without snatching up Abigail's calendar from it's perch above my wagon wheel. No new beaded pegs this year... though I'm sure she smiled all the same from her final resting place, proud that I still remind her so much of my Pa.
