Supper At My Fire
He was eating a piece of bosk meat in the Tuchuk fashion, holding the meat in his left hand and between his teeth, and cutting pieces from it with a quiva scarcely a quarter inch from his lips, then chewing the severed bite and then again holding the meat in his hand and teeth and cutting again. Without speaking I sat down near him and watched him eat.Then we sat there together for a time, not speaking further, he eating, I watching while he cut and chewed the meat that was his supper. There was a fire nearby, but it was not his fire. The wagon over his head was not his wagon. There was no kaiila tethered at hand. As far as I could gather, Harold had little more than the clothes on his back, a boskhide robe, his weapons and his supper.
"You will be slain in Turia," said Harold, finishing his meat and wiping his mouth in Tuchuk fashion on the back of his right sleeve. (Nomads of Gor)
I returned the next day for the Weaver as planned, to the First Wagons. But not before I'd tethered Necessity to one of the larger wheels and stopped to assist the other men there with building the fire. In the meantime, Sakmeta was there as well, chatting up some other Year Keeper named Laverne, I think. I cannot recall with any clarity... which is strange.
"Do you know her?" The Bead Maker had asked after Laverne left.
"No, I do not."
"Maybe next time she will tell us a story." And already she was offering to cook for those of the First Wagons. This after inferring that the Weaver had no place at 'our' wagons just yesterday. Was this to imply that she was my woman? I do not begin to understand
the Bead Maker, but after she remarked with a certain hopefulness that the other Year Keeper would tell us a story, I replied...
"That would require listening."
It was then that Aiyana appeared with a basket of meat and other offerings. She looked briefly confused... thinking perhaps I'd changed my mind, and she wondered whether she ought to get her own pot and begin cooking. There. At the First Fire.
"Oh," I grinned, gesturing for her to come. "Not here, Aiyana. But at my fire." I carried her things for her too, all the way back to the camp of wagons where my own were parked.
