Gestures, part 4

[frogs_of_war]

Although I only work two days this week (one of them tomorrow), I feel like my week is speeding by. I feel like I'm not getting anything done, but I have written a chapter plus of Harmonies, two of three parts of the second section of Trifecta, and 2k words of the second Wings story typed in. And I still have four hours before anyone gets home.


Title: Gestures
Status: Part 4 of 10
Genre: science fiction, romance, slash
Rating: PG (13?)
Content: showmanship, presents, a rest, a huge cat, singing, forest, grasslands, a river, hills, a clue, eerie villages, fun, friends, blood, pelt, Hunter, comfort, sleep
Length: about 4,500 words
Summary: Colt and Lion set off on their quest to find Orion with Python as their guide.

Masterlist


The next morning Colt sat by the women as he finished the last bit of the belt. Lion had not asked his grandfather about leaving yet. Maybe Colt would have time to finish it.

Voices rose and people got to their feet. Colt stood up to keep from being stepped on. Grandfather grunted and crossed his arms. Colt followed his gaze. People stepped aside as Python strode into the village with a fur flung over his shoulder and his fist around the last of the lei, a few broken flowers still clinging to the string. “Lion.”

Grandfather scowled. “Not Lion.”

Python beat his breast. “Lion.”

“No.”

“Yes.” Python tossed down the flowers and crushed them under his foot. “Lion.” Python touched his chest. “Lion home. Python home.”

Grandfather growled. “Lion not woman. Lion not mate man.”

Python pointed a finger at Colt. The people between then stepped aside. “Not Man?”

Grandfather scowled harder.

Python threw out his arms. “Lion mate Horse. Lion mate Python.” He gestured with almost every word with movements too close to his chest for Colt to see, but they must be important because Grandfather’s eyes never left them.

Lion stepped out from between two buildings. Python turned to him. “Lion.”

He laid the pelt across Lion’s shoulders like Lion had done for him with the lei the evening before. Then he spoke with words and gestures about big cats and a bigger, better pelt that would win Lion’s heart. He was leaving today for the mountains and would not return without his prize. He would steal Lion’s heart from whoever held it and steal his body from wherever he slept and whoever he slept with. Python would win.

And then he disappeared into the forest.

The language was very poetic to watch. Colt should pay more attention to the gestures. That was where all the nuance seemed to be.

People gathered around Lion and touched his arms and chest and petted the fur. They exclaimed over its softness and thickness and how well it was tanned. Then they turned to Colt.

But before he could truly panic over what to say, Grandfather cleared his throat. “Dawn. Lion Horse go. Find Star. Find Hunter. Pack. Rest. Leave.”

The women tossed complaints at Grandfather, but he could not be swayed.

Lion sat down beside Colt and showed off the pelt without removing it from his shoulder. Then he rubbed the soft fur against Colt’s cheek and smiled.

—

Colt followed Lion down the path. He was tired already and the sun wasn’t all the way up yet. “Rest.”

Lion shook his head. “Soon. Python.”

Colt sighed. If his lover was close, he’d be impatient to see him too. Colt stopped for a second to catch his breath then trudged on.

—

Python appeared on the path beside them without a sound. All those thuds must have been for effect. Python touched the pelt he’d given Lion, which was tucked into the belt Colt had finished the evening before. Then he touched the belt with a frown and a question grunt.

Lion smiled. “Horse.”

Python scowled and then leapt into a tree and jumped to the next and the one after it. Lion followed along on the ground. Colt wasn’t getting any rest today.

—

Python was a great hunter, even better than Lion. Lion, who Colt hadn’t seen near the cook fire except to drop off meat or pick up food, cooked very well. Colt filled his belly every night and enough food was left over for their breakfast.

Python took first watch. He scowled when Lion curled up beside Colt.

Colt would just as soon take watch, if just so Lion would snuggle against Python for a few hours, but when he tried, Python stayed up anyway.

Someday, maybe, Python would trust him.

—

Python stopped suddenly with his palms down. Colt had quickly learned that meant stop and be quiet. Python climbed over fallen trees and through brush making less noise than a mouse. Lion leaned against a tree, relaxed but ready to move at a moment’s notice. Colt’s feet hurt, but he didn’t want to get caught sitting when Python came back.

He found his own tree to lean against.

Python appeared, scowling. He made the gestures for quiet and then to follow. He wasn’t wearing his knapsack. Colt lifted his. Python pointed ahead and up. His knapsack was in a tree. Lion reached up and set his beside it. Colt’s, with Lion’s help, went on a nearby branch.

Then they followed Python for what felt like forever being as quiet as possible.

Even the birds were silent. That was a bad sign, wasn’t it?

Python scurried up a tree that had grown nearly level with the ground Colt stood on, but then the ground fell away. Python impatiently gestured for them to follow.

The bark of the tree was thin and came off in giant flakes wherever it was touched. The leaves were small, but numerous. Python stopped, leaned against a branch, and pointed.

Colt waited until he felt secure before looking up. He was glad he had. Before him paced the biggest cat he’d ever seen. Even the ones he’s seen in picture books had not been that big. Its shoulder was probably higher than Python’s head. They would just be gulps to it. And it was so close Colt could hear its purr.

The cat paced around its fallen prey several times then it lifted the deer like creature by its broken neck and bounded away.

Python grinned. “Gone. Feed mate. Feed young. Fur.” He touched Lion’s arm. “Fur Lion.”

Lion could make a coverall out of the pelt with more than enough left over for boots and a hat.

Lion grinned at Python. Did he actually think Python could take down a cat that size? Or did he think they could take it down together?

That would be a story to tell once Colt got off this planet.

They walked back to their packs. Python shimmied up the tree. Lion reached up and grabbed his bag. Python threw Colt’s bag at him. “Cat, Lion.”

And he grinned like he knew Colt could not give Lion anything half so wonderful.

Colt was ready to concede the point. “Cat. Mountain?”

Python laughed. “Grandfather not know. Grandfather not know mountain. Grandfather not know cat. Cat Lion go. Python find Star. Find cat. Get fur. Home.”

He laughed again and leapt from the tree. As he stood up, Lion leaned down and kissed him on the lips.

Python jumped back and covered his mouth.

What was the big deal? Hadn’t Lion and Python been doing more than that that night with the flowers.

He turned his back on them. His feet needed a break. He tried very hard not to listen. Only by trying to remember the words to his favorite songs did he drowned out Python insisting they not kiss until he’d won Lion completely and Lion saying that he’d already won Lion’s heart. Singing the words aloud helped.

Colt turned at a touch on his shoulder. The other two were ready to go. Lion asked what Colt had sung and Colt spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to translate songs about love and betrayal and war in places night clubs and star cruisers and office buildings.

These people didn’t even have the concept of work, as far as Colt could tell. Everyone did what they could to help the village survive. And how could he explain betrayal when he didn’t have the words for lie.

They had to have a word for betrayal. People were people everywhere. And they had to have the concept of sex without commitment. Maybe if Colt could somehow explain that although he’d like the idea of a night or several with Lion, he in no way wished for a long term relationship with him, maybe Python would ease up on the hate.

But then again maybe he wouldn’t.

—

Three days later the forest turned to grassland. Two days after that they reached a huge river. They followed it up into the hills. Python was glad. Cats in the hills had thicker fur.

The climb was arduous, but Python hopped rock to rock like a mountain goat and Lion’s long strides ate up the landscape, no matter how rocky. Colt didn’t complain. Lion and Python wouldn’t have understood him. He saved his breath for climbing.

This trip was going to make him fitter than he’d ever been in his life. Of course Colt’s mother would keep him home and feed him up the moment she saw him again. And he’d lose the muscle on his next long space trip.

Maybe the one when he took Orion home. Orion’s family lived far away.

But… would Orion want to go home? Colt couldn’t very well drag Orion halfway across the planet to the skipper if Orion didn’t want to go.

Mr. Robertson told Colt to try his best to persuade Orion, but if Colt didn’t had a good job and a family he loved that relied on his income and he’d found a willing guy on some far flung planet who wasn’t already in love with someone else, he could be talked into staying for a year or five or twenty.

Maybe Orion had found love among the natives.

Colt sighed. Maybe he could bring a note from Orion back with him. He didn’t expect to get paid for this trip. The Santiago’s had a lot of money because they never spent it, even when they promised payment. At least when that promise was to a boy who didn’t give the answer they wanted to hear.

Colt sure hoped Orion wasn’t like the rest of his family.

—

A man steeped out of the trees in front of Lion and demanded… something. Lion looked at Python. Python scowled and thumped his chest, speaking quietly, but firmly. The exchange went on. Python clearly had the upper hand. As the man turned away, Python smiled. “Man hair sun. Three day hill. One day water. Two day jungle.”

So Orion was less than a week away. If the blond in question was Orion.

“Village?” asked Lion.

“Hide Village. Hide people. Not brave.”

Lion made the question sound.

Python laughed. “Big people not brave. Little people,” he put a hand on his chest, “big brave.”

Lion agreed Python was very brave. So did Colt. Python walked the planet like he owned it.

“Big man no brave. Woman stay. Man go. No man see woman. Big man hide woman.”

Lion smiled. “Grandfather young. Grandfather hide woman. Grandmother not hide. Grandmother go. See. Do.”

Python nodded. “Brave woman. Hide woman not brave.”

So was this village made up of one man with many wives hidden away or several men and their hidden wives? In a land like this Colt couldn’t imagine one man supporting his wife and children without help, much less several wives and a score of children.

But then every village he’d come across had been different, so maybe the right environment and if by hide that meant that the women could come and go from a large but limited space.

Still, it would be crazy to try that with the lives of people you loved at stake.

—

Three days of hill climbing brought them not to a river, but to an empty village. The houses were mud and twigs with grass roofs. Where did the grass grow? Back across the other big river? At the one ahead?

Colt sat down near where the cook fire should have been burning while Lion and Python explored. Python ran out of a hut, holding a bloody rag. He stared at the ground as he walked between the huts then he pointed at a soft piece of earth and the edge of a print that must have, when whole, been wider across than Lion’s out stretched fingers. “Cat.”

Lion leaned over Python’s shoulder. “Cat back?”

Python shook his head. And he must have been sure because they made camp right there in the deserted village. They slept in a bed that probably belonged to someone who was dead. Colt started at every sound all night long and he was glad to put his back to the village the next morning.

The river wasn’t far away and it was more of a stream: wide, but not very deep. Colt barely got his knees wet crossing it.

A village sat on the other side of the river. The women and children stopped what they were doing and watched without saying anything. The whole scene was eerie.

Colt wanted to get out of the village as soon as he could. He missed the days of bringing gifts and being welcomed like a friend. But Python would not be rushed.

The villagers’ eyes followed them out of the village. Colt wanted to run and get out fast, but Python didn’t even speed up as they walked into the jungle. Two children peeked out from one of the trees. Lion reached into the tree and plucked a juicy yellow fruit. One child squawked and Lion passed him the fruit. The child stared at it. A younger girl took it from Lion’s hand.

The boy scolded her, but she stood up for herself.

Python laughed and the children disappeared into the trees. “Wait. Pick. Eat.”

The children didn’t come back. Python shimmed up the tree and tossed Lion a fruit. Lion took a bite and juice gushed down his chin. Colt laughed. He needed a break from all the tension those watching eyes had given him. Python threw him a fruit. He took a bite. The fruit was sweet and warm and just a bit spicy. Lion’s eyes widened and he licked his lips while staring at Colt’s mouth and stepped toward Colt. Colt laughed and raced around a tree, but Lion caught him and licked the juice off his chin. Python growled and jumped on Lion’s back. Lion pull him off, stuffed his fruit into Python’s mouth, and then kissed and licked Python’s face. Colt reached as high as he could and touched the lowest fruit. The juice dripped down his arm, but he got it. The fruit was delicious.

Python got away from Lion and stole a bite of Colt’s fruit. Lion caught him again between giggles and laughter, but Python leaped into a tree and shimmed out of Lion’s reach.

Colt was a boy again, not a man with a mission or a breadwinner for his family or a kid on a quest. He was the boy he hadn’t been since his father died.

Python pelted Lion and Colt with fruit and was pelted in return. He nearly fell out of the tree laughing.

A gruff voice sound loud behind them and Colt jumped. A Hunter, too young to be a grandfather, but a man worthy of authority, scolded them. A big cat was in the area. A cat that ate people. They should be on guard.

Python had shown no sign of surprise at the man’s appearance. Even playing around, he kept an eye out for danger.

Python hopped down from the tree without his normal thud. He bowed respectfully, something that Colt had never seen him do before.

The man grunted and walked away. Python picked up his pack and walked down the path the opposite way that the man had gone.

Twenty paces later he turned and grinned. He had two ripe fruit in his hand. He took a bite out of one and passed the other to Lion. Then he took another bite and passed the half eaten fruit to Colt. He wrapped a sticky arm over Colt’s shoulder and walked on. “Quest good.”

Colt nodded. “Good.”

Colt took a bite of fruit. Juice gushed down his chin, but the stickiness didn’t matter. He was among friends.

—

Python led them to a watering hole. Either he’d been here before or he was following some signs Colt hadn’t noticed. But despite the hot sun drying the sticky fruit juice to their skin and the beautiful, clear water in reach, Python made no move to clean up. He circled the deep place in the stream, looking on the ground and into the trees and stopped to listen every few feet. Then he declared the water safe. He would stand first watch.

Colt emptied his pockets into his bag then wading into the water in his clothes. They were as dirty as he was.

After his clothes were thoroughly drenched, he pulled them off and left them on a sunny rock. He had no soap, so he rubbed river sand on his skin. Once he got home, he was going to need a long, hot shower. And a shave. He did what he could with his knife.

When Lion didn’t join him, Colt climbed onto a rock. He pretended like he didn’t notice the approving glances, but his body noticed, which would have been embarrassing if his companions hadn’t been in the same predicament.

Lion stood up and took off his clothes. He was a sight to see. Then he slid into the water. He was still the man to watch, but Colt had to retreat from the sun before it burnt him. He reluctantly put his damp clothes back on.

An undulating roar echoed through the tiny valley. Lion scrambled out of the water and tied on his loin cloth then stuffed his belt and pelt into his satchel.

Colt picked up his bag. Would he have to run? Was running from a man-eating animal that might weigh more than the three of them combined even possible?

Python held his hand flat and cocked his head. His eyes never left the forest. He nodded and pointed then led Lion and Colt to the top of a ridge. He had them wait while he scouted. He returned a moment later. A Hunter was battling a huge cat and losing. Colt was to climb a tree and call out if the cat left the clearing.

Python pointed out the tree he wanted Colt in, which was much too close to the cat for comfort. Lion gave him a boost into the lower branches. Then they disappeared leaving Colt all alone with a much better view of the creature than he wanted. The huge cat circled the wounded man only a tree length away. Lion stepped into the clearing with a twig crack. The cat turned to look. Lion was tall and broad. The cat moved, keeping Lion and the Hunter both in view, but it hadn’t counted on small, quick, fearless Python.

The cat bled from the neck after Python’s first attack and then from its back thigh, foreleg, and head. The cat just couldn’t keep up with him and keep Lion and the Hunter in sight.

The Hunter gestured to Python and Python ran to him. He came away with a long knife on a stick.

Lion circled the clearing. The cat dove at him, but Python intervened and the cat ran itself up on Python’s spear. Its death screams were horrible and the blood… Colt had never seen so much blood.

Python didn’t wait for the cat to stop twitching before he pulled out his knife and skinned it.

Colt turned away as best he could in the tree and tried to breathe normally. He was not cut out for this life or this planet.

“Horse,” Lion called up to him. “Help.”

Lion had better not be asking for help with the skinning.

Lion gestured Colt over to the wounded Hunter. Colt sacrificed his undershirt he was wearing and his spare to make bandages. The man was awake and talking so he couldn’t be as badly hurt as he looked.

The Hunter, Kite, was from a nearby village, not more than a day away. The village had heard of a man killer and several of their best men had gone out, but by nightfall the village had new widows and orphans. Kite had gone out today to see if he could find signs of the party. The men who had returned had run away, leaving the two to be eaten by the cat. Kite had proof.

Kite’s stomach rumbled. Python, still dealing with the hide, sent Lion and Colt to find food. No other predator would be around with the cat in the area. Still they were careful. They foraged, but could find no meat. All the animals were hiding.

They built a fire in the clearing and ate fruit and roots. Python sighed and stood up from his bloody work then disappeared into the forest. He came back before the others were done with their portions, wet, but blood-free with several small rodents. The cat was off limits. One did not an animal that had eaten people.

Colt was glad. His stomach was queasy enough already. He distracted himself by singing a lullaby about the stars.

When he finished Kite asked where they were from. Colt said he was from beyond the stars. Kite, leaning against a fallen log, sat up straighter and then grabbed his side and sank back down. He knew someone like that. Someone with hair like the sun.

Colt could hardly sit still. Was he close to the end of his quest? Was this Orion? He had a hard time sleeping. Lion rolled away from him complaining he wiggled too much. Colt was sandy-eyed in the morning.

Colt used that as an excuse not to watch as Python rolled up the huge pelt. Once it was a tube, with fur on the outside, it wasn’t so gross. He even took a turn carrying an end when he wasn’t being a shoulder for Kite to lean on. During frequent rests, Colt asked Kite about this sun man.

Kite said the sun man was the lover of the biggest Hunter in the village. He couldn’t find edible food, was always saying things that didn’t make sense when they could understand him at all, and couldn’t climb a tree, but he could get water from the air and sharpen any kind of knife and make things that burned hotter than wood and was always thinking up new, better ways to do things.

Colt sighed. If Orion had a home and a love and a place of his own, why would he want to leave it?

The two day trek to the village was both too long and too short. Colt’s crush on Orion was a decade old. Now, presumably, he was going to meet his hero. What would he find?

Lion, who had carried the heavy, stinking pelt most of the way, gave it back to Python as they neared the village.

People appeared and took over letting Kite lean on them.

In the center of the village, Kite was set at a place of honor and Python spread his pelt at Kite’s feet. More people came out of their huts. Lion, Colt, and Python were served cool drinks as Kite told his story.

In the midst of Python attacking the cat, a small blond man wandered out of a nearby hut. He blinked several times in the light of the setting sun and walked up to Kite. “Do you have any news?”

The man spoke in Donovan Station dialect of Aria, which Colt rarely came across on any place his skipper could get him to. Most planets spoke dialects of Trade, including the Deresla star system.

The villagers sighed, but one woman wrung her hands. “Bark?”

Kite sighed. “Dead.”

He pressed a beaded necklace into the woman’s hand and passed the other, this one with lots of sharp teeth and colorful glass marbles, to Orion.

Orion held the necklace against his chest. “I knew he was dead. If he were alive he’d have come back to me.”

Then he turned and trudged away.

Several of the villagers spoke at once. Kite lifted both his hands, his palm forward. “Listen. Listen. Know truth.”

Colt turned and followed Orion. This was Orion, wasn’t he? He had the blond hair, now to the middle of his back. His skin had lost its never-see-the-sun-paleness of someone raised on a space station, but was still paler than the other villagers. But most of all, he didn’t have the face and body of a not-quite-grown teenager. His shoulders were broader and his body had filled out. But then it would have in the intervening years.

Colt stopped in the hut’s doorway. Orion sat on a pile of palm fronds and looked up at Colt. “What am I going to do now? I can’t even feed myself. I can’t kill anything and I can’t with any success remember which plants are safe to eat. Even the children laugh at me. I will die without him. They only take care of me because Jaguar asked them too. Without him I am nothing.”

Colt fell to his knees. “Orion?”

Orion looked up.

“Orion,” Colt said in Orion’s native tongue, “you aren’t nothing.”

Orion smiled and wrapped his arms around Colt. “Do you know how long it’s been since anyone called me that name? Orion Felix Donovan Maximus Zane Santiago. He died years ago.”

Colt reached up and touched Orion’s cheek. “He’s not dead. He’s right here in my arms.”

Orion lifted his lips to Colt’s. The world fell away. This man, who could talk and understand Colt, mattered much more than the people outside talking easily in their incomprehensible language.

Orion was warm and inviting and very demanding. He wanted it hard and fast. But Colt had had his crush for years. He didn’t want to treat Orion like company for one night on a planet Colt didn’t plan on returning to.

Colt didn’t give in, no matter how many times Orion begged him to just get on with it. This might be Colt’s only chance to touch Orion. He didn’t want his fantasy-come-true to be over quickly. He touched and sucked and licked and kissed and asked for attention in return and when the right time finally came to be surrounded by Orion, he didn’t slam to the finish although he had to recite the table of elements with their atomic weights and values and chemical properties to stave it off.

When he felt Orion crest, Colt rode the wave after him.

Orion lay limply against him. “I’ve never… I’ve never felt… anything… like that… before.”

Colt leaned forward and kissed Orion’s sweaty forehead, “Neither have I. But you’re worth it.”

Orion sighed and cuddled closer. Colt closed his eyes. He’d had a very long day.