Page 16 of Betrothed to the Yeti

“Tell me about heating the stew again,” I ask just to watch her face brighten with pleasure at the memories.

“The tubers hold the warmth, so you get a burst of heat each time you bite down on them. The spices intensify. The meat falls apart on your tongue and the flavors—hmmm—they meld together,” she murmurs.

Her features loosen as she watches the contents of her dinner swirl in the melted snow. Gone is the worry and scorn that captured her heart. Watching her relax her guard is a bonus to eating something new. Could she have a temporary blackening of her spirit from the fight, or has she recovered? Will the distance from her sisters, the terrifying brothel, and Alpha release the love and happiness within her?

“What do you use for cold storage?” I almost miss her question because I’m lost in the domestic picture of Jaya cooking…cooking for us.

“What is this cold storage? I thought you hated the cold of Enceladus,” I say with suspicion. I wish my eyes didn’t narrow and give away my unease. We are getting along. Jaya finally shows me she contains the joy I wish to share with a human…

“In Alpha, we dig trenches in the snow to freeze meat until we can eat it. The meat lasts longer, and the hunters do not have to leave the safety of our walls as often. Your land isn’t contained in walls, so any predator can dig up your frozen meat. Do you keep your food under the temple? Wait, you can’t with the hot spring flowing beneath us.” She bounces from idea to idea, answering her own questions aloud between chews to her bottom lip. It’s just as well. She isn’t going to like my answer to her request for cold storage.

Goodbye, content Jaya.

“All the food I possess is in this kitchen—” Her dropping jaw sends my confidence crashing through the floor. Her outburst from the rotting seeds piled in the kitchen is a festering wound on our ragged truce. The bags are long emptied, but without knowing the cause of her outburst, I can only guess what bothered her about them.

“You store nothing!” She ends her statement with a feminine shriek and a stamp of her foot.

I breathe away the raking of her judgment on my pride. If I explain my frustration, she will yell. Her yelling could wake the darkness. With him so close to the surface, a screaming match would risk him emerging. I can’t help that the villagers bring gifts. They have for longer than Jaya has lived. Between the meals they leave for me and the animals I hunt on their behalf, I eat fresh meals every day. Why do I need cold storage? Who does she believe protects the cold storage of the villages?

Me. I’m the Protector of Humans!

“I eat what I hunt. I leave what’s too much for the scavengers. I taste the human meals, but they send more than I can consume—” I pause when she winces at my mention of not finishing the tribute meals. “Humans mixing materials, seasoning them, and roasting them is the problem.”

Her eyebrows raise at that. I extend my palm at her to let me finish.

“The scavengers won’t touch the food after such manipulation. Full meals don’t grow new plants. What am I supposed to do?”

“You should bring the meat to the villages or leave the carcasses of the beasts that you kill at their gates. With one of these tigers, a family will eat for a season. A village could feed everyone a meal,” she pleas. Tears clog her throat and croak between her words, but my heart soars. Doesn’t Alpha share meals as one? Would she see I’m not the enemy if she saw the shared feasts of Gamma, Beta, or Delta? With each use of “they,” “them,” and “their,” she cements herself at my side, instead of a resident of Alpha.

If she is over her initial fright and ready to commit, perhaps it’s time to share why I requested she live with me in the first place. “Come and let me show you what I know of Alpha—”

“Obviously, you would know more than me, the human…the human who grew up inside Alpha,” she says with sarcasm dripping from her words. Each acidic syllable stings. Bitter Jaya returned with the mention of Alpha.

My chin drops as the hope in my chest deflates. Is she a lost cause? What am I to do now? Contact the Seer? I want to love her, but is she too much for me?

“Look,” she says, sensing the pivot in my mood. “Give me time to put the extra meat somewhere, clean the kitchen, and clean myself, then I will look at what you want me to see…or if you wanted…let’s clean this together, bathe, and—”

“Thanks, Jaya,” I say before bouncing to my feet. “I will make more sense after you see the paintings.” I bound upstairs to my stack of portraits where I will wait for her. It isn’t until I reach the room where I locked her our first night that the unease from my belly reaches my brain. I have the sinking suspicion that I said or did something wrong to Jaya, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Jaya

Lazy. Furry Ass.

He’s all about protecting and nurturing humans until it comes to cleaning. I see red. He really thought I was offering to clean all this by myself while he sits idly? There’s no language barrier. He’s grown accustomed to his status as “Protector God” when he’s nothing more than a scarecrow from the Elders’ stories. Stands in the center of a field, looking scary…that’s Pabu.

No wonder he lives in a pig stye. The air is musty and borderline toxic from the rancid seeds spilled everywhere. I kept their bags, but they were stained with rot. The fibers are threaded with smelted crystals after they have run their energetic course. Clay pots with ornate carvings are hopelessly caked in food older than me. Is this what the first humans envisioned? Is this what the Seer envisions when she leaves the tribute sled at the altar?

My vision pulses with fury.

Am I dooming myself to living in a hovel, or in a relationship where I clean after Pabu? The moment of truth. In Alpha, I wanted to lift my station high enough to have some choices. I longed for a day when food insecurity didn’t consume me. In Pabu’s care, I have more than I can eat—a warm bed for Ku Huang—but with her so close to her kidding time…I have no options in sleeping places except Pabu’s bed. Do I want to live as a whoreand a maid? Not if I’m given the choice!

But it’s time to pay for my accommodations.

Stress squeezes under my ribs. I tear at the collar of my dress but think better of ripping off my clothes. I fight for air. The walls are closing in as my panic attack threatens to wring the life from my body. The will to live reaches through the haze of terror. Power surges through me and I march into the front room.

I fling the door open and scream to the cold, bleak world.

I scream at hunger. I scream at predatory beasts—Enceladus animals and humans. I scream at the endless cold. As my rage echoes over the snowy hills, I march back to the piles of steaks I cut from the tiger carcasses. My greedy hands grasp half of them. They drip on the front room floor as I squeeze them. My pulse pounds in my knuckles. I inhale all the anger from my soul. My second set of screams accompanies the meat as I throw it out the door. I’m as helpless as I was in Alpha. All those lonely nights I thought a full belly or less frostbite on my toes would be enough, but I was wrong.

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