Work Text:
The stranger did not move.
Shou Yuing tightened her fingers around her spear. The stranger was kneeling by the river, so it was harder to judge her expression and see what she were thinking.
“Who are you?” she asked. The stranger did not answer, so she repeated her words, this time with the signs. “Speak.”
The stranger - a girl, Shou Yuing could now see - turned up her face and spoke in a nonsense tongue, and made nonsense gestures. Shou Yuing did not understand. Seeing this, the stranger raised her hands, and stood. She took out a knife from her furs and threw it onto the ground, talking all the time. Shou Yuing glanced forwards at it, then stepped back, lowering her spear.
“I will not hurt you, if you do not hurt me.” She spoke and signed at the same time, but the girl did not seem to understand. “Are your People from here?”
She did not answer. Shou Yuing stepped closer, studying her. She, in her time so far dwelling here, had not seen any other hominids, or come across any evidence that there were ones nearby. But the girl did not seem to understand any of Shou Yuing’s signs or words - she had travelled very far in the last few cycles of the moon, but surely not far enough that the language of this place was entirely separate from her own. Was the girl a traveller, adding to the distance separating their tongues? Alone, which was unusual.
But not unheard of.
Shou Yuing put the end of the spear flat on the ground, holding it with only one hand, and backed away. The girl watched her go and did not follow her.
Shou Yuing slept a little nervously in the cave she’d made her home that night, but the girl made no attempt to approach her again.
The very next day she found a cluster of berries in a large shell, lying just outside of her cave. She rolled one about in her hands, then tried it. It was sweet on her tongue, and she ate them before she went out hunting.
She saw the girl again two days later, when she was digging for roots. They peered at each other like startled deer, then the girl backed slowly away. Shou Yuing watched her go, but she couldn’t find the girl a threat enough to justify trying to scare her out of the valley entirely. She cut herself some roots, then left the remainder still exposed to the air in case the girl did not know the fauna of this place and where to dig.
They saw each other a little more often after that. This area was full of prey, so it did not worry Shou Yuing that the girl stayed. Besides, from time to time the girl would leave her things at the mouth of her cave.
The first rain of the growing-cold season came soon after. Shou Yuing settled herself in her cave to watch, when she heard a rumble above her in the clouds. She rose, head turning this way and that, then lightning struck down into the forest. She flinched, but she was no longer a child, and settled down again, the cave growing cold as the rain fell down.
Some time later, as the storm quieteed, she heard panting breath, and straightened, reaching for her spear. But it was only the girl, who held, victorious, a flaming branch. She hovered at the entrance of the cave, seeing Shou Yuing’s unwelcoming reaction, but then Shou Yuing gestured for her to come over. She had a small, unlit - she could not be there always to protect the fire when she had one; inevitably, it would go out - fire pit tucked away from the rain, and she stepped back to allow the girl the honour of making the fire herself. She glanced at Shou Yuing for another moment, then did so.
They both knelt and warmed themselves for a few moments, before the girl started looking around. The cave was unimpressive, ornamented only with a few furs for a bed and a few paintings. The girl stepped over to the wall, then glanced back at Shou Yuing. She hesitated for a moment, then followed her to watch.
The girl’s hand skimmed the wall, then rose to a herd of deer, messily painted on the wall by Shou Yuing on the second or third day of her deciding to settle here. She had painted a hunting scene - with herself standing over a kill - for luck in finding food.
The girl turned to her, pointing at a deer, then said an odd word and made a gesture. Narrowing her eyes, Shou Yuing thought it looked a little like deer horns. It must be the girl's People’s sign for deer.
She said her own word and made her own sign for it, and the girl grinned in understanding. She pointed to the human figure next, and did the same. Shou Yuing repeated them back to her, then made her own. The girl struggled with the word, her mouth not quite making the right sounds, and Shou Yuing wondered if she could not, if this was just another difference between them, so she just said the girl's word for it instead. They smiled at each other for a moment at understanding.
Shou Yuing turned to point at the fire. “Fire,” she said, making her sign for it. The girl copied the sign, and said her own word, along with her own sign. Shou Yuing copied the word fine enough, but not the sign; it involved a strange twisting of both wrists that she could not master. She made her own instead, but the girl didn’t seem to mind.
“Wait,” said Shou Yuing, though the girl wouldn’t understand, and went to get a shell with dried pigment. She walked over to the mouth of the cave, and reached out her hand, wetting her fingers and then mixing them into the pigment to make paint. Returning, she dabbed it over the wall, painting a wolf. The girl studied it for a moment, then said her word, and made a sign like teeth snapping shut. Shou Yuing did the same, and they mimicked each other.
She took the shell next, and drew a line that dipped and rose in the middle, then made a sign with her fingers by her mouth. Shou Yuing frowned. The girl lifted her arms, then waved them like birds. Shou Yuing was unable to suppress a small giggle, and she made her own sign and said her own word. Then she pointed at herself.
“Shou Yuing,” she answered, and made the sign for her name. The girl repeated it.
“Shou Yuing?” Shou Yuing nodded, then pointed to the girl.
“Ace,” she answered, and made her name sign. Shou Yuing copied it. Then they grinned at each other.
Shou Yuing turned back to the wall, painting the valley, its trees and its rivers. “Valley,” she said, and made its name sign. You did not name places in speech, only in sign.
Ace said and signed something, which Shou Yuing realised from her expression must mean something like ‘confusion’. She went to the edge of the cave and pointed all around the outside. Ace made a similar sign, which must mean something like ‘understand’. So was the first ‘not understand’? Shou Yuing stored that thought away in her hand and came back over to the wall.
Ace pointed at the human in the hunting scene. “Shou Yuing?”
“Yes,” said Shou Yuing, and made the sign for it. “Yes.”
Ace said her own word for ‘yes’, and then lifted her head up and down.
“Not understand.”
Ace said Shou Yuing’s word, then nodded again. Finally, Shou Yuing realised that the head movement was a sign. Did Ace’s People sign with their heads as well?
“Understand.”
“Shou Yuing,” said Ace, again, and put out her second finger. Shou Yuing frowned. But then, realising, she lifted one thumb, and Ace signed ‘understand’. She made Shou Yuing’s sign for ‘one’, and then her own, then pointed at the figure on the wall again with a questioning expression.
Why she was alone.
She wasn’t entirely sure how to explain what had happened. After a moment of thought, she realised she still had the paint at her feet, and thought of how, when her People told stories, their signing changed, so as they signed they were almost miming out the words.
Shou Yuing started on another part of the cave wall, and drew her homeland, then her People. She pointed at one of the figures on the wall, then herself.
“Shou Yuing,” said Ace.
She nodded jerkily, which made her feel a little dizzy. Ace did the sign again, and Shou Yuing saw it was considerably less nausea-inducing when she did it. She repeated it, with less extreme movements, then began to tell her story.
Her People had been led by a seasoned warrior, Brig, for many years, till two newcomers had come during a harsh winter and challenged him for leadership, and when they brought food, her People had accepted them. Shou Yuing had been hesitant, not in the least because the son of the new leader, Mordred, had been giving her looks she didn’t like.
Soon Mordred was set on making her his woman when she came of age, but Shou Yuing did not love him, nor trust him. Her brother - though she could not think of how to communicate this to Ace - had taken to staying by her side so Mordred could not claim her, but her first blood changed everything.
When Mordred had announced to her People, after her coming of age ceremony, his intentions to claim her, Wei Yang had refused on her behalf. Her parents had insisted otherwise, and Shou Yuing had felt very sure there was about to be a fight, in which Wei Yang could not hope to win, considering Mordred’s position, and which would allow Mordred to claim her without resistance. She had declared self-banishment instead, so Wei Yang would not die, even if she very likely would, and left her People soon after, travelling for many cycles of the moon till the furs tied to her feet had worn through, at which point, by their laws, she was far enough away to settle.
Ace seemed to understand this, and touched Shou Yuing’s arm gently, which Shou Yuing took to be a gesture of sympathy. She pointed at Ace next.
Ace grimaced, but went over to the wall. On the side of the wall that Shou Yuing had painted her homeland, she painted hers, and then pointed back to the fire, saying her word and making Shou Yuing’s fire. From there, made easier by the fact that she could both sign and say ‘fire’ and have Shou Yuing understand, she explained how she had come to leave her People.
They lived in small houses made from thatch, and kept a great fire in the middle of the village that was always lit, so at any time they could start a new one. Ace had been given the duty tending it. The earth around it was bare and stamped dry, and nothing flammable was allowed near, but Ace wanted to learn more about fire, in the hopes of perhaps learning to create it from nothing, and in experimenting, the fire had somehow caught on the ground, and her village had all burnt. She was alone even among her People, so nobody had defended her, and she was banished for it.
Shou Yuing did what she had done, touching her arm, and Ace smiled sadly at her. She pointed to the two of them, then held up her finger and her thumb. Two.
Ace smiled. She held up her second and third fingers. Two, again.
Shou Yuing nodded, then turned and pointed at the bed of furs. She signed ‘sleep’, which Ace seemed to get, and nodded in response to.
They both went to the bed, and though it took a little bit of shuffling, they eventually were curled into each other. It was very intimate for two people who did not share a People, but neither protested. It was comforting to be like this.
Shou Yuing remembered how her People would lie in the night, all on the same furs, nuzzled up in little groups of families or lovers or friends, to stay warm. Indeed, Ace, curled around her back, felt warmer than the fire itself.
She went straight to sleep.