Page 193 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

“Aerfin was wise and knew she did not want a male for a mate who only found her face appealing. But Aerfin was also as wild as the forest around her. She thought that to take a mate was to be tamed. She wished to be free to climb the trees whenever she desired. Free to run with the wild ensouka herds, free to roam across Lina’s lands.

But these were the very things that Felmat found most appealing about her.

He liked her face fine enough, but it was her wild spirit that made his heartspace soar.

Aerfin feared that a mate would expect things from her that she was not prepared to give, that they would not want her to stray far from their home.

But Felmat only wanted to roam with her when she roamed, run with her when she ran.

He vowed he would follow her clear across Lina’s forests if she would give her heartspace to him. ”

“Remember how we would make that same vow?” Nelsah says, coming to sit beside me.

She is the grown version of herself now. Smiling a soft, reminiscing smile.

“I remember we would compete to say how we would each do more than the other to prove our worth to our mates.”

“I will climb the tallest tree!” Nelsah cries in imitation of her younger self.

“I will swim the whole length of the Great River!”

“I will run around the entire forest!”

I chuckle. We were younglings and fools. Neither of us could have known that we would never have the chance to know our mates.

Nelsah lies back so we are side by side, watching the stars. Her hand falls close to mine, but she does not touch me. In these dreams she never does.

“I am saddened that I never got to know my mate.” She speaks to the stars as much as me. “But I am full of gladness in my heartspace that I got to know you, Dazzik.”

“Even at the very end?” I say, thinking of a blade in my hand and her glassy eyes as she begged me.

You must do this for me, Dazzik. You must.

“Especially at the very end. Will you finish the story?”

My voice feels thick in my throat, but I continue.

“Aerfin had heard such words from others before. Others who did not mean them. So she denied Felmat, denied her own heartspace that had come to ache to belong to him.

“But Felmat would not give up so easily as that. He was a hunter. It was in his blood. When Aerfin ran from him, he tracked her. He followed her all across Lina’s forests, from the cliff tops to the sands to the plains.

He pursued her to every corner. And when he could not catch her, he pursued her into her very dreams.”

The first dreamspace. The first true mates. A mating that so pleased Lina, she immortalised them in the sky.

“I think I shall not come to you again,” Nelsah says.

And though she is just a dream, the thought of losing her cuts me.

“Oh, Dazzik.” She turns to me, and her eyes are as deep and fathomless as the sky. “You do not need me as you once did.”

“Because I am soon to die?” The words are hoarse and rough as they leave my lips.

Nelsah smiles and it is the most radiant I have ever seen her.

“No. Because you are soon to live.”

I jolt awake as I always do when these waking dreams with Nelsah end.

Overhead, the twin moons have moved a little, Aerfin and Felmat playing out their courtship across the skies.

An example to all raskarrans. Every mating that followed theirs was one blessed by Lina.

Matings between two souls so well suited that it reminds her of her favoured children.

This is the story passed down by my ancestors to me.

The story I cannot pass on. No mates remain, no younglings to learn our tales. Our stories will die with us.

How can this world be one in which I am soon to live?

I climb back down to the forest floor, return to my cave. During my forage, I have found some berries, fat and ripe, that will not keep. I eat them without guilt, sating the hunger pangs in my stomach for now. Then I store away everything else I have gathered, counting my mouthfuls again.

I will live these rains, I think. Even if they run long, I will survive them to start another season alone. With my newly repaired tent, if I catch the ensouka herd at the right time, I might even live the next season well.

I draw my thoughts back to the present moment.

It does not do me good to think too far into my future.

When you live alone under these trees, your circumstances can change in the beat of a heartspace.

If I grab the wrong branch when I climb, if I step on the wrong spot as I run, I could injure myself grievously.

Not so grievously that a tribe could not have aided me.

But I have no tribe. Even the smallest injury, the smallest sickness, could turn deadly for me on my own.

Better to focus my energies on the moment, rather than planning for a future time that I may not be around to greet. Prepare for the rains. Survive them. Then it will be time to think on what the rest of the new season holds for me.

I peel off my clothes, folding them away at the edge of my cave. I go to my furs, expecting to feel awake after my nap at the outpost, but my eyes grow heavy immediately, and once again, I drift off to sleep.