— We take our caribou two rivers to sunset, and winter down south of the ice caps.
— What’s your clan?
— Raven, Loon said proudly.-And you?
— Eagle, said Elga, looking pleased; it was best if couples were from different clans. Seeing her expression, Loon danced in and pecked her on the cheek with a kiss.
— Well met, eagle woman, he declared, smiling, and when he saw the pleased look still there in her eyes, he smiled for real, he could feel the difference in his face.
— Let’s dance, she said, as if they weren’t already, and raised her hands over her head and shimmied. She was more graceful than an elg, and her loon cloak bounced and flickered in the firelight, and Loon with his owl vision danced with her with his gaze cast down, watching her legs and hips and hands, keeping his gaze from hers as she kept hers from his, except for a moment now and then, when a move made them laugh or they bumped together hard. Right now they couldn’t look at each other, but once in a while they would both look up and their eyes would meet. Are you here too? their gazes asked, and then answered, Yes, I am here. We are here, together in a bubble of our own, which has all of a sudden popped out of nowhere around us. Isn’t it exciting? Yes it is! And then they would look down and dance, almost as if abashed, or a little shocked, needing a little time to take it in.
And there was no hurry. The night was young, midnight had not yet come overhead, the bonfires were still growing their big mounds of embers, with immense heaps of steppe dung piled around them to be burned. Most of the people there were going to dance the night through and then sit watching the sunrise together. This was the eight eight, peak of the year, it was meant to be like this, and Loon found himself comforted by that, it made the strength of the sudden new feeling in him all right. This was the place where this kind of thing happened. He glanced up at her face again, watched her looking into the fire; he knew he didn’t know her, and yet at the same time it felt like the look on her face told him everything about her. Everything he needed to know. A northern woman, she would be tough and hard and hot. She would enjoy the south and its mild air.
On they danced. A pack from the east formed a dance line, each of them holding a stout stick in each hand, and their drummers took over the rhythm and moved it to a heavy four beat. Their dancers began to dance with all their footwork the same, a kick left kick right, while they smacked their sticks together, mostly hitting their own but also trading hits with others in their group when they all spun around at once, a beautiful sight and sound, nimble and clacky and quick. While they all watched, Elga came to a stop beside Loon, and the sides of their upper arms touched, and Loon felt the touch like a beam of sunlight on a cold morning. A big howl of approval went up when the stick dancers brought their routine to a sudden halt, and they clacked their sticks lightly in return and took the ladles and cups of mash offered them. The drummers shifted back into a four-and-five, and the general dancing took off again.
Loon and Elga went back into their bubble and danced with the rest until well past midnight. Loon’s feet were getting tired, and Badleg was asking for relief. When the drummers switched to a big heavy two-three beat, Elga turned to him and put her arms over his shoulders. She was distinctly taller than he was, and in feeling that a sizzle started at his ears and ran down the back of his neck and up around through his guts to his spurt, which began to rise heartbeat by heartbeat. She leaned down to him and kissed him on the ear, and the sizzle turned to a little bolt of lightning running right down his spine to his prong.
— I’m tired, she said, — and I have to pee. Come with me to the stream and then let’s find some place to rest.
— All right, Loon said.-I have to pee too.
— I’ve eaten so much this week, she said as they stumbled across the meadow away from the firelight, to the slow looping river that drained the festival meadow. Down this way were the shitting grounds, and they had to go slowly to dodge the holes and trenches dug into the wet ground. Elga stepped down to the streamside by herself, and Loon went behind a tree and managed to pee successfully through what was more spurt than pizzle, peeing up at the stars as he began, which made him laugh.
That done they wandered back toward the camps, and Elga stopped at hers, and rejoined him with a bearskin rolled up over her shoulder. She was also wearing a long fur coat with a wolverine-fur collar. Off into the night then, upstream into the hills. On the south-facing sides of these hills, low tangles of brush made for many small lay-bys. It was only necessary to find a good one that was not already occupied. During the last couple of eight eights Loon had taken a look at these hillsides in the mornings, wondering if he would ever have reason to want such a shelter, telling himself it might happen, it might happen. And here it was. He could not find the nook he had discovered two summers before, but then Elga saw a knot of white spruce that she liked, a little tuck of stunted trees, such that they had to crawl to get into it. They paused as they did to make sure no one else was already in there; but it was empty.
And then they were inside their lay-by and on Elga’s bear hide, on the thick fur lying together kissing and getting their clothes off, squeezing and caressing each other, and then he was on her and her legs were open to him, and with a couple of thrusts he was up and into her. They were both gasping. Loon, who had mated only with Mother Earth, was shocked at the incredible smoothness and warmth of her, the way they fit together and slid against each other with no drag; it felt so good he couldn’t really tell where he ended and she began, it was just a big blur of good feeling down there, a back-and-forth sizzle of good feeling.
She stopped him with a hand over his mouth.-Don’t come in me, she said.
— Oh. All right. But I’m about to.
Indeed at the very thought the glow of pleasure flooded back from his spurt all through him, his whole body one great thrusting mass of pleasure, he was thrumming with it, and then bursting. Her knees were up to each side of his ribs and she was squeezing him between them, and as he felt himself begin to spurt he pulled out of her and thrust himself convulsively against her belly, and feeling that she grabbed him by the hair and kissed him again and again as he moaned.
They lay there for a while and then she rolled over onto him. He grew hard again faster than he had realized was possible, but she rubbed her vixen over the top of his spurt this time, kneeling on him and kissing him as she did, until she too moaned and pressed herself down on him, crushing him down into the bear fur and the lumpy ground under his back. The female covering the male! He had never seen any animals do that, so it had never occurred to him. Now he thought it might be the best way of all.
They lay there and kissed and petted. Her belly was gooey with his mushroomy spurtmilk but she did not care, she rubbed it into her skin and into his skin, she kissed him and caressed him, rubbed herself against him, humming; when he got hard again she kissed his chest and his belly and then took his spurt in her mouth and sucked on him until he came again, feeling it more powerfully than ever. She hummed approvingly throughout, and then stretched out and kissed him again, and he tasted his own seed there in her mouth, shocking to his tongue and then he wanted to taste it again. She turned and rolled and presented her vixen to his face, all wet and musky, and he licked her in the way he had seen wolves lick their mates, it was obvious what to do, but also shocking in the new way it felt, the slick smoothness of that interior skin, the tight curl of the hair around it under his tongue, the taste of her.