Soosha and Jula

 

            I will use English here, of course, as I don’t speak Saslingua, but you will understand that the dialog is not in English at all.

 ***

            Hofel handed me a small naked female. She was sleeping, as I gathered her up.
            I took her into my arms as tenderly and carefully as I could. She was so very small. She felt like cradling a rabbit. “Soosha, just sleep, baby,” I whispered.  I looked her over in detail as she slept in my arms. She was around two years old I guessed, though I had not held a human child before.  She was thin. I would guess that Mother Wolf was getting to the end of her ability to feed the child. She was dirty, but otherwise seemed strong enough. She held on to my coat as well as any of my own. Her own hair was half the length of her body and seemed to be a tangled mass of brown curls with a lot of grassy stuff and wolf hairs mixed in.
            “Where did you find her,” I asked him.
            “I saw her in Mother Wolf’s den with the wolf children.  I was just walking by on the path, and I looked over and saw a human face there in the den, Jula. I thought, now here is a mystery. It was also funny!
            “But I couldn’t ask Mother Wolf, for as fine as she is, she couldn't explain. But, I think I know where she must have found the little creature and dragged her to her den by whatever clothing she had on. We thought they had all died.”
            “So, she has no one at all,” I said.
            “No,” Hofel said, watching her sleep in my arms.
            “She is hairless. She will need to be covered somehow,” I told him.

⁕🤍⁕ 

 
            I woke in a small space lined with fur. I could see trees and blue sky above me. My belly ached. I kept quiet as Fila had taught me with nips and growls if I cried. Wolf children must never betray their own location.  I knew it well.  I probably thought that I was a wolf somehow, even if I didn’t look like the others.
            When I sat up, I looked around. I saw that I was in a woven enclosure like a large basket, made of branches and lined with skins. Of course, that morning I had no words for what I saw. It was all named later.
            I had never seen this place of course.  It was huge and open but surrounded by the biggest trees I had ever seen. Stone made a smooth surface under all. I smelled something totally new to me, cooked flesh, I later learned. My belly ached anew.

            I was not alone.
            The one who had taken me in her arms last night saw that I was awake. She left her cooking fire and walked over to my nest. She was very big also, but not like Hofel. Her coat of hair was lighter in color than his, and her eyes were golden. She walked slowly as if she were trying to not frighten some wild creature. Of course, by her judgement I was exactly a wild creature.
            I already loved her. Sweetness and comfort came from her like light from a fire.
            She knelt down by my basket of branches and fur. She put a hand flat on her bosom, like Hofel had done his chest and said, “Jula. I’m Jula. I am a mother of the Forest Keepers.” I registered that Jula was her name, but the rest of it went over my head.
            Seeing that I did not panic or run, she put her hand on my head and said, “Soosha.” Then she smiled.  I had never seen smiling.  I didn’t understand it, but she still seemed comforting to me.
            “You will be hungry, Soosha. I need to show you how we eat cooked meat. Let’s just wrap you in that fur and I will take you to where we eat together. You must be a brave girl.  This will all be new to you.”
            She picked me up out of my nest, standing me on the stoney forest floor. Then she wrapped me in the fur and gathered me up in her arms again. She carried me to the area with the fire.  Fire was another thing I had never seen, and it was fascinating and frightening at the same time. Around the fire was an assortment of lowish, flat boulders.  There was a type of structure around and over the fire, which had what I didn’t know was a small deer roasting in it.  It smelled good to me.
            I didn’t see Hofel, or any others yet, but I would later.
            Jula sat me in my fur on one of the flat boulders, then went to her fire. She had what I learned later was an obsidian blade with a wooden handle.  With this she cut some thin bits of the deer and laid them in a shallow wooden bowl. She brought the bowl to me, sitting down beside me.  Then she demonstrated that I should put the meat in my mouth. Now, it’s so hard to describe how ignorant I was.  I had eaten a few scraps of raw meat, and it was nothing to love or hate, but this cooked meat of Jula’s was my first taste of good food. I had no trouble learning to eat it. My stomach told me that it was good, for I was chronically hungry.
            I ate all she had given me.
            They drank water. I drank water also when she gave me a little carved vessel of it.
            This was my first day with those who walk upright and speak and cook their meat. I would not have you think they were simple or primitive. Their lives were made of songs, words, conceptual matters, not so many made things.
            “I need to make you some sort of garment Soosha. I have more furs. I will cut one to make a little robe to keep you warm.  I will make you something for your feet too,” said Jula and I had no idea what she was talking about.  But I listened as well as I could.
            She carried me outside of their home camp to a small shallow stream where the water ran over more of those flat stones. There I was washed in water for the first time. The water was cold, but not icy. When she thought I was clean enough she wrapped me back up in my fur and took me to the fire to warm up.
            As I sat by the fire, I dozed, and dreamed a little. Maybe I had seen fire before, sometime before Fila found me. Maybe I did remember arms holding me. I cried out and Jula came to me. She held me and sang to me. The song arranged my dreams sweetly and I was at peace.
            It was a good first day among the people. I though of Fila and her children with love but I was so very happy to have been found by Hofel.