Shaman

Training with the Beast

Ava awoke as soon as the golden rays of sunlight penetrated the cow-hide covering the entrance to the hut. The rays hit against her eyelids. She yawned tiredly and stretched. Once she regained all of her senses and mustered up the will, Ava moved to get up. She turned around to find that Eve had, from sometime during the night, pulled and caccooned herself within the blanket that they shared. She was still sound-asleep. Ava smiled. Eve tried her best to act grown (and in most cases, succeeded in trying) but Ava knew that Eve was still a child at heart. This idea was proven when Ava gently poked her sister, to which she was met with a mumbled "No Mama, I did not kiss that boy down at the lake. I merely tripped onto his lips" and then a yawn as she turned over to bury herself in deep sleep once more. 

Ava giggled and shook her head, before moving to the entrance of the hut. 

She hesitated for a moment when her arm reached out to the cow-hide. 

Could she go out there today? 

Could she truly face the village after humiliating herself infront of them? 

It was very tempting to turn around and follow Eve's example by falling back to sleep. 

It was also very tempting to fake ailment and ask Eve to go out into the village and take on her daily pre-shamanic responsibilities. 

However. 

Her cousin was out there. And if Ava was not out of this hut by the time he woke, he would most probably come in here and drag her by the ears to the temple. 

The elders were out there as well. And if they learnt of her 'ailment', they would most probably order her to whip up a tonic to heal herself. And then they would find out that she had not been paying attention to the specific lessons that taught her how to create tonics, and they would most probably tear down the village in anger. 

Or they would learn that her ailment was false and tear down the village in anger. 

And if she sent Eve, the villagers would tear their home down in anger as well, as Eve was not in line to become the next Shaman. The very idea would be considered Heracy. 

Either way, the village would be torn down. 

Or worse. 

The Elders would tell Zahara. 

Ava shuddered at the thought. 

It was this thought that managed to pull Ava to her feet and take shaky steps out of the hut. 

Himloh was still asleep, Ava thanked the ancestors. He was lying against the round wall of the hut with a thin blanket that Eve had carried out to him some time during the night, to cover and protect himself against the elements. 

Staring at him like this, Ava felt a deep sence of sympathy for her cousin.  

She wished she could have invited him inside and set another sheet of cowhide out for him, but he was not allowed to sleep in their hut. It was against the laws of their village. Though Himloh was their cousin, he was still a man. Only fathers and brothers could share a woman's hut until she married. 

Himloh had a hut of his own, however. It was a hut that he had built for himself and his bride. He would be moving out of his mother's hut and into his own after the wedding. But he could still spend nights in his own hut if he wished.  

But he would not. His job was too important to him. 

Ava worried about her cousin's unhealthy relationship with the concept of responsibility.

It had contoured his face prematurely. It had coarsed his voice and hardened his hazel-nut eyes. 

Himloh was not always the stern, work-obsessed warrior whom the village now knew him to be.