A Greater Lesson

Chapter 4: Afterthoughts

As I walked back home, I couldn’t stop thinking about Rivka.  How could someone so delicate—a woman—live all alone in the jungle.  She didn’t even have a home.  I had to admit there was humor in the fact that a woman could scare me the way she did.  Her attire was very original and to be honest, a bit intimidating.  She was strong, I’ll give her that.

She had rejected my offer to come home with me immediately.  I was bummed about that, but I could understand her point.  She couldn’t have interacted with people in at least a couple of years.  If it weren’t for my need of goods from the market I wouldn’t have either.  It’s not like I had any real relationships with anyone in town but at least I had talked to other humans.

The market—I wondered if she really made everything she had.  I couldn’t imagine her actually buying things from the market.  It occurred to me that since the fire she probably didn’t even have money.  Of course!  I mean she didn’t even have shoes, but it didn’t seem to bother her.

Oh, I had so many questions.  What would she do if I came back?  I decided I would try it in a week or so.  I had to admit I was afraid of her, and yet, I was drawn to her.  I felt as if we had a bond through our pasts.  I felt obligated to help her.

I turned down the tiny dirt path to my nearly abandoned home.  The trail and shrubbery around the house were torn and tattered and dead.  I had done this on purpose.  I didn’t like things to be alive.  In a way the ghostly environment around the small hut was meant to be a desolate, scary looking place; a place no one wanted to be around so in that destruction I had alienated myself from the rest of the world.  Maybe that was the same principle Rivka followed in the things that she decorated herself with.

She was back into my thoughts.  I had to stop thinking about her.  I didn’t want someone in my life.  I didn’t want compassion or sympathy; I wanted death and destruction.  I wanted to hurt things, and I didn’t want someone to comfort me.  They brought me pleasure, a person wasn’t what needed or wanted right now.  I wanted my anger and my pain.  A person—a woman—would dull that flame of hatred inside of me and I couldn’t let that happen.

I pushed the memories and questions from the events that day out of my head and plowed through my front door.  I looked around the house; a place for everything and everything in its place.  The wall was decorated with trophies and skins from animals I’d tortured and killed.  My most prized had always been the head of an ocelot with a spear struck in it’s eye that continued all the way through its head.  I smirked when I looked at it.  Then I looked towards the empty space in the middle of the wall.  It was the perfect place to hang the perfect kill, and that’s why it was still empty.  I had someone special in mind to put there; that hideous puma that killed my family.  I wouldn’t skin it or just keep the head, I would stuff the entire body and position it in the most vulnerable position with the scar I had purposely left in plain sight.  I was determined to get that cat.  I looked back down and headed further into the house.

Usually when I walked inside I had some kind of game in my hands to skin and eat for dinner, but today all I held was my sword and my dagger; unused and clean.  If I came home in this state any other day I would have felt like a complete failure, but now, I felt satisfied.  It had been such an odd day, so full of curiosity and discovery.  I walked into the kitchen and opened a chest in the ground where I kept my extra food after it had been dried.  I didn’t eat out of there often because I usually brought home my food fresh so I had quite a bit stored.  I shuffled through the contents before finally selecting a large piece of tiger jerky.  Most people didn’t eat like I did, they preferred deer or something of that nature, but since I killed so many other animals it would be a waste not to eat it.

I stood and walked back to the main room.  I finally set down my weapons before taking my seat on the ground.  As I leaned my back against the wall, I noticed a jaguar skin spread like a rug on the floor.  I immediately thought about Roux.  He was obedient to her, something I had never seen in a wild cat before.   The more I remembered his behavior the more I realized he wasn’t just obedient, but he seemed to genuinely care for Rivka.  My attempt to push her out of my head had failed.  Actually, it had more than just failed.  I was actively concentrating on her.  She cared for him too.  Her image flashed into my mind and as I analyzed it her clothing caught my attention.  If she loved animals so much, why was she wearing a jaguar skin?   I mean, something else like a deerskin would make sense, but a jaguar skin of all things.  I was now uncertain I would be able to keep from seeing her again.