Lar sat in the sand and shook his head. He teetered to his feet. Almost blind with the passions stirred up by a simple touch and looking deeply into those green eyes, he was blind. He fumbled his way up the face of the rock toward his home. He looked around but she was nowhere in sight. He sought the comfort of the worn chair to watch his people go about their day. The visions would not come. He could not calm his pounding heart.
“Maybe my old mother is right,” he said to himself. “Perhaps I have mourned long enough. Perhaps there have been too many nights alone, singing the song for the dead. It is more than four Gatherings since Han died trying to birth our child.”
Lar sat back and pulled his hood forward again as the pain of loss made him weak as a child. Tears poured from his eyes for a time as he wept silently. After a moment, he rose and struggled up the last few worn steps quickly. He found his way to the pillows and skins of his bed. Putting his mother and the red headed girl out of his mind, he slept.
He awoke and lit some lamps. Holding the guttering light high, he stumbled around in the corners of his messy apartments. In a remembered place, he put down the lamp and began digging through a pile of litter. He was searching to find the leather bag his mother had told him about. She had told him of her secret stash last year just before leaving the caves to join the widows and travel with the People. It was still in a dusty corner where he had thrown it.
He felt the smooth leather and remembered his mother's soft voice, "Lar, this is to keep you from the loneliness that surrounds you." At that time he had put the bag away and returned to singing his mourning songs. Now, he blessed her again for taking care of him.
He spilled the large, red tear into his hand. Turning it in the dim light he thought of Han. For a moment, the aching in his heart was so painful that breathing was difficult. This was the sister to the tear that his father had given him for a bride price for Han. At the thought of his beautiful, dead mate, tiny spots of water dropped on to the knees of his pants. For a long time, he only sat and cried.
As he cried, he thought back again to those beautiful days when they were so young and care free. He could not remember a time when they had not been together. He had loved Han since he was a small boy. And, as she had said so many times, Han had loved him nearly as long.
This burning fire of love had begun innocently enough. One year, he had been sent to school to perfect his letters. He had been a guest of Kal’s family. After his seventh summer, on alternating years, Kal’s family had included him during their away time. His mother and father had wanted him to see the world away from their hidden home. So, together they had made arrangements with various families to carry Lar out with them to their activities. This time, he had traveled with Kal and his family. Kal loved Lar’s father and was easily persuaded to care for the son of the Watch Man.
He also loved the years that he was boarded with the Hunts Men. When in either camp, he was a member of both families. So, he and Han had grown up almost as siblings. They were inseparable, sitting together at mealtime, learning their runes and rote, or playing games like any two siblings would. Alternately sharing a story or scrambling over some prized morsel of food.
And through those early years as children, they had also fought like siblings. It was clear early to both sets of parents that this was no simple relationship. These two children were bound to become life mates. When the squabbling got intense, all the gown ups around them would look at them and laugh knowingly. Lar and Han were the least knowing of all the People of their common fate. The future Watchman and the gentle beauty would be forever bound. Oblivious, they fought on.
Time took its toll. Puberty wreaked twenty kinds of havoc on their lives and bodies. For a time, they went about their joined life without a moment’s thought. Some days, they were inseparable, splashing in the streams of the Dark Wood or running through the narrow, winding streets of the Great City at trading times. Other days, the fighting would be emotionally bloody. Lar, though he loved Han more than any one, knew just what to do to drive her completely insane. And, in return, as only a life mate can, Han knew just what to say to crush him mercilessly.
It all came to head on his thirteenth birth night. He said just the wrong thing at just the most importune moment. She, in fit of rage, said the most perfect response that she could imagine. He became so damaged that he had left Kal’s camp that very night. He never returned to Kal’s tent until he brought the first red tear as a bride price on the night of Han’s Shivaree.