It was here, beneath the monolith, that he had tried
to cleanse and bandage the wound on her leg. The memory and sight of
it, of blood on her beloved flesh, filled all his thoughts. Through the
strong taste of pride and anger, a fresh and cutting sense of worry
returned to him. The protective instinct was too strong inside him, and
what they had shared, too deep.
He thought of following after her, but did not know which way she had
gone, and doubted Alaska's ability (as well as his own) to find and
isolate her most recent trail among the layered and crisscrossing paths
of the colonists. He could only wait, and watch the sun wheel the
shadows around him. When the longer shadow of the Monolith joined that
of the deeply carved Obelisk, locking together into a long sword of
darkness upon the earth, it would be time. And she must come to him.
But that remained at least two hours away. He looked down at the
deerskin pouch, which had slipped from his shoulder and rested, half
open, on the ground. Remembering one of its contents, he emptied it out
onto a gray, porous stone before him.
There, beside the wrapped hunting knife (which she now refused to
carry), the whet-stone, and the flints for making fire, he saw them.
Dryer, less green, but still potent in their otherworldly magic: the
five remaining peyote buttons.
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