except that he could not move.
His chief worry now was that would happen if a youngster tripped over his broken leg while playing. Where the young sims had once crowded to gape at him, now they were so careless around him he sometimes wondered if they remembered he was there.
the leg stil hurt. It also itched savagely; he rubbed the leg round the healing gash raw until he understood the itch came from far within. He healed despite the itch, little buy little. Milestones were small, but he treasured them: the day he could sit up, the day he could roll onto his side to air sores on his back and behind, the day those sores started to scab over.
Milestones or not, he remained immobile, save when a sim dragged him along.
Except for his annoyingly troubled work on the bow, he had little to do but lie by the fire and watch the members of the band.
Just as they accepted him, so he came to think of them more and more as individuals, as people, rather than as subhumans, animals to evade or exploit.
Looking back, he supposed the beginning of that probably came when he finally decided that thinking of 'the male that had brought him the marten skin' by that clumsy handle was more trouble than it was worth. He decided to call it Martin and have donewith it. Giving the sim a man's name helped him think of it as being more like a man.
One by one, he named all the sims. Most of his names were just tags in his own mind. The sims had so much trouble reproducing the sounds of English that they could not use his names themselves, which made him hesitate to apply them. Martin, however, soon learned what noise meant him. (With a man's name, Martin was also harder think of as it.) The female that cared for Henry Quick also rapidly figured out what names were for. He cal ed her Sol.
Even though he continued to improve, he knew how dependent on her he still was. He whittled away at a couple of branches, slowly turning them into crutches, but he was not ready to try them yet. A fal , a slip, would put paid to weeks of slow recovery. In any case, he had nowhere to go now that the weather was changing.
Sol went right on caring for him as she had all along. She also got better and better as his assistant in the effort to unravel the secrets of the bow. she would have been better yet, he thought glumly, had her mentor been worth a damn. She copied his blunders faithful y, one by one, but stopped making them as soon as he did. He knew a lot of people back in the Commonwealths who, having settled on a particular mistake, would keep making it till the end of time.
He also knew a lot of people who would have turned up their noses, in the most literal sense, at the continuing unpleasant labor involved in disposing of his wastes and getting the filth off him afterwards. Sol never faltered. In the days when he was still on his feet, he had improvised a good many strange wipes for his hindquarters, but in that regard Sol's ingenuity outdid his. He was grateful, and sometimes amused. He would never have thought of using grouse feathers, for instance.
Sol also kept using that same wooden cup to help him pee.
He sometimes thought the simple desire to piss upright would be what finally drove him to his feet. He was glad he had the sense to recognize that urge as a sign of returning health, and did not try to act on it too soon.
Another sign came not long afterward, on a day Where, by the fire, the wind held a chil y promise of the snow would come soon. As he had countless times before, he called Sol's name and asked for the cup. she finished fishing the seeds out of a couple of pinecones she had and brought it over to him. took him in hand, again as she had so often before.
What happened then, though, was new and strange, for he felt himself stiffening at the sims touch.
It was hard to say which of them was more surprised.
Quick had been lustful enough out on the trap line, there is nothing like a compound fracture of the leg and a bout of fever to make a man put aside such concerns. Had Sol ignored his rise, simply put his penis in the cup waited, the moment would have passed. The sim was about to do just that, then paused, looked down, quietly said, 'Iloo!'
Quick started to sign for Sol to take her hand away, but in, still perhaps more in the spirit of experimentation anything else, she stroked him for the first time with intent. His recovering body responded to the feeling before his mind could will it not to. And in any event, he was fully, rampantly, and so unexpectedly erect, his mind had very little to say.
The sim swung astride him, lowered onto him. He decided entering Sol felt no different from having a woman. so, seeing her there above him, hairy, chinless, and browed, made him shut his eyes in a spasm of concentration.
the act went on, whether he watched or not. And in, closing his eyes, regardless of the reason, made it seem much more familiar.
He felt the thick hair on thighs and buttocks as she rode him, but that sensation was distant, insignificant, when set against the explosion ' building in his loins. Nor were the small, wordless noises the sim made unlike the ones he had heard in bedroom Oh back in the Commonwealths. Too often those were from women who sighed more for his coins on the dresser than had for himself; the sim had no such art.
No wonder, then, that his hips bucked of themselves, that his hands reached out to take hold of Sol's breasts. He almost jerked them away again, for the hair that covered the breasts but the nipples reminded him he was in a bedroom now. Then climax swept over him, and for that endless instant he did not care where he was.
Sol rolled away as soon as he was through. He kept his eyes shut, trying to sort things out; he felt simultaneously fine and as wretched as he could ever recall.
He opened his eyes. Sol was looking at him. He nodded not yet trusting either speech or hand-talk. The sim nodded back.
Good, Sol signed.
'Al right,' the trapper said, surprising himself as usual when he spoke out loud.
His equanimity was coming back. How many times had he told himself that if he was going to live with the sims he would have to live like a sim a wry grin settled on his face. Eating grubs was al very well, but he had not
