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All things your soul and the birdsong

Must be sliced up and laid out for the judges

Daydreams mating-drive and fear of death

--Rolf Jacobsen, Knives, Knives

So the world would be harmed if anything in it were free from suffering.

_--Giacomo Leopardi, Dialogue Between Nature and an Icelander _

After the hunting lodge closed, I stripped off my clothes and sat on my knees, atop a folded linen sheet meant to protect from the centuries-old wood floor. A flax rope, as thick as my wrist, hung from the trusswork on the ceiling. My hands were shaking, but I managed to reach up and grab it.

The lodge's chief huntress, the woman who had first taught me how to gut a caribou nearly ten years ago, picked up a washrag and doused it in grain alcohol. She rubbed it on my stomach, soaking the soft cream-colored fur and little leopard spots under my breasts. The smell made my eyes water. I wished that Kari could be here, but the ritual was closed to all but to myself and the chief. She would be here next time, though.

This is a stupid ritual, I told myself, privately cursing the millennia of traditions before my time. Every huntress on the island did this, going back to when we still lived in snow huts and hunted seals with big bone-tipped spears. You're supposed to tell the chief of the lodge after you know you've missed your period, and the ritual usually happens that night: three cuts under each breast and three above the navel, made with a knife dipped in oil extracted from nettles, so the flesh scars as it heals. Nine in total. It was a miracle the island had any female hunters at all. One of my mothers did the ritual while she was pregnant with my half-sister, and when I was little, she would let me run my fingers over the scars. I thought it was cool back then--now, not so much.

"Are you ready, Shea?" The huntress said.

Absolutely not.

"Yes." I guess we can never be ready for anything important that happens in life--puberty, childbirth, pain, disease, tragedy, death. Perhaps being an adult means you just have the strength to brace yourself for the blows and the grace to recover after. I wasn't sure I had that.

The threads of fate that brought me here, to this moment, started over a decade ago, and after this night, the threads would keep weaving themselves through my life, through the next nine months, and through the coming decades. I couldn't decide if the thought was beautiful or terrifying.

The huntress dipped the knife in alcohol and then waited for it to dry. She pulled a small vial of oil out from one of the pouches on her dress and uncorked it, letting the cloudy blue liquid run down the edge of the blade. After that, I decided to avert my gaze and appreciate the trusswork of the vaulted ceiling.

She put a hand on my chest and lifted my breast, the cold knife weaving through the fur of my stomach and touching bare skin. Twenty-three years in the boreal forest and a decade of hunting had left me with cuts, bites, stings, scrapes, and the scars to show for it, but the nettle oil was different. I clenched my jaw and swallowed the scream. One.

***

I first met Kari when we were both eleven years old. She went by a different name then, a name now lost to memory. I remember that year clearer than most, not just because of her, but because of the cold snap that killed the salmonberry crop. People in the central part of the island put salmonberries in everything--jam, absinthe, wine, sorbet, disgusting little cakes made from acorn flower--and it was as much a staple of the diet as caribou. After the first snow came early, culture on the island ground to a halt.

My parents sent me into the forest with a basket to find any chokeberries that survived the cold snap. They were hardier than the salmonberries, but they tasted like death when eaten raw, as the name indicated. I want wanted to spend the first snow of the year indoors sitting by the fire, but my parents insisted on sending me out, presumably because they had similarly cozy plans for the day.

I met her in a small forest clearing after I found a bag full of chokeberries and crabapples lying at the foot of a tree. She shouted at me from above before two more apples landed in the sack. She was perched on one of the branches like some kind of falcon, her legs wrapped around a branch while she picked apples and threw them down onto the ground. I caught one, and she let me eat it--it was sour, but not nearly as astringent as the berries. After she climbed down, we walked through the forest, and the next time we found a crabapple bush, my girlhood hubris decided to take the lead. Determined to climb higher and faster, I put my weight on a rotted branch and fell nearly fifteen feet down onto the forest floor, landing on my ankles. My screams of pain sent the crows flying from their branches, and Kari was forced to hobble me back to town, her arm around my side as I cried more from embarrassment than the injury itself. My cheeks burned hot in the nippy winter air.

Her house was closer to the forest, and one of her parents wrapped up my leg and let the two of us sit by the fire. They cut up the apples and served them with salmonberry jam and boiled camas. We sat together for the rest of the day while we complained about our parents, and she told me she wanted to be a painter in the temples when she grew up, and I told her I was going to be a hunter. After that night, I don't think we were apart for more than a week.

***

I expected the pain to be an urgent sting, but the oil turned it into an agonizing burn that radiated across my skin and refused to abate even after she pulled the knife away. My eyes slammed shut, I took deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth. Hee-whooo. Hee-whooo. This ritual, among other things, was supposed to prepare one for the pain of childbirth. It sounded ridiculous at first, but I was beginning to think they had a point. Heee-whooo. I opened my eyes, mostly to clear the tears. A statue of Verda, god of the hunt, rested by the door to the lodge. I felt as though he was looking down on me, already dissatisfied. I felt the tip, warm with blood, press against my skin. I braced myself this time, slightly more ready. Two.

***

A young priestess left me at the edge of the forest outside the village. Before that day, I had never met those priestesses, who wore green and blue sealskin robes with little interwoven waxing moons tattooed on their hands; the dealings of their goddess--fertility, sexuality, childbirth, matters of the sexes--were not the domain of children. Even without their robes, the priests themselves always stood out: we called them the twice-born.

The priestess had given me a pitcher of steaming water, the surface green and murky; it smelled like oakmoss and pine tar. After I walked a few feet past the tree line, I glanced back, and the priestess was gone. There's a joke on the island: the first people were born from an eagle's egg, and they learned their child-rearing skills from their avian parents--out of the nest and on your way you go. The same applied to many rituals.

The last snow of the year had just melted, and the earth was wet and soft under my boots. Everything smelled of life. A sea of green moss rolled across the ground, broken apart by the curling fingers of fiddlehead ferns that shot up between the gnarled branches of the boreal trees. I kept looking over my shoulder, and once I could no longer see the village through the trees, I stopped and put down the pitcher, some of the hot water splashing onto the dirt. I took one final look around--I suppose I didn't care if the sables or squirrels saw--and started to undo my trousers.

The previous morning I woke up to find my bedsheets patterned with blood. It's said that the goddess of fertility blesses young women with their menarche when she judges them ready for adulthood. The proud goddess she was, she demanded thanks in return: the ritual washing of blood onto the forest floor. I wasn't feeling thankful for the bloody bedsheets the morning prior, nor the upset stomach that would dog me for most of the week. At the time, the whole ritual just irritated me; I didn't need a ceremony or a celebration to remind me just what I had to deal with from now until I became an old crone. Looking back, it was one of those things that forced you to confront yourself and your fate. Spend some time alone accepting the reality of your fleshy, fragile existence. My parents had invited Kari over--so I at least had that to look forward to after.

After I walked back home and exchanged pleasantries with the _twice-born_priestess, the blood and the ungodly cramps were offset by salmonberry wine, which I could now drink, and a little carved figurine of a uterus that Kari gave me as a joke. She had wrapped it in a small wooden box and gave it to me with a firm hug. She meant it as a playful rib--my last birthday, she got me a vial of pine-resin perfume after I told her that I was worried how I would smell after I became a hunter and spent half my day gutting wild animals--but I instantly treasured it and returned it to its box. Later, it would find a home on the shelf by my bed.

I had known Kari for over two years, and the usual cheery friend I once knew was fading away. I could see it that day, clearer than ever; the smile was on her lips and absent from her eyes. The leopard's tail, once fluttering and lively, hung limply from her back. A week prior, I told her that I was joining the hunting lodge. I thought she would be happy, but all she managed a faint smile, and she told me she hadn't been doing much of anything.

After breakfast and my second glass of wine, Kari had the presence of mind to realize that the festivities were wearing thin and that she should drag me out of the house. I had my fill of the forest for the day, so we walked across the village to the little river that cut through the outskirts of town. She said that yesterday she had gotten in a fight with her parents and nearly ran away. I asked her why, and she said she didn't know. We spent the rest of the day by the river, eating smoked salmon in silence with our feet dipped in the warm spring water.

***

The second cut set off a wave of nausea, and I felt myself lean forward as though I was about to pass out. The wave passed, and I tried to focus on my breath. Hee-whoo. Hee-whooo. Verda says that the circle of life is spun by the suffering of the living. I saw it the first time I killed a caribou at thirteen, her blood soaking through the snow, chest still rising and falling, legs twitching. The huntress who was flaying me alive--or at least, that's what it felt like--handed me her knife and told me where to cut along the length of her neck to end her suffering. We ate well that night. I saw it again when I was learning to track bears, and I saw the mother bear rip open the belly of a fawn to feed her cubs. Finally, I saw it when my half-sister gave birth.

The knife touched skin again, the muscles in my jaw were starting to cramp. I just screamed. Three.

***

"Knowing are those who traverse the forest both by land and by water."

The words were carved into a wooden plaque that sat atop the wall of the temple antechamber. The air was heavy with incense, a sappy fir-resin musk that smelt neither organic nor herbal. A few people sat on cushions around the wall to escape the spring rains or while they waited for a priest. A few of the people I recognized from the village--one was a woman from the hunting lodge who was about to give birth, along with her midwife, and a handful of sex workers I recognized from the smoke room down the road from my house. I had greater concerns at the moment--I hadn't seen Kari for a week.

"Shea?"

I spun around. It was the priestess from my menarche ritual last year. There was a look of concern drawn on the soft lines of her face; out of the many reasons a girl my age would end up here, most were considered unfortunate.

"I'm sorry if I seem a bit lost, but I'm trying to find someone," I said, respectfully tilting my head down. Even the kindest of them give off an aura of otherworldliness that made you shirk back into the shadows of the mortal plane. I told her everything--about how I hadn't seen my best friend, about how she hadn't been herself for ages, and how her parents told me she had left for here, and none of them had seen her since.

She smiled warmly and told me to wait while she fetched someone else, and a few minutes later, she returned with another priest, I assumed he was a man, but I wasn't entirely sure. The blue and green sealskin robes were the same regardless of gender, which didn't help. He motioned for me to follow him down a hallway.

"I was wondering when I'd see you." He said once we were in the privacy of a narrow stairwell.

Priests always say things like that, and it never becomes any less unnerving. "You were expecting me?"

He nodded. "Kari gave me specific instructions--you, and you alone could visit."

"Who?"

"You know her by a different name," He said. After we reached the top of the stairs, he led me down a smoky hardwood-lined hallway to a small prayer room. He knocked on a sliding door, and Kari's voice answered in the affirmative.

Before the priest could even open the door all the way, Kari leaped through the gap and wrapped her arms around me, nearly pulling me off my feet. I was too shocked to say anything, so I just returned the embrace, unquestioning. When she finally pulled away, her hands still on my shoulders, I almost didn't recognize her. She had washed her hair and tied it up, the dark circles under her eyes were gone, someone had helped her trim the stubble of hair that was growing under her chin, and she was sporting a smile that I hadn't seen from her in a year.

She took me by the hands and pulled me into the room, a converted loft with a bedroll and a table. It wasn't until she backed away from me, beaming and speechless, that I noticed her clothes: green and red sealskin. The pieces finally came together.

"So it's Kari now?" I said, picking my words carefully.

She nodded. "Yeah, it's, uh, my maternal grandmother's name. I always liked it." She said, bouncing on her toes.

"So, you're joining the temple then?" I motioned to her robes.

Another buoyant nod. "It's sort of...what people like me do, I guess. They won't let normal people--or well, you know what I mean, people who aren't twice-born--join the temple. So they always need new attendants." Her smile conveyed so many emotions: apprehension, happiness, relief, and hesitation all rolled across the fluttering motions of her face.

I sat down on the edge of the bedroll. Kari joined me and leaned her shoulder against mine. It was something she occasionally did, but for whatever reason, it felt different now--better, but different. I was unsure what to make of everything, not because I saw her as a boy, or even a young man, but because I saw her as a friend first and a boy second. During our childhood, the question of our genders was never something I even considered, and so now I was left to grapple with reality: the part of Kari that never concerned me was the part of her that concerned her the most.

"So, what now?" I said.

"I tell my parents if they haven't figured it out already. I start my studies here at the temple. The priests gave me a powder to put in my food, so I'll, you know, develop breasts and hips and all that."

"I always wondered how they did that."

"You what to know what it is?" She said with a smirk.

"Some kind of herb or something?"

She shook her head. "It's distilled from the urine of pregnant mares."

I looked at her incredulously, and she nodded, biting her lip. We both burst into laughter, the stress of the last week rolling off us in a moment of well-earned catharsis.

A full minute passed before either of us regained our facilities of speech. "Sorry about running off for a few days. After I figured out what was wrong, and I came to terms with what I needed to do, I just panicked a bit."

I shrugged. "I would probably panic too. If anything, I kind of feel bad too. I probably know you better than anyone else. I should have seen it coming."

"What, the fact that I refused to cut my hair and all my friends are girls?"

"I'm serious! I feel kind of silly."

She waved her hand. "The priests at one of the other temples have a saying. Regret can't fix the past, and fear can't change the future. The only battle you can fight is the one happening right now."

I nodded. A week in the temple, and Kari (I furiously worked to put the new name in my memory) had already picked up the wizened sage routine. We sat on her bed for a while, her head on my shoulder, only the occasional fragment of conversation passing between us.

***

I knew her as Kari from that day on, and her old name was rendered dead, lost to memory.

"How are you doing?" The chief huntress said.

What a ridiculous question. I was sweating buckets, my stomach fur was drenched in blood, and I had cried myself hoarse. However, I hadn't passed out, puked, or pissed myself, so I had that going for me.

"Fine."

_Fine_is such a context-dependent word, isn't it? I think something in my brain had switched over--on some level, the pain didn't seem to register quite the same, and the burning gave way to a dull throb that ran throughout my body. I could see her move the knife out of the corner of my eye, and I didn't even flinch. Perhaps this is the inner peace people talk about. She moved over to the other side of my chest. Four.

***

Kari was stretched out across the floor of the attic, her long dark hair spread across the wood like roots crawling from the trunk of a tree. She held an empty grass of salmonberry wine in her hands.

"Do you want to talk?" I was crammed up against the sloped roof of Kari's parents' house, knees up to my chest and a still-full glass of wine resting between my legs. The small farm cottage accommodated Kari, her three parents, two grandparents, and an aunt. The attic, even though it was small and uncomfortably cold, was an outpost of solitude.

She looked up, the tilt of her eyebrows suggesting that I had pulled her out of her head, probably for the better. "Stillborn."

"Oh." I felt myself stiffen and become intensely aware of my presence. Kari had worked as an attendant at the temple for over three years. "Do you want to talk about it?"

She pursed one corner of her lips. After so many years, I knew that look. It was the look right before the rivers flooded. "One of the other priests told the mother a month ago. That was hard enough, but there isn't much more we can do at that point. She still had to deliver, and I guess it had to be the day I was here. I'm not like you, not accustomed to being confronted with death quite like that. There's a lot of reasons I ended up there, and this wasn't one of them."

"You could always do something else. Not everyone who's twice-born has to end up at the temple."

She laughed mirthlessly. "You ever seen a twice-born fisherman? What about a farmer or a fletcher? All the twice-born folk end up in the priesthood eventually. It's where we look good, where we get respect. We're not looked at like freaks, Shea. We're exotic, which is somehow worse. I spent most of my life being treated like I was something I wasn't; if everyone I bump into for the rest of my life assumes I'm a priest, I might as well be a priest--it cuts down on the irony now that I look like a woman to most people. I feel like I belong at the temple, like I'm part of something I'm supposed to be a part of. Everyone needs that. Sure, in a less weird world, maybe I wouldn't but...I don't mind, most days. It's just days like this, days with the grieving parents, days with the sex workers who've made one too many bad calls, days where people just stare at me because I look pretty to them in a way most other women don't look pretty."

"So now will you admit you look pretty?" I teased.

Kari sighed audibly and lightly punched my thigh with her hand. "Fine! God! I'll say I'm pretty if you shut up about it."

I feigned outrage and slapped her hand away. The contact made something tighten in my chest, and a little part of me wanted to freeze that moment where my hand touched her.

Before she left for home, Kari had changed out of her temple robes and into her usual fare of a linen shirt and pants. As humble as it was, it always seemed to compliment her figure, and I found myself staring under the moonlight that beamed in from the windows. In the past few years, Kari had filled out immensely, and I sometimes joked that I only had a head start on her by a year. I had never seen Kari as more than a friend, but that indescribable warmth every time I felt my skin on hers was starting to change that.

She sat up with a grunt and scooted over to my side, hunched down between the truss studs in the ceiling. When I looked over, tears were running down her muzzle, which she quickly tried to hide with the sleeve of her shirt.

"Kari--"

She dipped her muzzle down. "It's fine. I'm just silly."

I put my shoulder to hers, leaning against her. I felt her move forward slightly, so I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her down into my lap. She didn't resist--and even though it was the most physical thing we had ever done, it felt entirely natural. Seconds of blissful silence passed between us, with just her shuddering breaths to fill the moment. She wrapped an arm around my ankle. "I'm here," I said.

"What happened today reminded me just how broken I still feel. For years there's been this perverse little ticking clock telling me I should have kids. I can't, though. At least not as a mother. It's such a stupid thing to want, but I can't help it. And the stillbirth brought all those feelings into focus. Seeing someone who could have what I wanted, only to have it ripped away from them, touched something raw in me. Something I haven't been able to heal."

I always cry when I'm around other crying people. I can't help it. I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and leaned over, letting my hair brush across her cheeks. She rolled over onto her back. The moonlight reflected off her lachrymose tan-brown eyes, and seeing that hurt in her just tightened those ropes around my chest, and the more I fell into her gaze, the more the ropes pulled, a little singularity of emotion that was so new to me back then.

"You're not silly. I can understand." I desperately clawed around my mind for more words, better words. "If I can feel like that sometimes, so can you."

She smiled briefly, but the shadow of pain remained in her eyes. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was love. "Thanks. That means more than you think."

I kept on thinking of more to say. She deserved more than a few stitched-together sentence fragments. Hunting had trained me to be a woman of action, not words, so I just decided to go with what I knew. Slowly, as though I expected her to resist, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close. Once she realized what was about to happen, she put her arms on my shoulders and lifted herself up to me. I felt my lips touch hers, and all at once, that bundle of tension inside my chest came undone, months of repressed glances and awkward smiles and unspeakable daydreams all ending at a point where I felt her wet lips, her breath on my cheek, and her arms around me. I pulled my arms tighter around her, and her muzzle opened, the position was awkward, but neither of us cared. Her muzzle was so warm and inviting, and everything about the feeling of her embrace was just so _perfect_that every other sensation was lost. When she pulled away, she moved her hands up to my cheeks; there was a look of love in her eyes that made it seem as though she was seeing me for the first time. We didn't say a word--it just didn't seem necessary. She just pushed herself off my lap and laid there on the floor, looking at me expectantly. I didn't hesitate for a moment before I got on top of her, arms by her shoulders, and the kisses started anew.

***

Sometimes, when I'm feeling down, I remember that night. It's woven into countless little corners of my memories, an acorn that's grown roots deep in the soil of my soul. That was my first kiss, and it wasn't the only first we shared that night. I'm not sure if her parents knew or even cared--we didn't make much noise, although we spent most of the night fumbling in the dark.

The individual cuts were starting to blur into each other, nerve endings burned out and merging into one morass of pain. I was beginning to feel like I had made it over the hill, and perhaps I could just let my mind wander while the passage of time carried me through the second half. Life on the island being what it was, extended families, both young and old, living under a single roof, I had a very vivid idea of what awaited me in nine months. Now, I had a whole afternoon to ruminate on it.

I breathed through the pain. Whee-whooo. Five.

***

"Shea! The water, the water!" The twice-born midwife shouted at me from across the room. Paws scrambling across the wood floor of the family den, I ran into the living room and pulled a steaming pot down from above the hearth, splashing some on my legs as I ran back to the den. The midwife took the iron pot and let it down on the floor with a thud.

My half-sister, naked save for a thin linen robe, rolled her head back and made a noise somewhere between a sob and a groan. It was the kind of animal utterance that conveyed not merely pain, the procession of pain across great expanses of time. The first contraction had started before sunrise. It was now past dinner.Any time now, the midwife had said.

The midwife dipped a linen cloth into the pot and motioned for my half-sister's husband, a young snowy leopard who looked just as frazzled as I, to hold it between her legs. The hot water was supposed to help with blood flow, but I was thankful for the modesty more than anything. It was customary for the youngest in a household to help out in the event of birth--which was me, although I was pushing nineteen--but as was frequently the case, I hardly felt thankful to be part of such traditions. The midwife had shooed my parents (and grandparents, and uncle) out of the den, leaving just myself, the midwife, my sister, and the father.

Another contraction. Another order from the midwife to push. She wrapped her hands around a bath towel that was tied to a shelf on the wall, her face ghoulishly contorted in agony, jowls set back in a snarl exposing white gums above clenched teeth. The towel had been an improvisation, until two hours ago she had been holding the snow leopard's hand, at which time we all heard a meaty _pop_during a contraction, and his own shouts of pain joined hers. The midwife theorized that she had dislodged the socket of his thumb joint. I was told to fetch a towel after that and some liquor for the father.

The contraction ended, and my half-sister went limp, her eyes rolling back in her head. The midwife grabbed her arm and curled two fingers around her wrist, checking her pulse. She then shooed my uncle's hand out of the way, and I averted my gaze while she checked the kitten's progress. She cursed under her breath. Soon.

"Shea, fetch more towels and some cold water." The midwife said, her voice hoarse. I had half a mind to ask her if she wanted some of that liquor.

I could hear the next contraction from the living room as I stuffed a handful of towels down the front of my shirt and poured water into a pail from the tub of well-water we kept by the hearth. My sister's grunts had devolved into bloody, guttural screams. My fingers were shaking, and I nearly tipped over the pail of water as I tried to order my hands around the handle. Screams like that would unsettle anyone's nerves, and whatever composure I had left after twelve hours was beginning to fail.

I kept my eyes planted on the floor as I returned to the den and dropped everything in front of the midwife. My uncle-in-law dipped a towel into the water and dabbed it across my sister's forehead. Her whole body was shaking, tears fell down her muzzle from wide, unfocused eyes. The two of them whispered soothing nothings into her ears as I made of point of not looking at what the midwife's hand was doing between her legs.

The next contraction happened after what seemed like seconds, and once I stepped back, my curiosity got the better of me. It's hard to describe, but it's one of those things where once you start watching, you can't stop. My feet were nailed in place, my eyes locked to the spot where my sister squatted over the floor, biceps flexing above her head as she wrapped the towel around her wrists.

I don't quite know what I expected. I was too old and had spent too much time on Kari's family farm to expect a furry kitten to come popping out like a pea from a peapod squeezed between the fingers. It was a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process punctuated by screams and bodily fluids, and by the time I saw the kitten itself, I had already choked down something I thought may have been vomit. The midwife put a folded strip of leather into my sister's mouth, she bit down, but the screams continued unabated, deep throat-torn howls that came with every push, ringing in my ears. Then, just like that, with one final push, it was done. Squeaky, high-pitched mewls as the midwife fussed over the infant, checking him--and it was a boy--before she handed him over to my sister, who had collapsed on the floor. The rest of the family, presumably huddled right above us on the second floor of the cabin, cheered as they heard the newborn's mewls.

"Shea, I think some wine is in order." It was my uncle-in-law.

I stood, eyes wide, watching as she pulled him up to her breast.

"Shea?" He repeated.

"Huh?" I forced myself to return from whatever state of shock I was in. "Oh--wine. Yah." It was another second before I could command the power of locomotion.

I pulled down an unopened bottle of salmonberry wine--the more potent stuff, this time--and for a few seconds, I just stood motionless, the last twenty minutes seared into the front of my mind's eye. I took my time uncorking the bottle and pouring four overfull glasses, and balancing them all gently in the palms of my hands, hoping I could buy enough time to skip the passing of the afterbirth. My timing was off. It's as if the goddess of fertility herself was wagging her finger at me and saying, sorry, girl, you don't get to sit any of this out.

After the midwife cut the cord and swaddled the kitten in a clean towel, she allowed the rest of the family to pour into the den. The lot of them scuttled into the room like a pack of hungry coyotes.

I spent the rest of the night cradling a glass of wine and watching my sister while the midwife waved at my family to give her some damn room to breathe, by the goddess. That look of joy and elation on her face, the wide-eyed expression of unconditional love as he nursed from her; I had never seen emotions quite like that on another person. After a day of full-tilt chaos and unspeakable pain, everything about my sister radiated warmth. We exchanged glances for a brief second, she smiled at me, and I smiled back, she mouthed a weak _thanks,_and I returned with a wordless nod. I don't quite know what was going on in my sleep-deprived, hormone-addled brain at the time, but that night, despite everything I had witnessed, I set a goal for myself. It was a goal I kept.

***

This is a terrible idea, right? A version of me who was only an adult in the most perfunctory legal definition decided she wanted a kid, and now a version of me five years later had followed through, for reasons that defied sense. I knew what lay ahead over the next nine months, I had seen it in my sister, and I heard Kari's midwifery stories from the temple almost every day. Barring war, disease, or famine, the birth was set to be the most excruciating day of my life, and that was assuming nothing went wrong. I barely feel like an adult myself--how am I supposed to care for someone who can't even feed themselves? Kari can become a wetnurse, they have the supplements at her temple for that, and the rest of our families will chip in to help; that's just how things work around here. I even looked after my niece a couple times a month--on the island, parents don't really raise children, households do. Yet it would still be my child, my responsibility. Forget the next year--what about the next decade? Two decades? I could barely manage myself when I was sixteen, how could I possibly parent someone that age? If Kari's midwifery training at the temple hadn't taught her so much, she probably would have drilled a kid into me on accident when we were sixteen ourselves.

What was happening right now, and what had happened just a few weeks ago, wasn't merely about the next nine months, or next year, or any number of years. This was setting the course for the rest of my life, from this moment until my death, and my body returned to the soil of the forest from whence all life comes. This one breath of existence, of thought, before I passed into non-existence for eternity, and the unyielding ecological cycle of life continued without me, was happening right now. In this very moment. Was this what I even wanted to do with that brief flutter of consciousness? It wasn't too late to back out. I wasn't even two months in--the temple had tinctures that could end it.

The huntress wiped the blood off her knife with a rag soaked in grain alcohol. Watching it didn't even frighten me anymore. My physical facilities, overwhelmed, had just numbed themselves. The most vivid of all my remaining senses relayed the stench of blood and sweat.

The one certainty in all this was Kari. I understood that I wanted to spend this infinitesimally short spasm of existence with her. For the better part of a decade, not a day had passed where I didn't believe I wanted to share bed and table with her for what time I had left. Even at her most clueless and obstinate, that never changed. And she wanted this. For years she was too shy and too polite to even ask, but I knew; that small part of me that saw the look on my sister's face five years ago wanted it also. I think that's what this is about: not just me, not just the child, not just Kari. All of us, together, as one, for that brief flutter of life we all had.

The next two cuts came quick, and I was so lost in my head that I didn't even notice for a second. Six...Seven.

***

A perilously narrow stairwell led up to the attic of Kari's house, forcing me to hold the two mugs of tea above my head as I ascended. It wasn't so much an attic anymore as a third story--last year, Kari's mother had built it out under the guise of "making more room for everyone," apparently predicting what was to come become of Kari and me before we even knew ourselves.

"Kari, I brought tea!"

Still lying under the covers, she put down her book and stretched her arms. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, and after years of living with her, she had forcefully converted me to a morning person. Carefully balancing the teacups, I fell back into bed and handed one to her. "No breakfast?" She said.

"Your granddad was monopolizing the hearth for his creative interpretation of snowshoe hare and mushroom stew."

Kari chuckled. "I thought I smelled something odd." Sitting up, she leaned against me, her head on my shoulder. The linen top sheet had fallen down to her waist, and I put a hand around her and let my fingers fall through the soft fur of her stomach. She purred quietly in response, her stomach flexing as I gently ran my claws along that strip of flesh where wiry pubic hair turned into soft fur. The rising daylight melted into her wild winter coat, creating a little halo of sun around her curves.

On the next pass of my fingers, I felt her erection brush against my fingers. It was no accident; after seven years of sharing a bed, I had a mental map of where to touch and when. She didn't say anything, but I felt her hips thrust ever so slightly, and she nuzzled under my chin. I put down my tea on the floor by the bed, and she did the same.

"See, this is why I get you up early." She said as I straddled her midsection. I untied the heavy bathrobe I was wearing and threw it aside before adjusting myself to get under the sheets.

"And it's why I never complain about it."

I gave myself some time to warm up and leaned down to kiss her, our hands exploring familiar territory, yet our passion was unabated by experience. She ran her paws from the small of my back down to my thighs, then gently pushed me forward so she could guide my right breast to her muzzle. I let out an involuntary gasp and wrapped my hands around her head, pushing her in as I felt teeth gently scrape the hardening flesh of my nipple. My tail lashed against the bed.

She slipped a hand between my legs, her middle finger feeling the wetness between my labia. "How did I manage to land someone as lovely as you?" She said in a whisper as she pulled away from my breast, hands on my hips to guide me down.

"I fell out of a tree."

She laughed and let me take charge as I took her erection in my hands, guiding it between my legs until it hit its mark, and she slowly bottomed out inside me. I stopped for a second, reveling in the sensation before I leaned forward to plant a trail of kisses from her ear to her lips. Her mouth was as warm and inviting as the rest of her; for a few minutes, we didn't do anything but let our tongues tussle. After a while, the need became too much. She put her hands on my midsection and started to thrust, and I bucked back into her motions, arms wrapped tightly around her. I nuzzled under her cheek, letting out little moans of pleasure each time I felt the root of her penis press into my womanhood.

No words passed between us for the countless minutes we spent together, the heatless winter sun bathing our bodies in light. Instead, the passage of time was marked by our thrusts and little exasperated noises and the unspeakable things we whispered into each other's ears. The sheets slowly fell off the bed, and our tea turned cold.

"Is it safe?" Kari asked. I could tell by the way her hands gripped my thighs that she was getting close.

For the past few minutes, both my hands had been working furiously between my legs. I had to stop for a minute before I could speak between heavy breaths. "Last period was two weeks ago, I think." Kari didn't have ovaries, but her job meant that she was better at the math than I was.

"Might want to pull out."

I stopped grinding into her and pushed myself up, hands resting on her shoulders. "We don't have to if you don't want to."

She looked into my eyes, first confused and then surprised. Neither of us moved.

"Shea--"

I squeezed my thighs around her, the two of us still coupled. "Up to you. I would just...be happy to let it happen."

"Are you sure?" Her eyes were wide open. "I always figured we would sit down and talk about, you know...a kid."

I touched my forehead to hers. The past half-hour of lovemaking had brought me to the edge, and I had to strain to keep my hips from continuing the effort. "I've had years to think about it, and I've never changed my mind." I wasn't sure if that was true or not, but it felt true.

I leaned down to kiss her on the lips, she returned the kiss with even greater intensity. The hands on my thighs darted between my legs as she thrust into me, the tips of her fingers expertly working across the hard nub of my clitoris. I knew she wouldn't pull out. I pulled her into a hug, arms around shoulders as I let her do what felt right--what came naturally. The thought of what we were doing aroused me even more. It was both uncertain and inevitable, and we had forged a path that we would never walk back from.

I came first. Mewling, shuddering, shaking, my head resting on her chest as I tried to push my hips as far down as they could go. She held me close as she whispered little words of encouragement in my ear, hand on the back of my head stroking down to my shoulder blades. Her climax was rough and restrained, she buried herself in me as she came, and I reached a hand behind me to feel her twitching. The two of us had been incredibly careful for seven years, and the intimacy of that moment felt like a headrush, like slowly falling into a dream. Even after she came, I didn't climb off her. We just fell over onto our sides, her length slowly softening inside me.

After a few minutes, she started to grind into me, her erection returning, and we pulled the covers over ourselves, legs and tails twisting and knotting over each other in the dark. The second round happened faster, but with no less vigor--ages of care and menstrual tracking made us feel like we had so much to make up for, the recklessness made our hearts burn with lust. When she finally finished, she dove between my legs, dutifully cleaning up after herself before she turned her lips on the hard nub of my clitoris. The next time she came up for air, the sun was at its apex in the sky.

***

We didn't conceive that morning, and I had my period a little over a week later. Kari was disappointed, but I didn't mind. We hadn't even hit our mid-twenties, so we had plenty of time. The next time I was ready, she wanted to try out a few different positions that might help it take, but I didn't want to. The idea of actively trying somehow seemed less romantic, more artificial. I just wanted to love her, and whatever happened--or didn't happen--was fine. However, that period the following week was my last.

You learn to make peace with the inevitable when you live in the forest. People die, people go missing, rivers flood, crops parish. As the huntress made the last two cuts above my navel, I didn't squirm or shout. I felt it, but whatever inside me that was fighting the pain had relinquished itself. Eight. Nine.

I let go of the rope and fell onto my back. Sweat from my forehead ran down my head and into my ears. Despite everything, I felt at peace in a way I hadn't in weeks.

***

Kari ran her hands up from my pubic mound, her thumbs just above my labia until she traveled around my stomach and reached my breasts. She put her hands under my arms and leaned down to kiss my muzzle. I mumbled happily in response, running my tongue under her chin. Temperate spring air drifted in through the windows, sending little strands of fur fluttering across sunbeams. Both of us were shedding our winter coats.

Kari gently put her hands on my stomach, cupping them around the bump at my midriff. Her thumb reached down to feel the three scars above my navel. "Halfway there." She said, trying not to sound too chipper. She knew the next twenty weeks would be harder on me than on her.

I nodded, stretching out in the sunbeams. "At least I'm not hurling my guts out every morning."

"I gave you herbs for that, you know. Can't complain if you didn't take them."

"They only tasted slightly better than the vomit."

Kari sighed, "well, stoics usually make for good mothers."

I leaned up in bed slightly and reached my hands down to Kari, feeling around until my fingers found her inner thigh and then worked up to her penis. She let out a barely-audible ah and fell over next to me in bed. I climbed on top of her, letting her grind herself between my labia as we kissed until I was wet enough, and she slipped inside me. The reservations that gripped me weeks ago, during that long night in the lodge, had been replaced with pride--at what I had done, at what I was doing, and at what I would soon do. That pride had manifested itself as desire, and pleasure sprang forth not merely from touch or climax, but from the understanding of what I could do with my body. As we made love, I was focused not on myself but on Kari; I listened to her slow, shivering breaths as I rested my head next to hers, felt her hands desperately grip the skin around my sides, I followed the thrusting of her hips as she ached for more of what I gave. To have an effect such as that on another person is an enrapturing experience on its own.

We exchanged no anatomical quips or erotic threats. Words, whispers, and speech seemed unnecessary. Entire stanzas passed between us whenever we moved our hands across each other's bodies, and when our eyes, wide and unfocused from pleasure, met briefly. I could tell she was getting close by how she thrust her hips and the little guttural noises she made between breaths. I made no attempt to hold her off, and instead, I put my hands on her shoulders and looked down at her as I worked my hips. Her thrusting stopped, and she pushed herself into me, her back arched, jaw agape as she came. I just smiled, the expression leaving nothing unsaid.

I looked down as we pulled apart, long strings of bodily fluids connecting us. I made sure to spread my legs, tilting my hips so she had a view of her own milky-white product dripping from the folds of my inner labia and down my thigh. She made a growl of satisfaction and slipped her fingers into me, index and middle digits pressing forward on a spot that made the joints in my knees turn to liquid. I came while collapsed on top of her, my arms tight around her shoulders.

After we floated back to earth, I rolled off her and onto my side, where she wrapped an arm under my breasts and pulled me into a hug.

"You want to hear something silly?" Kari said, whispering with her muzzle in the crook of my neck.

"What?" I took her hand that was thrown over my side and pulled it up to my chest, weaving my fingers between hers.

"That night when you said you were okay with having kids, I always worried you would regret it later. I almost pulled out a few times, just because I was worried about you."

I squeezed her hand, and it took me a minute to form the words I wanted to say. "I was worried I would regret it too. Regret can't fix the past, and fear can't change the future. I know I want to spend all of those moments with you, and if I have a chance to make us happy, to love you in a way that's totally unconditional, I want to do it."

She kissed me behind the ear and said nothing more. The minutes fell away into hours, and so fell the day shortly after.