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If anyone saw the way Yuuri softly stirred the sugar at the bottom of his coffee cup, they would surely say he was grieving over a broken heart. And they would be sort of right. But it wasn’t his heart which sook console over a bitter and warm drink, but rather his pride and his will to keep on going.“Yuuri!” a childlike voice brought him out of his trance. Yuuko was already rising a hand up to call for the waitress “You want another cup? That one must be cold already”The young man blinked in confusion before denying softly “I’m good thanks”“Anyone with two eyes can see that’s the biggest lie ever” Takeshi mocked next to Yuuko who didn’t waste a second on giving him a hit with her elbow, making him duck in pain.“I said it yesterday and I will say it again” Phichit raised his head off his hot cocoa with a big white and foamy moustache which finally pulled a small smile off Yuuri’s lips “all he needs are some good days lying by the sea with a drink on his hand and maybe one of my friends by his side! A little time out of the lab doesn’t do bad to anyone, you know?”Truth be told, Phichit had been mumbling over and over again about inviting him to spend a few weeks at his family’s summer house in Phuket Island over the past week after what Yuuri considered to be the worst event in history… or at least of his now-done career. Phichit hadn’t been the only one either: when he had finally had the courage to call back home and tell his parents about the failure to the world of science that he was, his mother had immediately suggested for him to go back for a few weeks to Hasetsu over the summer break and have some katsudon, his father said they would always welcome him into the resort and his sister had simply mumbled an almost inaudible ‘Cheer up, lil’ bro’.“Speaking of which, I should go back to the lab to clean my mess up.” he started to stand up from the cubicle, placing his bag over his shoulder while pulling out his wallet “Professor Cialdini said he wants that thing out of the lab by tomorrow”“Tsk. You’re exaggerating, Celestino simply said he needs the lab for the freshmen’s open class on Monday” Phichit snorted, nevertheless, he stood up after his friend “You’re such a drama queen sometimes I wonder how great you would have been in a Theatre Major. I’ll help you clean”“The machine is big, right?” Yuuko wondered, rising her hand again to ask for the bill “Takeshi can help moving the pieces if you want!”Her boyfriend almost spit his own drink in surprise. But everyone in the table knew there was hardly anything he wouldn’t fulfill to his now fiancée, especially since she was pregnant.Yuuri could thank his rugby-player muscles, though. Phichit and him being physicists meant that the strongest part of their bodies were their brains rather than any muscular fiber anywhere. Yuuko, despite her petite size and her mathematician mind, was stronger than them both combined but there was no way in hell or heaven they were going to make a pregnant woman do the heavy job. Literally.Despite usually seeing each other while walking down the hallways, the four of them had formally met during their first meeting at the International Students’ Club of the Saint Petersburg University. Phichit and Yuuri had instantly clicked and became each other’s best friend to the point that by their second semester they had become roomies; thanks to her bubbly attitude, Yuuko had been quick to join their all-nighter study sessions in which most of the time she would correct their most complex equations while sharing snacks their families sent them from home.Takeshi had actually joined their group when he had asked for help to make Yuuko notice him out of all the Russian and non-Russian students who were after her all the time. He really liked hanging with them but sometimes he just couldn’t grasp what the hell those Einstein-for-brains were talking about.The lab at the Institute of Physics was as big as the college’s prestige, and it needed to be if it wanted to pay respect to the Nobel Prize winners who had stepped out of its walls. Yet, as much as grandiose it might be in the aesthetic sense, every student who had spent a few minutes of his life in there, knew the struggle, stress and pain that implied being enclosed in one of its rooms for either class, homework or project.In Yuuri’s place, he had three full blackboards the height and width of the walls they hung on to prove it.Surrounded by them, computers, about thirteen cardboard boxes filled to the top with equation-filled papers, wheelie chairs and some miscellaneous stuff borrowed from the Robotics dept, lied Yuuri’s final project in all its infamous splendor.At first glance, it looked as if someone had glued together a pair of boxes: one made of solid metal and having all the façade of a set of Google-center computers with a small monitor and a keyboard to access to its system, and another one made of glass and carbon fiber which looked as an expensive showcase with a sort of claw on the top.The idea was for the controller to insert a certain equation on the monitor followed by the subtraction of a determined number of years and a password, this action would cause a chemical and mechanical reaction which would be freed through the claw’s tubular channels and into the isolated ‘showcase box’.What for? To make a small twist in the space-time which could be visible and study-able for mankind.Or at least that had been the idea.Yuuri had been working on that thing for the whole semester and five days before, he had thrown his hopes and grades out of the window when the only thing the machine did was nothing but a mere lighter-like spark. He had set himself too high for his own good.“Oh wow!” Yuuko exclaimed in surprise when she entered the room “The last time I was here, the blackboard wasn’t that full!”Yuuri let out a giggle while he and Phichit placed their coats and bags on one of the chairs “Well, you have been kind of busy going to the gynecologist these days”His friend smiled at her swollen belly. She was barely on her 22nd week but her belly already looked as if had been 9 months as she and Takeshi were expecting triplets. If him and her parents had lost their breaths when Yuuko announced her pregnancy, both her boyfriend and parents had almost fainted when she revealed they were going to be three babies.“Still, it was fun hanging here” the girl admitted, siting on the wheelie chair her boyfriend offered her. Her eyes were still fixed on the blackboard walls “I could keep my applied math sharp helping you with those”“Celestino also loved your help with Yuuri!” Phichit chirped from behind the machine where he had started to untangle some wires while Yuuri disconnected them “He says he always double-checked his operations when you were here”Yuuri had always been good doing even the most complex of mathematical problems from a very early age. His anxiety, however, would sometimes get the best of his brain and made his hands and eyes make the dumbest mistakes ever: from forgetting to put the vertical line on a plus sign to confuse a number seven with a one.“Ah… that would explain that mistake that annulation in the final track” Yuuko mumbled absentmindedly.Despite the indifference of her tone, as soon as the words were out of her lips, Yuuri’s head raised up like a spring from behind the machine.“What…?” his voice was barely audible in evident shockStill sitting on the wheelie chair and gazed with confusion by Takeshi, her friend was pointing at the upper left corner of the third blackboard. The equation described how one of the chemical components needed to be activated through speed for its isotopes to react with another compound in a nuclear scale so their reaction could start the time-space twist.Except that, in the equation, the compound didn’t activate itself, but it lowered its reactive power instead.“My chem is not as good as it used to, but I’m pretty sure you annulated the reaction and oxidized the other component in there” she explained, Yuuri followed the line she described with her finger “After that, as you didn’t increase the speed, it ended being a neutral reaction…”“YUU-CHAN YOU’RE A GENIOUS!” Yuuri exclaimed in pure joy “Phichit! I can fix it!”The physicist was so happy he wasted no time and went to his backpack to pull out his notebook and calculator to start correcting his equation with the excitement of a kid in Christmas. Phichit went back to plug back all the wires while Yuuko helped Yuuri in high voice, her boyfriend staring at her in the awe of someone who understands how amazing their significant other is.An un-drawn vertical line had been the cause of all his nightmares for an entire week!“Yuuri are you he…?” a familiar voice came out of the lab’s door. Professor Celestino seemed to be shocked to find two of his students and their friends in the room “Oh, hey there kiddos”“Professor!” the Japanese boy dropped the chalk he had been writing with and ran towards the professor with a smile he only let out whenever his mother placed a bowl of katsudon in front of his face “Yuuko found my mistake! I can fix it and have the machine running in no time!”Celestino couldn’t even put down his leather bag before his excited student rushed him in front of the blackboard and set to explain Yuuko’s discovery and his own strategy to re-arrange most of his equations on the last track. There was no way it wouldn’t work!“Pofessor, can I have another chance just this time?” Yuuri stared at him with the same wide eyes a puppy would useThe professor gave another look to the blackboard and to him.“Well” Celestino relaxed his shoulders “grades will only be up until Monday, you know?”What is left of the afternoon, the lab’s doors only open to let Takeshi out for cups of coffee and cookies on behalf of his fiancée and his friends who don’t take their eyes off the giant blackboards for more than five seconds. He even swears he can see the smoke coming out of their brains through their ears.Celestino, Phichit and Yuuko were sitting like students would do, making counts and helping Yuuri to advance quickly with them. The Japanese young man was holding a small light blue notebook on his left hand while writing with the right one. The large chalk-drawn process on the blackboards is nothing but a mathematical translation of what is written in that little notebook.He had written every single detail of his space-time experiment in those pages that weren’t longer than his phone’s length since he was still sitting under the kotatsu back at his family’s living room during the winter break.“I could reduce the pressure, but then it would oxidize…”“…now if you apply the Euler principle to this, the result should be…”“I remember you said in that part you made a substitution…”“…the range of that one is elevated to the previous atom. You’re missing two units”“Someone wants more coffee?”The sky is already dark outside of the building, but the small group inside doesn’t even consider paying attention to it or to the clock hanging on the back wall. How could they when Yuuri’s final equation is already written?It’s probably the length of Yuuri’s forearm, short and beautiful in the physics perspective. His audience clapped in genuine joy.“Omg, I can’t believe my bestie is the next Nobel prize winner!” Phichit squeakedYuuri’s face couldn’t contain neither the big proud smile nor the pink blush “I still have to know if this will actually work out”The young physicist was slowly typing his equation into the monitor ever so carefully, trying to do so perfectly. Life and Professor Cialdini had given him a second chance so he better not mess it up.“It will, kiddo” the professor gave Yuuri one of his tight and comforting shoulder grabs “You are about to make history! Phichit, why don’t you record this moment for the sake of mankind and science…?”It didn’t even pass half a second before his friend pulled his phone out of his pocket with a loud ‘YES SIR!’ and set himself into a filming pose. Yuuko and Takeshi pushed their wheelie chairs in front of the machine and he even got one for Celestino to enjoy the show.Yuuri gave it all one last look. Machine plugged, containers ready, pressure indexes ready, speed levels ready, containing barriers ready, inserted equation ready, Phichit doing an Instagram live ready, professor Cialdini ready, Yuuko and Takeshi excited for the show ready. Himself? Ready to make history!He took a deep breath to ease down his heart from all the cheering happening behind his back, pressed ‘Enter’ on the keyboard and set his hand to softly push the small lever which would free the chemical components from their pressured containers.That was when all the red alarms in his head started to ring. He had forgotten something, and it wasn’t until the lever was only two millimeters away from activating the whole system that he could remember what it was: the security timer. Without it, the machine would activate immediately, and he wouldn’t have time to set himself to a safe distance from suffering any kind of negative after effects.But it was too late before his brain commanded his hand to stop.Yuuri wouldn’t know if it had been an effect of the machine or if it were his own senses trying to avoid the unavoidable, but time seemed to relent. He had time to see Celestino’s proud expression, Phichit’s excited face while he talked to his Instagram viewers and Yuuko and Takeshi’s wide-eyed excitement.The last thing he felt with his last traces of full consciousness, was how he felt his brain fry like a pork cutlet. Vitka was awfully bored.Hunting would usually pump his spirits up as soon as he stepped into the forest, excitement and concentration would flow in his veins while he followed the trace of his prey but it would also fill his soul with respect, humility and peace while he performed the ritual of giving thanks to the animal for giving its life so life in his village could go on.Hunting was good so one would think being a hunting teacher would also be wonderful, but he had forgotten who was to be his pupil.“Agh!” Yur’chka complained next to him, the chirps of fleeing birds following his words.Vitka didn’t even need to turn his head to know the kid had stuck his arrow on the tree trunk rather than on one of the bird’s chest. He sighed for what should be the eighteenth time in the day. He could make the exact same correction he had been doing all day, but he knew his pupil would simply ignore the advice just as he had done so far.“Let’s go home” the kid made a deaf thump when he sat violently next to him, throwing his bow away from him “I’m done with this”Vitka picked up the wooden weapon, muttered a short prayer which ended with a gentle touch of his forehead to the mushy forest ground and stood up with his head still bowing with respect.“You forgot to thank for this lesson” he told his student off. The angry grumbles behind his back made Vitka sure the kid had listened.The way back to the village where their people lived was a track Vitka really enjoyed. Eight trees with a special mark made by the Petsk people had to be passed through before arriving to a small waterfall, they had to pass two others of those until a marsh was visible. A boat and a pair of rows awaited, for them so they could travel along the river. The Petsk village was located far enough from the river so clouds of mosquitoes wouldn’t attack during the summer but close enough so the walk towards the boats wasn’t so tiring in the early mornings.All of the homes were built in the exact same structure and size: a circular construction in the soft and pale color the marsh herbs would turn into when the Snow was only a few moons away from their village, the Petsk would mix them with mud and mold them over wooden supports until they achieved thick, slightly irregular and with some cleavages carved on them for some objects to be placed. In the center, made in the same paste, stood a small oven with more of warming intention rather than baking, for that they had larger ovens everyone could use.Just like the ovens, the Petsk had built a larger house for their healer and magician, around which all of the others stood. It was bigger than the others so Lili’ya could perform rituals, tend the ill or wounded and office the Bondings along her Cared, Ya’Kov, who had once been the Petsk’s Great Hunter.Yurch’ka lived with his Great Father in the house he had built for him and his Cared when he was young, so it wasn’t that far from the healer’s house. On the other hand, Vitka lived on his own in the house his Mother and Father had built in the outskirts. A home too big for just one.Sometimes, to ease the emptiness, Vitka would collect interesting things he would find along his hunting trips or his walks down the streams with Makka. His walls were quite full of furs which were too small to use on clothes, colorful feathers he had found in the forest, stones in other tones as those of the North caves he would find them at in his occasional trips which he would sometimes turn into beads and even seashells he brought back from the journey the Petsk made to the Sun Lands every Winter. In fact, in that moment he was awfully curious if he could soon add a new item to his collection“You want to go pick flowers?” Yurch’ka scandalized with a piece of dried meat between his teethThey had stopped for a little bite before rowing their way back to the village. Vitka had just learned a new method from Lili’ya to ensure a plant to keep its color and he wanted to try it on one of the Ground Skies.“You know they only bloom like three or four times before the Winter comes and I really want to see if I can make them keep their color” Yurch’ka rolled his eyes turning their usual bright green into a fed up white “Listen this, I’ll trade you this visit to the Sky Grounds for a non-lesson of fishing. How’s that?”Of course, the kid immediately agreed: the Sky Grounds weren’t that far after all. After tying their boats safely with the others, they walked up the narrow wooden pier but instead of taking the lane to the right leading to the small forest their village stood up, they took the one to the left which lost itself further the smooth hills at the back of the marsh; behind them, the ground ceased to be its normal tone of green and allowed small, simple, delicate flowers to color it the same as the sky. Hence the name.“How many do you think I should pick?” Vitka wondered, holding an armful of flowers. He could put them inside the hunting pouch on his back if it wasn’t full of a deer legs.“Well, you say you’re going to be doing experiments with them and considering your klutz self, the you should probably pick the entire field” Yurch’ka mocked, sitting on one of the hills apart from the flower field.Vitka didn’t listened to his words and tied the stems together with one of the threads intended for their ditched fishing lessons, they started to make their way back to the village in a quiet silence. Mosquitoes weren’t a bother yet so the only sound flooding their ears was the cicada’s soft song.“Say Yura,” the older man broke the silence just a few meters away from his home where they would leave most of their stuff before lending Yurch’ka back to his Great Father “do you feel something weird in the air?”The blond kid let out a puzzled ‘huh?’ before darting his eyes through the dark sky and then moving his pointy nose sniffing the night air. Vitka had let his improvised bouquet and hunting pouch on the ground with one swift movement while getting his bow an arrow ready to attack with the same grace and speed. His icy blue eyes scanned the dark cautiously: something had come too dangerously close to his village.“I don’t smell a thing” Yurch’ka mumbled on his side, grabbing his bow as well with less mastery “Are you sure you…wait”The smell was suddenly stronger. And it was the strangest thing ever to rose Vitka’s nostrils.“Bow and arrow ready, Yura” the hinter advised to his student who gave a mute nod in response.The scent was not bad, just plain weird. It had the same aroma as that of something being left over the fire for too long until it turned into coal, but the background of the scent was not that of a hearth, but rather that of a cruel winter night out in the forests with a wind so freezing it burns the skin until it leaves it deadly purple.An eye-striking light shone before their eyes, as if someone had lit up a white fire in the middle of the air followed by an invisible body which threw Vitka and Yurch’ka away with such strength both hunters let their weapons go and were left with no air in their bodies.Vitka immediately stood up, ready to face their enemy but there was no one to stick his arrows with but…He squinted his sky-blue eyes at what seemed to be a sack laying a few steps apart from them, but it had a very human shape to him. The hunter approached the curious figure cautiously and holding his bow ready to shoot. Yet, when he was only a step away from it, he put his weapon down.It clearly was a person just like him and his apprentice but, maybe it was his vision blinded by the lack of the Bright Father, he couldn’t see any sense of familiarity to the Petsk or to the other tribes he knew of. The person laying before him was strange for everything the Bright Mother could show: the body was wrapped in strange cloths in colors which were impossible to find in the fur of any known animal, he had no visible weapons on him, his hair wasn’t styled in the way the Petsk did but closer to the Almas in the grass plains near the Summer Lands but, what called Vitka’s attention the most, was the color of the hair itself.“Great Mother shining in the skies…” Vitka mumbled in aweAmongst the Petsk, the most common hair was that of the dried marsh grass like Yurch’ka but there also were the one of dried leaves before Winter like Lili’ya, the color of a warm hearth like Mila or even the color of the wood pillars in the forests like the Alma people. Vitka was a curious case but not a rare one though it was way more common amongst the Sammi in the Always Winter Lands.But someone with the color of the sky in which the Bright Mother stood? That was something completely unheard of.Vitka lightly poked the body with one of the ends of his bow but ended turning the face towards the hunter himself and he almost tried to shoot again. He had some kind of thin branches below the forehead and standing on the nose. Maybe some kind of amulet? Or the sign of a healer from another tribe?“What?” Yurch’ka interrupted his thoughts “Are we gonna kill her or carry her to Lili’ya?”Her?Vitks gave the body before him a second glance, moved into curiosity by his pupil. The stranger’s clothes were much lighter than the pelts covering his and Yurch’ka’s bodies, so it was easy to distinguish a small waist and curvy hips but there was no sign of breasts on the chest. However, his hair was styled like the Alma men and there was something masculine about the face.If he couldn’t get this right, he wouldn’t be able to say if it was a friend or an enemy. But Lili’ya would know.“We take it with us” Vitka concluded, crouching to carry the body in his arms before his pupil’s copious complaints, but as soon as he passed his fingertips under the torso he jumped back. It was burning in fever.The hunter placed his hand on the pale forehead, immediately feeling the dampness of cold sweat only to perceive the excessive warmth coming off the skin. However, Vitka wasn’t prepared for the moment the person beneath his hand opened his eyes.It was extremely subtle, but Vitka knew he wasn’t going to easily erase that vision from his memory.The warm pools gazed at him with the color of dark honey and were luminous like the last traces of the Bright Father before ceding pass to his beloved and made Vitka feel the same as if he was standing next to a hearth in the middle of the winter. It only lasted a moment before the person closed its eyes with evident tiredness.Vitka only rushed himself into carrying the body to Lili’ya.
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Katsuki Hiroko was a woman who tried to hold a positive attitude to every little rainy-day life offered to her.And that attitude was even greater when it came to her children, as she always wanted to not only be there for whenever they needed her but to also make a conscious effort to understand whatever they were going through.Like when Mari started to ditch dolls and secretly use his little brother’s videogames, or when Yuuri would start to neglect his toys in favor of curiously studying the garden’s leaves under his microscope, or that more extreme time when Mari decided College and an specific career just weren’t what she was looking for in life and opted to take multiple online courses with no-relation whatsoever but which made her happy.But if she was being honest with herself, Hiroko would definitely say the time her motherly instinct had been challenged the most had been when Yuuri told her and Toshiya he wanted to study abroad in the far away Saint-Petersburg.Yuuri had sat both her and Toshiya one snowy afternoon announcing the last days of fall. The dining room was quiet like it would usually be before the winter guests come in to enjoy the warmth of the hot springs. The youngest Katsuki starts his speech with a shy demeanor but his words grow progressively more and more passionate while he told them about the University, the scholarships he could get, the Nobel prizes who had been in there and the amazing job opportunities he would have if he graduated from there.“I can get a scholarship for both academic and dorm fees, the college has a lot of ties with Japanese government so I could get tutoring to get in remotely” Yuuri was even getting short of breath at that point of his speech. He stopped for a moment to get some air in his lungs and glanced at his parents with a mix or seriousness and nervousness“Ka-san, To-san. I know that so far I’ve only given you work but, I can’t think of something that I want more than this…”Her son’s voice had tuned shy once again but in her motherly understanding, she knew no words were needed anymore.The Katsuki household then turned all of their efforts to support their youngest’s dream: all the surplus from the inn was directed to a college account in the bank, Toshiya’s soccer jerseys passed to a second place, Mari would also put the tips customers gave her to the cause much to her brother’s dismay. Yuuri spent his last years of high school working part time in a café downtown Hasetsu and as a skating teacher in the local rink.All of it proved to be only the prelude to the real thing.During Yuuri’s first semester away, Hiroko still made food for four, went into his bedroom to wake him up, called for his help in the kitchen and even caught herself thinking of making katsudon in the weekends for him. Calls and videocalls were never enough but her motherly heart eased a little bit.But what kind of mother expects to be told her son has disappeared?No matter how many times the police and the college’s authorities shown her his son disappearing in a flash of light in a monitor, her brain couldn’t wrap itself around it.“I… I don’t understand” Hiroko mumbledShe had seen the same video in the morning news through the T.V. The presenter had called it an event for history to remember as one of the greatest advances in the world of physics: a boy in Saint Petersburg had basically opened a breach in space-time and all she had thought was is the boy would be a classmate to her Yuuri.Not that it was her Yuuri.The translator, a young man from Tokyo interchanged a few words with a lot of z’s and sh’s with a man pale as milk. The pale man talked directly at her, his voice immediately followed by the young man’s.“We have been questioning the four witnesses for twenty-four hours but they all say the same” the young man’s voice seemed distant “This was an experimental project made by your son, he didn’t take safety precautions and, according to the witnesses, he might have entered to a space-time alteration… whatever that means”‘Whatever that means’ was a right choose of words. But that wasn’t something which could ease her heart or mind. The pale man spoke something else at her and her husband’s back.“Ma’am, we need you to tell us anything your son ever mentioned about it about this project of your son” the translator mumbled “We have the Physics departments of the top Russian labs and universities working to solve this, but our information is far from complete”Hiroko mechanically nodded and stood up to open her son’s study to the pale man and the small group following him. She left them scattering amongst Yuuri’s papers, boxes and the desk computer under the vigilant eyes of her daughter and husband.Then she retired to her own room and locked the door. Tears didn’t make themselves wait for too long. For the Petsk, being a Great Hunter was a matter of honor, respect, sanctity, effort, responsibility and bravery rather than brute force and a big number of killed preys. Great Hunters were visible from a young age in which they would pay respect to the life in the forests neighboring their village instead of deliberately harming it like most of the children would do.Vitka remembered how much he cried when he found a bird with its wing broken underneath one of the Path Trees and his Father told him the wound was too bad and the best thing to do was to give it back to the Great Mother Earth. His cries went even louder and stronger, claiming that there wouldn’t be a need to kill it if he took good care of it the way he did with Makka but his Father explained to him that the Great Mother Earth gave life to live it and for a bird, life was useless if they couldn’t be in the arms of the Great Father Sky. The Great Mother would give it a home in her until the Bright Lights came to take it to the Otherplace.He remembered he closed his eyes the moment his Father took his bone knife out and he closed them even tighter when he heard the sound of an alarmed chirp followed by the one of the air being slashed. Then, silence.The exact same memory came straight to his mind when Great Hunter Ya Kov decided he had had enough of shooting in a static place and took him into the forest to hunt his first prey. The Winter wasn’t that far away so the birds had eaten a lot to get through the tiring journey, but they hadn’t moved to the Sun Lands yet. That meant they would be big, fulfilling and tasty.“I don’t want to do it” he complained during the entire walk towards the forest“Vitka, you will soon be eight winters old, it won’t be long until you become a man.” there was no sweetness in the Great Hunter’s voice when he said his name unlike other times “Then you will have to leave Lili-ya’s care and go back to the house your Father built: how will you eat if you don’t know how to hunt? If you don’t learn how to take care of the Great Mother so she offers you her fruits?”Vitka let out a muffled sob.“But they are alive…like me” at that point he didn’t remember if he was crying on the perspective of having to kill a bird or because he had remembered his late Father’s words.Ya Kov’s expression had softened and the Great Hunter was now kneeling on the ground, so his eyes were at the same level as the child’s.“Listen, Vitka” he felt his small, bony shoulders being held by big, calloused hands “A hunter is not a killer, we do it because we need to live as well but we always make sure to take just what we need and then we have to make sure to use everything we asked. That’s why we offer a prayer to the the Great Mother and her children, we promise to take care for what we take and to offer something in exchange”That day, Vitka helped Lili-ya prepare and cook his first meal as a hunter: a large goose which he shared with Lili-ya and Ya Kov. After cleaning the prey, the healer had given him one of the largest feathers she had pluck out of the animal, it was a good luck charm for his future hunts.Winters had passed, each striping Vitka off his childhood and bringing a little bit more of a man in exchange until, when he was fifteen Winters old, Lili-ya predicted he would be the one to take a Manak’s life during a hunt instead of her Cared. When he came back to the Petsk village with his spear dripping the magnificent beast’s blood, Lili-ya made him damp his palm in it and press it in the Hunter’s Cave along with Ya Kov and the old Great Hunters. He was one of them.Most kids around the village believed that being a Great Hunter just implied to be heroic during the hunts, get the finest pelts, have a necklace decorated with bones and fangs but, like Vitka at their age, they ignored the responsibility that came with the honor.A Great Hunter had to make sure the entire village was well fed. It was on his shoulders that if a woman whose Cared had gone to Otherplace during a hunt, an old man who didn’t have any descendants or an orphaned child weren’t able to look for food, he was to hunt for them.During the walk to the Sun Lands each Winter, he had to be the protective eyes for all the Petsk. His spear, knives and arrows were ready to defend his people for any threats they found along the way. His people would then make sure he was comfortable at the Sun Lands.The teaching of the Hunt was his responsibility as well. Parents and Lili-ya would send children to him so he and other of the village’s best hunters would initiate the younger Petsk in the use of both weapons and prayers they would use when they grew up and had to cooperate with the feeding of their families and village.Vitka had all these responsibilities translated in daily tasks but he just couldn’t seem to concentrate on any.He had burnt his breakfast, almost sliced one of the pelts he was curating, ended up tying wrongly the feathers on his arrows, he was close to break one of his spears and he missed his morning lesson with Yurch-ka… two days in a row.“Are you sick?” the younger Petsk wondered when he came into Vitka’s house, wondering why he hadn’t meet him at the entrance of the village to set off to the forest.Vitka denied with his head, but his forehead frowned. Maybe he wasn’t ‘sick’ but rather ‘unwell’, he had been like that since the previous night when he had arrived to the village with what he had thought was a dead person on his arms until Lili-ya had assured him that, as strange as that person looked with all his weird garments and accessories, he was just passed out and had a little fever. The Healer had enclosed herself in her home, forbidding anyone to open the door or the man would only get worse if the Night longed her cold fingers towards him.“I’ll go help Great Father” Yurch-ka notified him from the door “You go ask Lili-ya for help or something”Maybe he should listen to his young apprentice for once.With Makka following his steps, he made for the outskirts of the village since it was faster for him to make a roundabout than walking amongst the rest of the houses given that he lived at the very border. He didn’t have to walk that much since Lili-ya was picking large stems at the riverside.“Blessings of plenty” he greeted the Healer“Blessings of plenty” she answered back. Makka had been less ceremonious and simply threw itself and gave the woman a lick on her painted cheek she answered with an almost imperceptible smile before turning her gaze to Vitka again “You look sick, child”“I’m not but I feel like I am” a sad smile glided on his lips while he responded.She simply nodded in understanding. There was little need for other words than those when it came to Lili-ya since she had already cured him of something fairly similar when the Night claimed his parents and he passed to be under Lili-ya’s care.“Tell me why while you help me with those” she pointed at a pair of large baskets filled with herbs she would surely use in one of her concoctions for medicine or paint “Hunt has been good, our travel back from the Sun Lands was good, the Great Mother Earth blessed us with good seeds to grow, we have caught large fish at the river even”“That’s true” he agreed, making a little effort to place the baskets correctly on his arms so they wouldn’t fall “I don’t feel like that because of any of it, I just feel like there is something getting my attention”The pair entered the village where life had started for the new day. Some of Vitka’s youngest pupils were either helping their mothers drying meat or holding the weavings, men carried water from the river back to their homes while the younger women teamed up to carry some vegetables from the village’s crops. They all bowed their head and mumbled greetings at the Healer while the younger men and women would fix their gaze and blushed when Vitka greeted them.“Hmm, I have only heard something like that about forty-eight Winters ago” Lili-ya let out a little laugh before shrugging and getting her stoic expression back “But its probably an early conclusion of mine. While I figure it out, come help me with your little marsh man”Oh, right.“Has he gotten any better?” he asked trying to sound a little more uninterested than he actually was.Two nights ago, he had arrived to Lili-ya’s house with his little marsh man burning in fever and basically unconscious in his arms. The Healer made him lie the man on her own sleeping pelts while she tackled the Hunter with questions the poor Vitka had wondered himself before coming into her house.“Well, he doesn’t have fever anymore but he’s still sleeping” Lili-ya let the handfuls of stems she carried under her arms on the ground while untying the knot securing her house’s door “I tried to make him eat something, but I only managed to make him swallow some water”Vitka nodded and followed the Healer into her home. Cold toes were the first coherent thought on his mind and feeling in his body.Yuuri would usually lift his legs up once in bed so the covers would land underneath his feet and keep him in a warm cocoon through the entire night without needing to wear socks which he would eventually strip off when he moved on the bed. He must have forgotten to build his cocoon the night prior then.What time was it? He couldn’t make out sunshine rays hitting his face as it would usually happen when he was late for class, but sometimes Phichit would close the blinds along with the windows in an attempt to keep some warmth inside the bedroom so he better not trust the poor light.But, wait. It was Saturday, right?Oh, then it didn’t matter if he left his bed until nine or eleven in the morning: he only had a class at one o’clock and then he would call his parents and sister at four in the afternoon before they went to sleep.His father would give him the latest update on the soccer league and which players would be selected for the World Cup, his sister would mumble some ‘hello’ and ‘how’s school’ with more of a smirk than a smile and his mother would ask if he had already decided if he would or not visit them on the spring break…The thought hadn’t left his head when a huge mental tsunami arose from the bottom of his mind and flooded it with fast-forwarded talks in a café close to the labs, Yuuko pointing at a silly mistake, Professor Cialdini giving him another chance on his final project, Takeshi coming in and out of the lab with his arms full of coffee and cookies, a beautiful equation written on the black boards, Phichit recording him for an Instagram live, his instincts telling him something was wrong and then…darkness, crickets and strands of something silvery and shiny above his head.‘Something is wrong’, his mind claimed anew.Yuuri forced his eyelids to flash open only to find his entire body was exhausted and even that simple action left him breathless. But his panic wasn’t letting him give up at the first try.His second attempt made the back of his eyes hurt a little as they adapted themselves to the awfully dark place he was in. When they finally did, they revealed a large circular room, harshly built and with no source of light, which gave the whatever-they-were objects and ceiling hangings around him a very creepy look.‘Where the hell am I…’If the memories his brain had shown him were real, then he had had an accident with his machine, so the obvious following scenario would have been for him to be sent into a hospital. In that case, hospitals weren’t the bright-lighted, white and impeccable large rooms pictured on the TV. They had even left him with his clothes, shoes and even his glasses instead of the expected gown and bare feet under a sheet. His nose bridge was painful since he had slept with them on.Voices. He commanded his body to turn in their direction, to the only and weak source of light.He was seriously considering talking with the place’s director: which kind of hospital used a straw-door in a patient’s room… or which kind of doctors looked like pelt-coated fashion disasters.“Uh… excuse me?” he mumbled with all the voice volume he was able of getting out of his throat, it sounded croaky like if he had just recovered from a really bad sore throat.One of the figures turned its steps towards the place where Yuuri was lying down while the other one basically jumped back in a shock barely readable under the weak lighting. Yet, the eyes of the woman approaching him were fully visible to him: a bright green-hazel color which shone with the spark proper of someone who kept great wisdom.Her eyes were the only feature in her Yuuri could feel familiar. Because the rest wasn’t at all.She had red and brown stripes drawn on her face where her wrinkles traced really thin pathways which seemed somehow elegant, her ears were pierced and had beaded earrings hanging all the way down to where her collarbone must have been hidden underneath all those pelts. Her hair was braided tightly at the back of her head, decorated with more beads and feathers. At the sight of her, the words ‘wild beauty’ were the ones to appear in Yuuri’s mind.The woman inspected him moving her head sideways a few times until she finally placed her hand on his forehead and mumbled something underneath her breath in a language that to Yuuri’s ears was both so similar to the Russian he had gotten used to hearing at College yet seemed like a completely foreign language.A lot of ‘sh’ and ‘zh’ with a mix of more guttural and less polished sounds he just couldn’t describe.Yuuri’s brain seemed to only pay attention to the language as it wouldn’t obey any other direction from him. He tried to make his body move, his voice to protest, his head to shake away from the woman’s touch but he was frozen in fear. Fear for the unknown.“Uvet Vitka” the woman said in a stronger voice, her hand still resting on Yuuri’s forehead.His chest had started to rise and fall rapidly in a just arising panic extending through his body. Who was that woman? Why was she dressed like that? Which language was she speaking? Where was he? Why was he there?All questions were interrupted when the second figure approached him.Yuuri had seen a few model-like people walking around the streets of Saint Petersburg: tall girls and boys with eyes as big as marbles in every shade between the green and blue covered by thick rosy eyelids, their hair in a variety of warm blonde colors with an occasional tint of auburn, tall cheekbones and hollowed cheeks covered by a pale skin, thin limbs and bodies which could compete with those of a Barbie and Ken dolls. Yet all of them could fell to shame compared to the person who stood behind Mrs. Wild Beauty.Guiding himself by the facial features and the broadness of his shoulders, he was a man. His bones were sharp on his jaw and on the apples of his cheeks, but his skin was plump in his lips and eyelids. Despite his young face, his hair was a curious shade of silver, a part of it let loose while the rest was intricately braided and decorated in the same way as the woman’s. Despite his lean physique, muscle was visible underneath his clothes.But what drew Yuuri’s attention the most were his eyes. Blue, but a brighter shade than any other kind yet it also was deep as if one stared at the sea. It was weird, a pretty weird.“Nie tep?” he heard him ask to the woman, kneeling next to Yuuri and piercing him with his eyes.While his body had remained quiet when the woman had touched him, as soon as the man extended his hand to touch him, his body suddenly woke up in red alert. He managed to sit down and crawl away from the contact until his back clashed against the wrinkled wall.The action left him breathless and the two people before him mumbling unknown words to him as if he was a wounded animal.“Don’t get close!” he croaked “I’ll call the police!”Mrs. Wild Beauty commanded something at the man, but he seemed kind of scared to fulfill the order.“Where am I?” Yuuri demanded with a weaker tone, his legs getting wobbly “Who are you?”The man approached him slowly, crouching a little bit to be at the same height as him while extending his hands at him in a gesture to calm him down which only scared Yuuri a little more. A pair of strong hands grabbed his shoulders lightly, he tried to shake the grip off and screamed uselessly while the man mumbled quiet words in that guttural language of his.“Stop! Don’t touch me!” he yelled as loud as he could.His vision started to diffuse and not just because his glasses had fallen off his face. His body limped and his legs folded down to the ground had it not been for the other man who held him before he broke his nose. The voice of the woman commanded something from the other side of the place.Yuuri still weakly tried to push the man away from him but his strength soon left him blacked out again.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Phichit’s phone buzzed in warning that it only had twenty percent of battery left but, in a unprecedented move in his life, he swept the notification away from his screen and the video on it kept playing.It was the file of his Instagram live playing in a row. In it, Yuuri smiled at the camera before turning to his machine with a tense back, his hand moved on the machine and then, poof. A flash of light, Yuuri was gone while him, Celestino, Yuuko and Takeshi were thrown aback by an invisible shockwave which ended up by blacking his screen. End of the video.His finger pressed the replay button.Next to him, Yuuko moved in her sleep, making him turn a little so he wouldn’t wake her up. Nishigori was sleeping next to the door, so there was no problem with his cellphone’s light flashing him awake.It had been six hours since one of the officials and a translator had taken Celestino to God knew where for what should be his tenth interrogation already, though Phichit didn’t understand what they expect them him to say that he hadn’t already. Dumb cops.Actually, the four of them had said basically the same every single time they had been pulled out of the room on how Yuuri didn’t turn on the security system, the isolation wasn’t activated so the effects of his time-space twist extended to the closest living matter, him, and that was all. They had also tried to explain the officials there existed two different scenarios from there: if his organic matter and atomic composition had been too heavy then it had been incompatible with the energy flows in the twist (meaning he was probably dead, so despite his scientific mind, Phichit preferred the second one) or his atoms had been compatible with the energy and had tagged along with it to wherever they were flowing to.From the beginning to the end of their explanations, the officials had let their jaws drop and their eyes open wide in a clear expression of ‘what the fuck are you saying?’. It hadn’t been any better when Celestino basically translated them the physics into something their brains could get.“A leap in time” he mumbled with a voice full of both concern and excitement.The officials burst into laughing.Phichit sighed. His best friend was either dead or he was trapped in some kind of sci-fi time traveling phenomenon while the useless police had confiscated his machine and wouldn’t stop asking the exact same stupid questions.The sound of the door opening followed by a pair of gargantuan voices made him turn around and woke his friends up. Celestino entered the room with a more defeated demeanor than the one he had exited with, which was a lot to say.“Hey kiddos” the professor greeted after the officers had slammed the door closed “Sorry for waking you up”His three students got him a chair and Celestino dropped himself over it, sighing tiredly.“The same?” Phichit asked him. The professor nodded.“Still, I managed to ask them to call Yuuko’s family so they wouldn’t worry” he reassured his pupil, who nodded in thankfulness while caressing her bellyThe only attentions the officers had given them, were for Yuuko: warm tea, a salad, cookies for her sweet exploits, if she needed a doctor, a pillow, a blanket, moving a sofa into the room so she would be comfortable. At least they had decency in that part. They offered the professor some of the food Yuuko had shared with them.“If I understood correctly,” Celestino mumbled while he munched on a chicken sandwich “they have enclosed the lab for security, but they don’t want to touch Yuuri’s machine before they know exactly what it does. They sent people to Hasetsu and I bet they won’t be smooth on telling his family what happened”The already down mood in the room went down to the negatives with Celestino’s words.“But,” the professor appointed anew, gulping down his sandwich “I do have some kind of good news: they will let us out tomorrow but only to drive us to the lab to help them”“So, you mean we’ll have access to the machine?” Phichit felt his own eyes open wide. Unable to answer verbally with a sandwich mouthful, the professor nodded.For a moment, the boy could see a lamp turning on inside his head. He grabbed the professor’s chair and spun it until they were facing each other.“Then, does that mean we can revert it?” Phichit asked in excitement“How?” Yuuko’s voice interrupted his excitement “We can’t just push the lever back and make the entire process to turn back. You worked with him: if we put the equation in the system, the process will simply repeat. Not turn back”Phichit then turned to his friend.“But Yuuri did make a counter-equation” he exclaimed without losing the smile “The first process he extended the final equation from! He took it out of a book and then re design it to fit the algorithm! I helped him with it during a summer!”Yuuko looked at him like she would do with a small child who doesn’t understand.“Yes, but that’s in his notebook.” she grabbed his agonizing phone and replayed the video which had been left open “And he had it with him”It was true. Phichit followed his friend’s pink nail pointing at his friend’s back, a very-well loved leather pocket notebook with a pencil coming out of its pages the same way the very notebook did from Yuuri’s jean pocket. Every single step and definition of the equation, algorithm and machine was written in there.“It’s impossible to do it without that notebook” Yuuko finished“Do we have the final equation on the board?”Celestino’s face had that asymmetrical frown he only got when he was thinking on something big or when one of his student’s had an interesting project. Phichit and Yuuko nodded.“On the board and probably in the machine too” the boy confirmed.“We can turn it around” the professor mumbled so quickly and low-voiced his words almost were unnoticed by his students before jumping out of his chair, surprising them with the suddenly of his action “We only have to do the exact process backwards!”Both Phichit’s and Yuuko’s eyes were wide open and shiny with understanding. It was going to be hard; it would take time and difficult having the police stomping on their heels. But it was scientifically and faithfully possible.“We can do it kiddos!” the professor claimed cheerfully Yuuri’s stomach grumbled in hunger for the third time.Lilia (she still corrected him on mispronouncing her name, but his tongue just couldn’t grasp it) darted her penetrating green eyes down to a small bowl next to his ‘bed’ with a sort of soup in it, which had already been re-heated three times. Yuuri made his best to avert her green gaze.“Ye nie porvisha” he heard her mumble with a clear tint of a pissed off mother. Lilia pushed the bowl at him again “Svoi, zha”He didn’t understand a thing, but he could guess what she was telling him off about. If he wanted to know where the hell he was and how to get out of there, he needed energy. The soup was way waterier than what he was used to, reddish with a piece of meat and what seemed to be a poorly cut mushroom chunk floating in it. He drank.“Bilo’i tak slozh?” Lilia mumbled with clear sarcasm, with the voice of someone who knows she is right.The soup wasn’t bad, if only it lacked a bit of salt and while his tongue wasn’t extraordinarily pleased, his belly was joyous with its warmth and the feel of having food in it. Despite the seemingly eternally-lit fire at the center of the room, he could still feel cold in his toes underneath the pelts.Lilia stood up to remove a green concoction in her clay cooking pot, making her multiple jewels shake and ring like small bells.In the time he had been awake, several people had come in the circular room and while some of the visitors had some kind of jewelry hanging on their bodies or paint on their faces and arms, none was as elaborate as Lilia’s. The beads of her necklaces were colorful, with shells, shiny rocks and feathers and the red on her features formed some pretty intricate braids and patterns.Well, there kinda was.Maybe his ornaments weren’t as abundant or complex as the woman’s, but the silver haired man who had been in there when he first woke up had a ton of beads on his braids and a thick necklace made with what seemed to be bones and teeth; something he hadn’t seen anyone else wear.He finished the soup, his tongue fighting hard not to pop away the piece of too-cooked meat off his mouth, yet he couldn’t help but leave the mushroom chunk laying at the bottom of the bowl. Those things had been his culinary nightmare ever since he was a child.“Ye sdel?” the woman asked, refilling his bowl with the green thing she had been cooking much to Yuuri’s dismay. Lilia made some gestures with her spoon, indicating him to eat it quickly.The thick consistency and too-herbal taste of the concoction almost made the mushroom go down his throat unnoticed. Almost.“Ugh” Yuuri mumbled, feeling the trace of bitterness on his tongue.“Za´tra,” Lilia’s voice made him look up at her “ye dolosh tach khor sho lya stir ki. Taksne, noi shkur, vash taij.”She had spoken too fast but, judging by how her spoon had encircled his chest several times, he figured she was talking something about his clothes. They had gotten damp in sweat from the second time he passed out, so Lilia and her partner had stripped him off his jacket, shirt and sweater to leave him in his plain white under-shirt.“Stir. Ki.” Lilia said slowly, placing her hands over her head and mimicking something similar to her scratching her head. Yuuri’s puzzled expression must have been pretty evident since she also had to voice what seemed to be the sound of water falling.“Stir ki” she repeated, ending her demonstration“Take a bath?” Yuuri guessed, making some mimic of his own. Lilia’s green eyes had a ‘you finally understood something’ shine.As much as a bath sounded delightful, Yuuri had very low expectations to it considering the past days he had being eating and … doing other necessities in clay pots. Thinking of warm water was probably a very picky desire.However, the bath finally offered him the chance to get a glimpse of his surroundings and give himself an idea of where the hell he was.“Blagsleiv izobiye, Vitka” the woman’s voice brought Yuuri back to earth as a little bit of what seemed dusk light came into the circular room along a familiar figure.“Blagsleiv izobiye” the silver haired man answered. Everyone who came in there would say the same words, which brought Yuuri to think it was some kind of greeting. The man turned at him with a smile “Blagsleiv izobiye”Oh, he should say something.“Konnichiwa” you’re an idiot Katsuki Yuuri, he scolded himself “Uh, I mean… Bagslev izobi?”Despite his auto-correction, the man seemed to have some interest in his mistake. Kneeling beside his ‘bed’ and crouching his neck, he still was taller than Yuuri.“Kui ni shi ua?”Something inside Yuuri lit up as soon as those syllables left the man’s lips. While he had spent quite the time with Lilia inside the circular room, she had conformed with simply knowing he had understood whatever she was trying to say. But now, there finally was someone trying to understand him!“Konnichiwa” he repeated, pointing at the invisible air coming out from his lips “Bagslev izobi” his finger pointed at the hypothetical air out of the other man’s mouth “Konnichiwa. Bagslev izobi. Konnichiwa. Bagslev izobi.”The same spark he had seen in Lilia’s green gaze when both understood each other’s ‘bath’ translation shone in the man’s eyes.“Kunshiwa” the man greeted with bright eyes“Bagslev izobi” Yuuri answered back with a smileThe man smiled wider and got closer on his knees, he put his palm on his chest.“Vitka” he patted himself lightly “Vitka. Vitka. Vitka.”Vitka then fixed an evidently excited gaze on him. Yuuri repeated the gesture and placed his hand on his chest.“Yuuri” he mumbled quietly “Yuu-ri. Yuuri. Yuu-ri.”Vitka tilted his head a little, making his silver braids fall to a side with a small ringing sound, analyzing what had just come out of Yuuri’s mouth.“Iu-uri”Yuuri chuckled.“Close enough” Yuuri was a physicist. A man of science. He had devoted his life and his brain to try to understand the mysteries of the laws which ruled the universe, the beginning and evolving of space and time in the reality. To him, nothing in this life could ever get apart from the rules of Physics…which was why he just couldn’t wrap his mind on what he had just found.Judging by the light which came in the circular room when Vitka arrived, it was already midday. Lilia had given him some sort of tea and a strip of dried salty meat as breakfast as soon as he woke up-but he was already wishing for fruit or something for his roaring stomach to snack on by the time Vitka arrived.The silver haired man helped him to stand up, quite the task given how he had been lying down for more than three days and only getting up when he needed to arrive to the closest clay pot. His legs wobbled while he looked for support on Vitka’s shoulders as the man held him by the waist tightly before essaying some walking towards the exit.“O’torsh ye” Vitka probably meant something along the lines of ‘be careful’Light outside the circular room almost made Yuuri went blind, maybe he should have gotten himself those glasses which turned dark when the sun hit them last time he visited his oculist. When his eyes finally adapted themselves to have the Sun present again, he felt his heart, soul and mind tightened into a large knot.Before his eyes, it seemed as if a museum’s Prehistoric exhibitions had suddenly come up to life: primal houses made of what seemed to be dry mud and sticks stood in a circle around Lilia’s, long meat strips drying like ragged clothes on stick bases, people carving large (mammoth?!) fangs or molding new clay pots, pelts and furs being stretched for curation and, the most evident and shocking thing for Yuuri, the naturality in which they lived what seemed to be their daily lives. They weren’t putting up a show.Yuuri’s head turned in every direction possible for his neck, worrying Vitka in the process.“O torsh, ye slab” the silver-haired man mumbled with concern, adjusting his grip on Yuuri’s body before they followed Lilia’s steps againMore of the alive-museum people were at the river, knitting and repairing fishing nets by hand, their light-colored eyes opened wide in curiosity at the sight of Yuuri.Wait…. the river shore…he knew it.Celestino had taken him and the rest of his class on a trip after they won an academic decathlon against the Physics Faculty of the Moscow University. For Phichit and him was a wonderful, and cold, change of scenery outside of the city when the professor organized a hiking on the green surroundings of Saint Petersburg.Phichit and him had taken a picture in that exact shore while their crazy Russian classmates swam and splashed in the freezing-cold river. The photo was in Phichit’s Instagram feed for God’s sake!“Omye ne rez jie go” Lilia’s voice brought him back to earth“Da” after that short syllable, Vitka slid a hand under his shirt and started to strip himYuuri let out a startled scream and pushed the other man away, only achieving to fall down on the river as he couldn’t move Vitka an inch. The young physicist could have freaked out even more when he felt the foreign touch had he not been warned by Lilia that the purpose of getting out of the circular room was for him to have a bath.“I… I can do it myself!” he assured, putting his hands before him in a gesture to stop Vitka from getting closer to him.He wasn’t very sure if his fever had came back due to his sudden change of location from lying underneath thick pelts close to a fire to basically being naked out in the open and close to what surely was a freezing-cold river… or if he simply was embarrassed for getting stripped before Lilia, Vitka and a bunch of hopefully-focused-on-fishing people a few meters away from them.“O zhe” the other man pointed at the briefs still covering his private parts, and Yuuri didn’t even need to take a minute to interpret the words: those too.“No” he firmly answered, covering the garment with his hands.“Stir ki zheye” Vitka didn’t seem to understand the indirect gesture and advanced towards him anyway, pulling his briefs down and making Yuuri let out a shriek “ye dolch to znya”The following hour or so was an absolute torture for him, not only for the merciless scratching Lilia made all over his body with Vitka helping her by pouring God-only-knew what on his skin while being constantly hit by a stream of icy water, but because his mind was trying to process and accept what was happening to him.Numbers inside his head were moving fast, following the speed of his own nerves. He had left his trusty little notebook back inside the circular room but there was no need for it since the formulas and equations written in the board were still clear in his head. And what he concluded was terrifying.As the safety system hadn’t been activated, the reaction hadn’t only reached the elements enclosed in the containers but his skin still having contact with the machine.Given that, unlike the contained elements, he was the only organic matter close by the machine, it hadn’t picked part of his own matter to use as a catalyzer and, unable to know what to do with him, it simply extended its reaction towards Yuuri.He had basically traveled back in time through his machine.Yuuri thanked when Vitka poured water over his head so neither him nor Lilia would notice his tears. Vitka was worried for Iu-uri.Ever since that time when his little marsh man had woken up so violently, Lili-ya had assured him all Iu-uri needed was some more rest and she could manage on her own. While he had had some practice with Yurch-ka, it was hard to keep his nose out of his marsh man’s state. Especially when there were so many words about it floating all around the village coming from all the Petsk who had entered to Lili-ya’s house.‘I saw his hair is the color of the Bright Mother’s home!’‘He carries a strange amulet at the very front of his face…’‘Where did he get such weird-colored pelts?’‘I heard him scream a lot…Could it be he comes from a violent tribe?”‘He has even more curves than I do! Are you sure he is a man?”As much as he would have liked to go into Lili-ya’s house to ease his curiosity, the healer had begged the Petsk not to visit her if it wasn’t completely necessary… but fortunately for him, food was something completely necessary for Lili-ya since her Cared was on a trip to visit the Alma tribe.His little marsh man…no, Iu-uri was already awake and eating some of Lili-ya’s healing soups. The healer had stripped his off his strange pelts and was now only wearing a cloth thin like a petal, unlike anything the Petsk could weave. Vitka had greeted him, not really expecting him to answer, but Iu-uri surprised him by greeting him back in his own tongue.Then he told him his name. It was a strange name, no doubt, but something about it was sweet as the sound danced on Vitka’s lips.Lili-ya had then asked him to help her making Iu-uri have a bath with the hope that some of her remedies on his skin could ease the young man. Vitka agreed to almost immediately. But then, instead of the bath doing Iu-uri any visible good, he just seemed to be tired and distant. Vitka was even afraid the man had gotten sicker since his eyes were red.“He’s not eating” Vitka appointed the Healer as he ate a strip of meat and a handful of seeds. Iu-uri had the same menu placed before him but he hadn’t touched anything.The Healer gave a look to the boy sitting quietly on his sleeping pelts but the pots, herb sacks and boxes heavily overflowing her hands soon demanded her attention back “Maybe he’s tired from the time outside. Remember he was five days asleep”Vitka had only formally educated into hunting and being responsible for his fellow Petsk but, living with Lili-ya, he had sneakily learnt a thing or two about of the art of Healing. And he was pretty certain someone healthy wasn’t supposed to look like Iu-uri was looking.The beautiful deep eyes which had struck him upon their first encounter now looked empty, his gaze was fixed on a random point on the wall and he could see his hand shaking.He went to sit down beside him again and longed his hand to touch Iu-uri’s shaking one, the other man didn’t seem to notice his presence until Vitka’s fingers brushed his skin.And Iu-uri violently pulled away from the contact, horror visible in his eyes.“No!” he shrieked like he had done when they were at the river. When their eyes met, his expression softened with evident guilt, but the fright in his eyes remained “Sorry… I should sleep a bit”Iu-uri then put the meat and seeds away from him, got underneath the pelts and turned his face to the other side in a very clear sign of him wanting to sleep.“Vitka,” Lili-ya called him, pointing the uneaten meat “why don’t you go back home and give those to Makka? I’ll send someone for you if I need more help with him”The hunter nodded, put on his warm pelts before walking outside but he didn’t leave without taking a last look at Iu-uri. Oh, he knew what those soft shoulder moves meant: he was crying.The village was probably the busiest at that moment, when the Bright Father was about to hide and clear the way for his Cared. The other hunters and the fishers would come with small catches for their families, the children would collect firewood for their homes and while other Petsk were picking up the meat and pelts they had been curating all day long.Unlike his fellow Petsk’s houses, his was still unlit and quiet.Hanging from a small thread at the entrance, was a wooden whistle which he made sound before entering. Makka, who would probably be somewhere near bothering rabbits and similar, wouldn’t take too long to come back home.In the meantime, he took off his warm pelts, unbraided his hair and piled some firewood up in his oven. His too-fluffy wolf came through the door happily running with a prey between its fangs.“Wow!” Vitka smiled and scratched her behind the ears “Did you catch it on your own? What a good girl! Look, Lili-ya sent you a gift!”He had found Makka when he was fourteen Winters old, precisely during a Winter while he and the Petsk were walking to the Sun Lands. He was deeply asleep inside the moving-house he shared with his Mother and Father when he heard quiet whines next to one of the food bags. Thinking it probably was one of the younger children who had been left hungry, he woke up only to find a small cub unsuccessfully trying to open a food bag.It was probably the size of his fore arm, too fluffy to see what it actually was until Vitka picked it through the loose skin on its nape. Ah, a wolf cub.The Petsk had their own breed of tamed and domesticated wolves, the K’ski, but the shape of their heads, the color of their fur and their eyes was quite different from the wolves of the woods. This cub had almost fooled him given how brown its fur was and how dark its eyes were.“Vitka, go and leave it outside” his Father’s voice spoke softly to not awake Vitka’s mother sleeping beside him “Its mother must be looking for it”Any other day, he would have obeyed his father without second thought, but while he held the cub’s nape, its bones were visible beneath the fur which wasn’t too thick for the matter.“I think it’s alone, Father” he mumbled holding the animal a little gentler before passing it to his father “Look”The older man held the whining cub between calloused fingers, turned a little bit to help his eyes inspect it better under the weak light the agonizing fire at the middle of their house offered him. His son was right: the poor cub probably wasn’t a Moon old and it evidently hadn’t eaten in several days, one didn’t have to make too much effort to notice the popping bones.The man passed the young animal back to his son with an almost unnoticeable nod.“Give it a strip of meat and then go back to sleep. You can place it under the pelts, so she doesn’t eat more” his father let out a loud yawn and went back under its sleeping pelts.The kid smiled widely and cuddled with the little fluff ball after feeding it two meat strips. It was alright, he could eat one less the following morning. Vitka started mumbling soft gentle words to the cub who was probably still scared.M’ka. Calm down. M’ka. Calm down. M’ka. Calm down.“How about I call you Makka?” Vitka mumbled, almost half-asleep. The cub answered with an equally sleepy lick to his chin.Makka had grown a lot ever since. Ya Kov and Lili-ya allowed him to keep the little wolf after his parents passed away and as Winters passed, both became inseparable.“Well girl,” Vitka took his boots off, placing them near the warmth of the hearth “why don’t we go to sleep?”Vitka’s sleeping pelt was a large bear fur he had hunt while the Petsk did their long walk towards the Sun Lands and the animal attacked their camp, probably because they had settled along a river full of fish. Any other time, they would have simply scared it away from the houses, but the beast had attacked one of the families and a hunt couldn’t be helped.A good thing about the size though, was Vitka and Makka fit perfectly under it and there was still more space.“Good night Makka” Vitka mumbled. His fluffy wolf licked his chin, making him smile.His night would have been calm as usual, with the occasional little Makka-kicks as she chased little preys in her sleep. At one point he could even hear the Wind chanting outside of his home, probably bringing in the last traces of snow with it but he was quick to fall sleep again, only thinking about how upset his fellow Petsk would be to find some of their crops cold-blue.Nothing out of order had it not been for Lili-ya waking up in the middle of the night.“Vitka! Vitka!” a pair of long-fingered hands was shaking his body “Wake up child!”His eyes were heavy when he tried to open them, his limbs numb and unwilling to cooperate but Lili-ya didn’t give him much time. Urge in her voice and eyes.“Vitka wake up!” she prompted again“What is it?” the hunter asked with a sleepy voice “An animal entered a house?”Lili-ya looked at him the way she would do with a child.“Iu-uri ran away”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Yuuri just couldn’t conceal the sleep.In any other situation, he would have blamed his empty stomach and thus his signature way of throwing tantrums by not eating. But at the moment, he liked to believe he had way a better excuse for Morpheus to run away from him.He was stuck in the Prehistory.One of Phichit’s many acquaintances around campus was Guang Hong, a Chinese freshman who was on exchange from Beijing studying Archaeology. They had met for a coffee a few times during the previous semester and, while he was even shier than he was, whenever he started to talk about his career his passion absolutely took over and there was no way of shutting him. Thanks to all that excessive information and his own ability to memorize stuff plus what little view he had had of his surroundings so far, the Neolithic was the first period to pop up in his mind.And that certainty, instead of bringing him some comfort, terrorized him.For once in his life, his brain pleaded and begged to be wrong, to have misunderstood his calculations, chemical processes and studies. Could there be a misplaced sign again? No. Maybe his machine had malfunctioned again and instead of a time-space loop it had only been a space one? No. A mere and sole misplacing in space? No. Could it be this was only a village lost in the infinite Siberia? No. Was there some logical, rational and preferably do-able way to go back home?
No.
That mere and simple syllable his brain repeated again and again in the back of his mind was striping him off all the little composure he had miraculously achieved to retain.His head was about to explode from the inside, he was sure.Inside the circular room…no, house everything was dark and silent save for the softly agonizing hearth crackling in the very center and the deaf sounds coming from the outside, probably the bone and bead hangings on the ceiling being violently rocked by the wind. Lilia’s silhouette was evident on the other side of the room, rising and falling with every breath.An intense migraine drilled sharply send an attack to him. He hushed a painful shriek in the bottom of his throat, but he was unable to hold his tears back.His family. Would that mean he would never see his Oka-san and Otou-san again? Would Mari never call him ‘lil-bro’ ever again? Yu-Topia… would he ever feel the soothing warmth of the hot springs on his skin? How he regretted complaining of the humid summers at home when at that moment he would give everything he owned for a second of it.His friends. Would they be ok? Yuuko was pregnant and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing he and his stupid machine had been the cause of a miscarriage. Yuuri was sure he was Professor Cialdini’s number one headache in that moment; he hated to be such a burden to such a wonderful professor. At least they would be safe, his own body must have acted as a barrier between the machine’s effect and his friends.
Are you sure about that?
Oh no…What if his body hadn’t been enough protection? After all, he had tested the machine while it had the safety on, never with its full-range capacity. What if his own organic matter had been a bridge for the reaction to move to other organic matter? What if his friends were stuck in the same situation as he was? Scared and confused about their environment. The image of his pregnant friend came back to his mind.If it was true they had jumped in time with him, then she was the most prone to danger. Maybe he could find them, bring them to the village: it was the best place to be while they were there. Perhaps they would find a solution together and go back home.Yes. That was a good idea.He needed to go look for them. Together they would go back home. Yes. His shoes and sweater were nearby, he better got going. It was dark outside, but he was sure it wasn’t that late: Lilia had gone to sleep when the sun was hiding. Yes.Outside of the curved walls, Yuuri could hear a sound he had became familiar with living in Saint Petersburg: the sound of wind carrying snow.That was his signal to go. Phichit, Yuuko, Takeshi and Celestino were falling asleep against one and other in the backseat they were sitting on.Neither had properly slept since the police had took them into the station and they had their internal sleeping clock completely messed up thanks to the continuous and long interrogations they were submitted to every night and day. The officers had only gone smooth with Yuuko: her interrogation sessions were quick and only once per day. She had also been the only one to go out of the station to be taken for a medical check-up.The group woke up at the same time when the patrol suddenly stopped with violence, the driver cursed under his breath. They couldn’t see him, there was a fancy automatic dark and completely polarized glass, as were the back windows, blocking any chance of getting a glance of the outside world.“Are we there yet?” the professor asked amongst yawns, referring to the University.“Da, but we can’t advance” the officer repliedThe four of them looked at each other with confusion. It was true the traffic in campus could be a little crazy from time to time but none of them had ever heard of a time it was so bad actual police cars with their sirens going out loud couldn’t pass through.It seemed their driver read their thoughts because he allowed the in-between glass to come down.Professor and students squeezed their heads in the small space left by the dark glass and got the same visual range their driver had. And what they saw, was absolute madness.The grey concrete covering every single parking alley and short avenues leading to the Faculty’s entrance was virtually invisible underneath so many shoes. There were cameramen, TV vans, people dressed in suits and armed with microphones, a multitude of cellphones being held up high above the heads of the crowd with arms wearing the distinctive ‘пресс’ armband identifying them as part of the press. All of it was trying, very uselessly, to be held back by a large team of police officers making a way for the patrol convoy into the faculty entrance. In the back seat, students and professor thought their jaws were going to crash on the car’s ground.“What is this?” Phichit gave an out loud voice to everyone’s thoughts.Their driver, whom they now recognized as the officer who would go into their room to leave treats for Yuuko under the protective and jealous gaze of her fiancé, turned his head at the dark-skinned boy.“They’re here for your video” he mumbled with an evidently fed-up voice tone.That hushed Phichit and his accompaniments’ further questions.It took them more than five minutes to get to the entrance, following the lead of the other patrol driving before them and the officers creating a living barrier against the journalists. If the sight was already unsettling, the moment the group stepped out of the car, the sound became an absolute nightmare to their ears.All the journalists started to speak at the top of their lung at the same time, sometimes in other languages than Russian, until they reached a point in which they all merged into a single collective sound.Another group of officers guided them as if they were kindergarteners into the building while the crowd started to dangerously approach them in desperation despite the living barrier. The door closed behind them with a loud thump followed by smaller but continuous knocks from the journalists. More officers were waiting in the inside, along what seemed to be doctors dressed in white lab coats or containment suits.A set of containment suits were waiting for them, save for Yuuko who had to put on one of the lab coats and was indicated to follow a second team to observe rather than going inside to the room where the machine was.The rest of the group nodded at her when she walked away and glanced at each other.While they knew they were being under severe scrutiny, helping whoever-those-people-were wasn’t their main goal. But now they had seen the extent Yuuri’s experiment had reached, they knew they needed those people if they wanted to have any chance of success.“You three are going in with doctor Zakharov and his team” another officer called their attention while they were being zipped into the suits “We expect your total and absolute cooperation with the case”Phichit felt his brows knit into a tight confused frown.“Case? What case?” the boy demandedThe officer stared at him the way one would do with someone stupid “Didn’t you see all that people outside kid? That thing” he pointed at the direction of the machine’s room “is the most important scientific discovery in history, and it’s not in America’s hands. If we can get it running again, the benefits would be infinite”Without any other word, the officer walked away, shouting orders in Russian.“Well, fuck” Phichit mumbled. Now they had another problem on their shoulders. Vitka had a moment to think on how strange Iu-uri’s pelts were when he gave them to Makka to smell for tracking.They were too soft, as if someone had treated for several suns in a row. It had the same color of the Great Father Sky, as if Iu-uri had managed to catch a Manak in the domains of the Bright Father. He had heard some of his fellow Petsk say that, with the color of his eyes, hair and skin, Iu-uri might as well be a son of the Bright Mother…“Here, girl” he passed the pelt close to Makka’s noseThe young she-wolf sniffed lightly and immediately set to run, giving Vitka almost no time to pass the garment to Lili-ya and the other hunters she had gathered to track Iu-uri.Amongst the Petsk it wasn’t rare to keep a hunting dog. A breed smaller and leaner than wild wolves, with smaller fangs and a fur smooth as that of an otter; they were good aids and partners during the hunts and protectors during the walk to the Sun Lands. Yet, and there were no Petsk to deny so, Makka outran every hunting dog in every field.Her nose could detect even the smallest track of a prey, her legs allowed her to walk or even run larger distances for a longer time without getting half as tired as the hunting dogs, her fur was thicker to protect her from the cold so hunts in the snow weren’t a problem. Even the smallest and faintest smell of Iu-uri on those weird pelts meant she could find him in no time.Snow felt cold and humid against his skin and he bet on Makka’s fur as well.In a normal situation, he would have locked his house’s door tightly with ropes so the wind wouldn’t blow it away and then placed a leather strip along the borders to avoid the humid snow coming in. After that, he would have wrapped himself along with Makka and set to sleep.Also, in a normal situation, he would have been worried sick on the perspective of getting his nose and fingers burned blue due to the cold. But in that moment, he was worried that would happen to Iu-uri.“You got anything Makka?” he asked his faithful wolf, getting a small huff in return as a sign of affirmationThe wind was blowing violently and harshly, whistling in his ears and blinding his eyes, but he could tell Makka was guiding him towards the riverbank. His little marsh man wouldn’t be as crazy as to jump into the river in the middle of a blizzard, would he? Such were his thoughts when Makka turned to a side and barked at the stakes where the Petsk tied their boats.One of the boats was missing.“Bright Mother, don’t strip your blessing off him” he mumbled under his breath and protector They couldn’t be that far right?According to his mental math and given his friends hadn’t landed in the exact same spot he had, then that meant the machine had its effects directly proportional to the distance in which they were standing from in the beginning. Even though he wished he had brought his faithful little notebook with him, there was hardly any need for it when he could do all the equations inside his head.Yuuko was his priority. Given how far she was seated from his machine, then she must have landed way farther than from where he had so maybe he would have to make a little more effort rowing up the river.But it would be worth it. Yes.The frost on his knuckles would be worth it. Yes.His nose was cold and a little numb, but that didn’t matter. Yes.Oh, that seemed to be a good point to stop the boat. All he needed to do was to push a little bit to get to the opposite side of the riverbank and he could start his search. He could see the forest already.Maybe Yuuko would have gotten a little lost in the middle of the trees but he could easily track her through her steps on the snow. After all, the snow was thick on the forest ground, freshly fallen. Wonderful!He would find Yuuko in no time. Yes. “Thank the Bright Mother!” Vitka claimed, the sound of his voice muffled by the thick protecting pelt covering his face up to his eyes.Makka barked in agreement as the missing boat came into their sight. It hadn’t been tied to anything but Vitka didn’t think its rower had any intention of actually securing the boat and they had been the river rocks the ones to hold it in ‘place’. His faithful wolf, always understanding him without the need of words, jumped to the snowy bank with the boat’s rope between her fangs to help Vitka pull the boat to land.Vitka hadn’t yet finished to tie the boat when his wolf was already on her way to the insides of the forest, letting out alarmed short howls. Despite his cold toes, Vitka grabbed his spear and ran behind her.Oh, there! He could already see the track Makka was so eagerly following.And he felt his poor spirit sink way below under the thick layer of snow: those tracks were clearly of a person but Vitka could easily see the front part of the track split into five gradually longer parts, meaning Iu-uri had fled without anything covering his feet.“Vitka!” a voice called his attention back “Vitka! Any signs of him?”Mila was a young woman blessed by the Bright Father who had given her a beautiful mane in the color of a warm hearth, only Vitka had more people coming from other tribes in an attempt to get his Care. Understandably, who wouldn’t love to Care for one of the Petsk’s most skilled hunters?“I think so” Vitka held his spear horizontal to salute his friend’s bow “But I think he ran away without boots” Mila’s face contracted into a shocked expression before “Well, your little marsh man is quite the thing…”Both hunters turned to Makka when the she-wolf howled desperately to get Vitka’s attention. She was already quite far away from them and seemed to be going to a hollow the Petsk hunters loved for its use when it came to hunting deer.“You better go to her” Mila mumbled, not quite completely out of her shock yet “Yurch Ka must be on his way but he’ll need help with the boat. I’ll catch up to you!”Without another word, Mila’s figure disappeared in the middle of the snowy winds leaving only a flash of bright red behind her, Yurch Ka’s yells were already audible. Vitka settled his spear and his face protector tight before running after Makka. He should be close.Yuuko wouldn’t be able to walk for too long unless Takashi had been close to her, which was quite unlikely despite being close when they were sitting at the lab. But she was six months pregnant with twins so something like that was far too improbable.If his brain math was right, Yuuko would be approximately one point three kilometers away from his landing point which would be about thirty minutes or so of walking.
Stop! This is madness! Everything is wrong! We must return--!
Yuuri shut his brain’s voice. It was ok, everything was ok.He would find Yuuko and walk her to the village. Lilia would surely welcome her at the circular room, give her thick furs and herbal-taste soups to warm her. Maybe after bringing his friend in, he could convince Vitka and other people to go with him to find his other friends and professor Cialdini.Even maybe one of them would have recognized the riverbank and settled to either wait for someone else to gather up or to walk towards a known spot they recognized from the road trip.“Yuuko!” oh, his voice trembled a little. Maybe it was because he hadn’t spoken a word since going back to the circular room after the bath “Yuuko-chan! Yuuko!”His steps were muffled by the snow which would have been useful had it not been for the wind howling in his ears. What if Yuuko was answering his out loud yelling and he couldn’t hear it because of that stupid wind? And now it was fogging his already fogged up vision, luckily he had had the good idea of grabbing his glasses when he had left the circular room despite the darkness inside it.Ugh, why hadn’t he grabbed something like one of those hats he had seen standing nearby one of the small niches in Lilia’s circular room.Well, it wasn’t as he would be walking on and about for too long now according to his math. Just a few more steps around so he would find his friend and bring her to safety. It wouldn’t be too long, it wouldn’t be too long, it wouldn’t be too long, it wouldn’t be too long…Something below his feet made a crack and he felt his stomach and himself to fall downwards by the invisible yet all-powerful gravity.Now it wasn’t just the snowy wind howling in the woods but also Yuuri’s voice which resonated even in his own ears… before a thump announced his landing on a snow bank a few meters down, his heart pounding inside his ears while his eyes grew foggy on something else rather than the snow. He was feeling dizzy and numb.His leg was numb, his leg was twisted, his leg was broken and his sight got blacked out. Vitka wished he had had more time to prepare himself and had tied something on his feet to avoid drowning inside the snow up to his waist as he was in that moment.The snowstorm hadn’t stopped yet, but was slowly and gradually easing just the tiniest bit while it had already left the ground covered in such a thick layer of cold he was hardly advancing at all and Makka wasn’t having any better luck for the matter: her little furry head was well noticeable amongst the white of the snow while her snout repeatedly snuffed snow out and high.Makka stopped abruptly at the very border of the hollow and let out a long howl. Vitka had to move his arms and his arms all over to move as much snow aside as possible to get to her.“Bright Mother, please don’t tell me…” he prayed under his breath.His wolf kept howling while he made his way to the border with utmost difficulty. Vitka had to plant his spear as deep on the ground as his strong arms allowed him to, he didn’t want to fall into the deep hollow if he didn’t have something to hang on to.The hunter removed his protector slightly to allow his eyes a wider vision spectrum at the risk of freezing his pointy nose… but he felt his breath freeze inside his throat.It was Iu-uri. He couldn’t be mistaken with that hair as dark as the Night Sky which was the only thing visible outside of a small hill made of snow in which he was evidently buried.“Iu-uri!” he called amongst the howls of his wolf “Iu-uri! Can you hear me?”He didn’t move at all.“Vitka!” voices behind him calledMila, Yurch Ka and Gor-zhi were following the path Vitka had carved through the snow, also employing their weapons to widen the it. Gor-zhi and Yurch’ka tied a thick rope to one of the nearby birch tree and the other end to Vitya’s waist, a technique they were used to when hunting deer in the woods and needed to retrieve the prey from the hollow.The three hunters helped Vitka slowly descend since he was the only one strong enough to carry a passed out Iu-uri.He had almost lost hope when he realized Iu-uri’s body had the freezing temperature of a corpse until he felt his Song faintly drumming underneath the skin and onto his fingertips. Despite the precarious situation they were in, Vitka couldn’t help the blush furiously extending over his face underneath the protecting leather.A Song was perhaps the most intimate of concepts and practices the Petsk had amongst them, something meant to be shared with a Cared only. While it was known the Song could tell the difference between death and life for an agonizing person, when revising it, it could only be done by feeling it on the hands or, less preferably, on the neck. But never on the chest, since it was there where the Song rested.Vitka quickly brushed his thoughts off to unearth Iu-uri and tight him strongly to his body in order to be pulled up by his fellow hunters.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Phichit was about to murder someone if he had to stand one more second without something warm on his hands.Despite the sudden snowstorm paining Saint Petersburg, the team of scientists and officers had decided to cut the heating to the bare minimum inside the lab which was the set temperature when Yuuri had completed the experiment which according to his and his professor’s calculus had sent him into a void of space and time. That meant that everyone working inside the lab was condemned to freeze while working despite they all looked like tacky plushies with all those cloth layers underneath their lab coats.Warm, barley-tinted and bitter coffee the catering brought by the police and distributed amongst everyone in the building every day had become Phichit’s only comfort the past days. The quantities he was drinking would scare the shit out of his parents had they been there.However, not sleeping at night was a very cheap price to pay for a decent warmth during the day.“Yuuko will be sneaking us some soup for lunch” Takashi seemed to be reading his mind, his voice was so low it almost came like a murmur“Don’t you need to eat when you’re pregnant?” Phichit asked in the same low tone. As much as he appreciated his friend’s generosity, she was carrying three kids in her belly and he really wanted them to see them healthy.“The police will take her to the hospital in the afternoon. She likes the food there better” Takashi replied with a smile, Phichit smiled back in complicity.Phichit focused back on the board before him, noting every single writing religiously on his notebook’s side with slightly more pressure than needed to allow the numbers, signs and letters to press onto the page underneath.That one had been the technique all of them had been using for the past week every time they were near Yuuri’s board equations: with the slight pressure trespassing the notebook and onto the following page, all they needed to do was to softly sketch graphite over it to have an exact copy when the Police confiscated the original.“Kiddos, come get your bellies warm!” Celestino’s voice chanted announcing he had brought a fresh batch of nasty coffee.It wasn’t time for Yuuko’s sneak-in soup yet so the three of them had to conform themselves with a couple of sandwiches from the catering service. Cold, to make things better.“How are things in lab B?” Phichit asked in an attempt to make small talk to distract themselves and the officers from looking too suspicious. With every sandwich bite and gulp of coffee, he would take advantage of the sound and softly rip the pages of his notebook off to immediately hide them in the insides of his sleeve.“That burrow of mad men?” Celestino huffed in disgust “Thank God I stopped them from doing anything to the machine besides from moving it! They wanted to tear her open, but I got to stop them”“What for in the first place?” Takeshi wondered with a mouthful of sandwich, keeping more pages inside his own sleeves“Tch! They already want to build a copy of my boy’s project” the always-kind professor was basically spitting the words “Luckily I managed to get the Academy get Yuuri and the three of you the best grades you will ever get! You too, Nishigori! I spoke with coach Sasha about you”Phichit let out a smile. His professor’s words were pure sunlight given the time they all were going through.His grades and the possibility of losing the semester due to the incident had been the main point of concern for his parents when the police had finally given him the chance of calling them a few days ago. His mother’s screams were still resonating against his poor eardrums and he still wasn’t sure how an Excel grid had become more important than the fact his best friend disappeared in an act of the almighty Science.Mom priorities, he guessed.“Also,” Celestino got his attention back “I spoke to officer Kovalev and basically bargained for a couple of beds. Those sofas will be the death of my poor back. I'm too old for this crap…”Both him and Takeshi snorted in laughter. The path before them, despite being barely on the building, was a harsh one but easing moments like these seemed to make it smoother. For ever since the Petsk had lived along the Large River, they had told the stories of the Elders in a never-ending cycle for every Petsk who was willing to hear. Most of the time they were stories on how the World around them had been created.How the Great Mother Earth and Great Father Sky had became Cared to one another after she had extended her trees to reach him and he had sent her wind and rain to caress and nourish her. He had given her a son to take care of her in the form of the Bright Father, he had taken a Cared himself with the Bright Mother.Unfortunately, he had not been able to give her a child so she wouldn’t be alone. Seeing her cry and even disappear for days made his heart and warmth to struggle harshly. So, he decided to gift her little pieces and traces of himself to keep her company; doing so would mean he would no longer be able to be with his mother as closely as he had been, sometimes even allowing snow to fall over the Great Mother Earth in his absence.But he did it because of love. And nothing seemed to be stronger in the World than it.Every little Petsk had heard the story around the warm hearth every time the Bright Mother showed her full beauty. Including Vitka.Maybe that was the reason why he just couldn’t help himself from hearing the mumbling of his fellow tribeswomen around him as he tried to focus on trying to do some new arrows, since Yurch Ka had lost plenty during their last hunting lesson the previous day.All of them were mumbling the same.“He truly has to be the Son of the Bright Mother if he survived such a snowstorm”
“Well, it would make sense: he appeared during a full Moon after all
“Maybe he is a gift from the Bright Father?”
“That would be beautiful. The Bright Father finally giving a child to his Cared!”
“Lili-ya told me she would speak to the Spirits to know the truth…”
A cut of the small obsidian point on his finger made him snap and get his focus back on his arrows rather than on the nearby conversation.Being a Great Hunter implied a certain level of logical reasoning and decision making during the harshest parts of an important Hunt. It was that reasoning Vitka was trying his best to hold on to before he let his own mind fly away. Because the worst part of all those things the Petsk women were saying was that he could perfectly picture them on Iu-uri.After all, he had appeared in a full Moon night from the middle of nowhere, wearing the strangest garments he or any Petsk had ever seen with ever stranger amulets on his face. The weirdest thing about him were probably his features: a face pale as the face of the Bright Moon and hair as dark as the Night she proudly lived in. Maybe that was the reason he had ran away in the first place…To go back home.If life next to the Bright Mother had been any different from how it was amongst the Petsk, then trying to run back home and to her would be a reasonable thing to do for Iu-uri even if it was a complete madness for him and the tribespeople.Vitka would also feel completely overwhelmed if he had been sent to a world completely different from his, from which he knew absolutely nothing or how to do anything… maybe Iu-uri didn’t even know how to hunt.“Ah, Vitka” a feminine voice called behind him, the surprise earned him another cut from the arrow “Blessings of plenty… oh, my. Sorry!”Being the advocate Healer she was, Lili-ya sat next to him immediately pulling a weaved strip made from soft plants and an ointment she always carried around no matter the day or the hour.“Blessings of plenty” he answered with a smile “It’s just a scratch”Lili-ya denied with her head, buttering his entire finger with the thick ointment and wrapping it so tightly it seemed she wanted to make it purple.“Nonsense!” the Healer replied with her brows knitted in a frown “I need you without any scratches so you can focus on a task”“As much as I would love to, I’m trying to get some arrows done right now…”Lili-ya simply fixed a mocking gaze on him, one eyebrow higher than the other. A knot finished her healing, making Vitka jump in the process.“Two cuts from barely tying arrows are the absolute worst coming from the Great Hunter” she stood up, straight as a pine tree and with a proud face “I have a better job that doesn’t require you potentially getting your fingers chopped”Next thing Vitka knew, he was sitting in Lili-ya’s home stirring a pot she had left on the hearth as she was out in the woods trying to find wax. His pelts would surely get the smell of the herbs in the broth but maybe that could help him when he went out hunting the next day. Besides that, the Healer had asked one more thing from him.Iu-uri was moving in his sleep, shaking and letting out low pained grunts. He was close enough so Vitka could see the pearls of sweat all over his face and the damp stains on his garments.The Hunter quickly stopped his stirring and went to get a strip of cloth wet in a small bowl Lili-ya had left with molten snow. Once he was sure it was completely cold, he placed it on Iu-uri’s burning forehead, the other man shuddered in his sleep when the compress touched his skin and let out a small pained-scream. Vitka had to make sure the other man didn’t move his injured leg despite Lili-ya having tied some rocks around the splint she had placed after mending the bone to a more natural position.“Sh, sh, please stay still” he didn’t know if Iu-uri could listen him in his state, but he kept murmuring easing words to him “You need to stay calm. Sh, sh, sh. Calm down”Lili-ya had left him prepared a small bowl full of a medicinal infusion she called White Soup, which made almost any kind of pain go away after a few drinks. Vitka had had to drink from it a few times during one of the Petsk’s journey to the Sun Lands and while he could advocate for its quick efficacy, he also knew it to be so powerful it would most likely make the drinker dizzy, numb-limbed and quick to fall asleep no matter the hour or the place. What if he just ended making Iu-uri even more lost in his sleep? He would be out of pain but then it would be longer until he woke up and that would make Lili-ya even more worried…Iu-uri yelled. An actual yell dripping pain in every note despite his eyes being wide shut.Screw this, the Hunter thought and went to get the bowl once he made sure the injured leg hadn’t been moved.He pinched Iu-uri’s nose to make his mouth involuntarily open wide gaping for air. He only dropped half of the half of the bowl, that should suffice to ‘sleep’ his pain away at least until the Bright Mother appeared in the Night.The thread of his thoughts kept rolling.Would the Bright Mother be mad at what had happened to her Son due to the Petsk’s lack of care? She was a powerful Spirit and could easily punish them by extending her coldness to their lands for moons to come, burrowing time from her Cared and making the days shorter. If she wanted, she could even guide beasts inside their homes and lead the fish away from their riverbanks.Vitka was a Great Hunter of the Petsk. The responsibility of feeding the tribe, keeping them safe and preparing them to learn to live in harmony with their surroundings was completely on his shoulders. Iu-uri had become a Petsk the moment he arrived to the tribe, inherently getting under the wing of his care and Vitka had let him got hurt.He had to change that.“When you wake up, I know you will,” Vitka mumbled softly at Iu-uri while he wetted his forehead with a freshly damped cloth on molten snow “I promise you I will teach you everything you need to know in our tribe, so you can make the Bright Mother proud”Iu-uri sighed softly in his sleep as any response. Yuuri felt as if he was watching a movie about himself through an enormously wide TV.In front of him was his twelve-year old self in front of a full-to-the-top bowl of katsudon, surrounded by his parents and his sister. It was his birthday. There was a single long box on the table where his and the family’s katsudon bowls were and a chocolate cake with candles on top.His parents and his sister had just finished to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him and Little Him was quick to blow the candles, a wave of clapping followed along the ‘clic’ of a came“Ah, already twelve… they grow up so fast!” his father teared up a little bit while revising the picture he had just taken“Sweetie, why don’t you open your gift?” his mother urged.Something quite unnecessary, if his current self had to be honest. Mini Yuuri pushed his katsudon bowl aside in a gesture he rarely did just to get his little chubby hands on the long box, he started tearing the bright-blue wrap paper in what could be a very brutal way had it not been paper. He didn’t have to make any kind of effort to remember what lied behind those two layers of wrap, he remembered the exact words on the box: ORION 180, the whole Universe before your eyes!Mini Yuuri gasped with surprise before he squeaked in pure joy, his face beaming when he hugged his parents and his sister.“Glad you liked it, lil’ bro” Mari mumbled with her signature half-smile“Thank you all so much!” he exclaimed; his happy tears were fusing with a wide smile that reached every corner of his face “This is the best gift ever!”Ah, how could he ever forget that birthday? He had been asking for the Orion 180 ever since he was six years old after hearing one of his senpais talk about it in the science club. Toshiya and Hiroko had asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he had quietly replied the name of the telescope, a deep flush covering his cheeks and ears since he knew the onsen wasn’t in a particularly good moment economically speaking and even he could notice.Yet, he wasn’t good telling lies. For his seventh birthday he received a pop-up planetary book. For the eighth he got a fluorescent mobile for his room ceiling in the shape of a twirling galaxy. For the ninth, a NASA hoodie. For the tenth, an Einstein figurine. For the eleventh, a DVD on his favorite documentary on Quantum Physics.But when he saw those bright ORION letters, he knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.His dream-self’s vision blurred out of nowhere, he felt the ground underneath his feet loosen up and he found himself falling into the void. The fall suddenly stopped, showing him a new but still recognizable scenery.A slightly-younger-Yuuri was sitting with his mother at Yu-Topia’s empty dining hall. Judging by their clothes and the amount of light coming into the room it must have been sometime during the late summer, a time during which the family inn wasn’t too busy.Yuuri got close to his mother and younger self to realize they were sewing…more like Hiroko was teaching him how to sew. Ah, he remembered that: it was before he moved into Saint-Petersburg and his mother had considered he needed some extra skills before living on his own.“You said this stitching works for buttons then?” his other-self asked HirokoHis mother let out a gentle chuckle and nodded without taking her eyes away from her more complex and more colorful project. A pillowcase it seemed.“Buttons, pockets and securing cloth folds” she answered heartily “Let’s say you buy a shirt that fits you well all over but around the waist. With that stitch, you can adjust it easily”Both Yuuris blushed slightly.While he was quite prone to lose control on his weight, he actually was in good shape ever since his teens when he would go running around Hasetsu, going into ballet and skating classes at the nearby studio and rink but no matter the amount of muscle built or the fat shed off his body, his waist and hips had always being quite pronounced like that of a girl. Thus, when buying a shirt, he would constantly have trouble with too-loose fabric around his tummy.“I’m thinking I should also teach you the basics of knitting as well…” Hiroko mumbled, interrupting both the quietness in the room and Yuuri’s thoughts.Then-Yuuri glanced at his mother with a confused face.“Knitting?”“Hmm, hmm” his mother murmured “It gets really cold in Russia, it would be nice if you know how to make yourself a cardigan, some socks or a scarf if the ones you’re taking aren’t enough. You could even make a nice thick blanket!”Ah yes, he had read and heard how merciless the cold was in Russia. While he was kind-of used to see snow from across the window, having to wear a thick parka and snow boots every time he was out or having to stay all day long under the heated kotatsu eating onabe. On top of that, he didn’t even lived in the most northern part of Japan colliding with Russia so most Japanese people living in Russia he had talked to had told him to multiplicate all of it by, easily, six times. They had all been right.“I guess… that would be nice” Yuuri mumbledHis mother smiled fondly.Maybe it was because he had been in an unknown place with unknown people in a, literally, unknown time but, Katsuki Hiroko looked particularly beautiful to him in that moment. He felt dampness start to form on his eyes.His dream didn’t let him get too sentimental before the ground trembled again and he saw deep cracks forming on it that soon swallowed him into a different scene.This one was from a normal day in college. Phichit and him were exiting one of the conference rooms where there had been a meeting from the International Student Group, they were talking to one of the freshmen students. Being watching the whole scene from an outsider’s perspective, Yuuri couldn’t help to let out a chuckle when he looked at Phichit, Guang-hong and himself being so wrapped in winter clothes they looked like walking onions.“Then, do you have a project already?” Phichit wondered while tying his scarf tighter around his neck. No number of turtlenecks seemed to ease the chilliness for the Thai boy.“Ah, yes” Guang-hong replied shyly, he only buttoned his jacket up. Both Yuuri and the Chinese boy were a little more used to the snow and the cold wasn’t as inclement with them. “I think it would be a good idea to get an idea at the museum”“Why don’t we guide you there? It’s quite far and getting a grip of your location when in Saint Petersburg is quite hard” then-Yuuri offered to the young freshman.The scene changed but without any movement from his body or his surroundings.Before him were Phichit, Guang-hong and then-Yuuri walking amongst locals and tourists in large halls at the Prehistoric collection of the Hermitage Museum. The trio were standing before an exhibition which depicted a daily scene in the Neolithic as read on a plaque, something Yuuri could definitely confirm its accuracy after getting a glance at the village outside Lilia’s circular room.While Phichit was fighting against a tangled set of earphones he had rented for a guided audio-tour, Guang-hong had seemed to leave his usual shyness at the entrance door. He was moving his hands in a frantic explanation and his mouth just couldn’t seem to stop spilling words related to the exhibition they were watching.“…it was such an important stage of human history! Even more than the Paleolithic if you ask me: drawings on stone weren’t gonna get us anywhere after all. But this? We started to live in actual houses, use actual clothes instead of dead animals, agriculture became a thing and we started to have so many advanced tools its crazy! They also started to understand concepts such as property, marriage, religion, love…!”Phichit chuckled, interrupting both his untangling process and Guang-hong’s rambling.“People right now don’t fully understand love,” his friend mocked “and you try to tell me a caveman did?”Yuuri and then-Yuuri had to suppress their laughter when Guang-hong inflated his freckled cheeks and got red with visible anger.“They did!” the freshman claimed “There are paintings and ceramics depicting love stories! Amulets! Graves where two people are buried with the same preparations which have been found in ‘wedding’ settings!”Phichit gave Guang-hong one last mocking glance and Yuuri felt the ground beneath him shake anew. He tried uselessly to grab onto one of the security posts surrounding the exhibition but the void beneath swallowed him anyway.Despite waiting for another of his memories be shown on a mental TV again, this next ‘scene’ was a complete nothing-ness from all sides.It was as if he was stuck in a borderless room colored pitch-black but not dark at all. He could see his entire body with complete and full definition unlike as if he was staring at himself in the night. But he could also feel the emptiness of the place.There was nothing.There was no one.Just him.Alone.How could his own mind be so cruel as to show him memories of his family and friends only to strip them all away from him? He crumbled over his own body, cried, bawled and screamed for help.Yuuri got surprised when someone actually answered his cries for help, making the room less black, slowly transitioning into a softly lit place.It came in a strange language. Unknown and familiar at the same time. A soothing voice easing his anxiety down with gentle and soft murmurs from which, while he couldn’t get the words, he totally understood the meaning.Tiredness and sleep flooded his entire being like a tsunami within him. But instead of fearing it, he welcomed the sensation and allowed his body and mind some actual rest. “I have talked to the Great Spirits!”The entire Petsk tribe, men, women and children kept the utmost silence and respect when the Healer spoke out loud from the entrance of their home. They all sat down on their knees as they shouldn’t be standing taller than she, the messenger of the Spirits.“As all of you may know, several nights ago, our Great Hunter” her hand appointed Vitka “had an encounter with whom we thought was simply a man from another tribe. However, I have traveled to the Sanctuary and spoken to the Spirits, the Mothers and the Fathers. What they have told me is something I consider to be quite important to all of the Petsk”Lili-ya’s green eyes fixed on a small group of young women who seemed to guess what she had discovered.“The Bright Mother spoke to me about her Son. A child she has raised in a different place in a different time, a child with a great wisdom that far surpasses ours…”“But he wandered into a snowstorm like an old manak!” an acute, childish voice interrupted the Healer’sThe entire village turned to see Yurch-ka with an annoyed glance which could easily beat the kid’s own. Lili-ya, accustomed as she was to the young hunter’s tantrums simply brushed the incident off and continued with her words.“The world she raised him in is completely different from ours, our wisdom and his are too different: ours comes from the Earth and what lies on it, but his comes from the sky and what is within it” the Healer explained calmly, yet focusing her attention on Yurch-ka “This is the reason why the Bright Mother has asked us to help her son”“Help him?” Mila asked in the crowd “But how? Isn’t he a Spirit as well?”“True,” one of the other girls, Ana-Taya, complied “he doesn’t look like he comes from any tribe we know. He has the skin of the Bright Mother, the hair and the eyes of the Sky she stands on. He is a Spirit”Vitka crouched a little bit in his place, playing with one of his hair strands. So what if Iu-uri was a powerful spirit or not? He wouldn’t say it out loud, but Yurch-ka was right: not going out in a snowstorm was common sense for any Petsk due to the world they were used to, but if Iu-uri had grew up in a different one, then it was clear he needed guidance or he wouldn’t be able to survive.“The Bright Father is also a Spirit, yet he wasn’t able to give children to his Cared for ages until now” Lili-ya’s words were firm “Spirits need of us as we need them. If Iu-uri is here to teach us something the least we can do is to teach something in return… which is why I have chosen Vitka to be the one to teach him our ways and provide him with the teaching and protection he needs”Every Petsk either turned to see the Great Hunter or fixed their gazes on his back. Vitka shuddered lightly and almost invisibly underneath the pelts shielding him from the cold of the snow. He was used to the feeling of being in constant observation but not in the way his fellow tribesman were doing it at the moment.He moved from his sitting position to duck his entire body in respect for the Healer.“I will gladly accept this task if you give it to me” Vitka mumbled just loud enough so the people around him could listen, but the quietness amongst his tribe made it seem as if he had screamed it.Lili-ya thanked him with a deep bow of her head, making her braids and amulets ring in the process. After giving the Blessing to the tribe, each of the Petsk went back to their daily tasks, except for Vitka who stayed in his place after Lili-ya placed her hand over his shoulder.“We are in a time when we are allowed to skip a few responsibilities: we can’t hunt as freely because of the younglings, we still have enough Winter food to hold until the Bright Father warms us with all his might” she spoke softly, almost as if the words were for herself “I wouldn’t have given you this task had I not believed you have enough time for doing so”The Great Hunter agreed with a movement of his head“It would also be nice if you could keep an eye on him again today… without White Soup if possible. He has been asleep for three more days than I thought”Vitka felt his ears get warmed up with embarrassment.The Healer gave him the Blessings one more time before heading out to the path leading to the opposite outskirt than where he lived. He had heard in the morning one of the youngest couple of Cared were having their first baby, Lili-ya would be having quite the workload for the rest of the day.Vitka made his way to Lili-ya’s house, trying as hard as he could to ignore the gazes of the other Petsk who looked at him as if he had single-handedly killed a Manak. The sensation was there again, and he didn’t like it one bit.The entrance door in Lili-ya’s home was tightly closed, something normal given that Iu-uri’s fever was still on the go and a broken bone exposed to the cold tended to hurt as if it hadn’t been mended at all. He opened it slowly, stripping almost immediately off his thick pelts, it was way too hot inside the locked home with the hearth lit up. He chuckled softly when he realized Lili-ya had taken the little pot of White Soup out of the house.Iu-uri lied on his usual spot, covered in pelts up to his chin and only his splint leg came outside of the covers. Lili-ya had told him it was a little early to tell with full certainty, but it seemed to be mending well so far. He hoped so, otherwise his hunting lessons would be a pain.Luckily, he hadn’t hurt anything else at the Hollow that would have made things more complicated like his hands, his knees or his eyes. Vitka had to admit he was really curious about his eyes: they were so deep, and they reflected the hearth perfectly…“Ah…!” the hunter tripped and almost fell on his back when he realized Iu-uri was awake and with his eyes wide open observing his surroundings “Iu-uri. Blessings of plenty…”Iu-uri didn’t answer, his gaze was unfocused like a lost cub. He tried to get up, but his elbows gave up under the effort and his back crashed on the sleeping pelts. Vitka rushed to his side and held him by the shoulders to help him sit.“Sh, sh, sh” he did so slowly and gently so Iu-uri wouldn’t get hurt “Are you alright? Would you like some water? Water?”Vitka even made the sounds of water getting down his throat so Iu-uri could understand. But instead of answering anything, Iu-uri focused his eyes on his own.“Vitka…” Iu-uri mumbled.His voice was rusty and nasal, the voice of someone who has been sick for too long. But that wasn’t what surprised him the most, rather the fact that this was the first time Iu-uri had called his name. And he liked how it sounded.But the pleasure of it didn’t last too long.Almost immediately, Iu-uri broke into tears, not even minding the fact his body was weak and his leg was badly hurt. He was bawling and weeping like he had done when he was sleep but it was worse now that he was awake. He was also speaking, in a language Vitka couldn’t understand any word but the sound of his voice was sad and pained.Vitka didn’t know what else to do but to cuddle Iu-uri in his arms like he would do with a crying child, careful not to lie him on his chest. He mumbled soft words and traced spirals on his back to ease him down.They stayed like that for several hours.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Yuuri was awfully bored.Had he broken a leg back in his time, it would have meant for him to stay comfortably in his bed, watching Netflix on his laptop or playing videogames. He would have been excused from going to classes, Phichit would have cooked or, worst case scenario in which the Thai boy had burned something in the kitchen, ordered food.Being a few thousand years back in time meant that none of those things was possible.Lilia had left the house shortly after he had woken up, quickly speaking some words at him, from which he only understood ‘Vitka’ out of all the bunch and gave him a bowl of broth for breakfast. Then he was left alone.She had been doing so for a couple of days already.He had tried to move around a little but the…device around his leg was really heavy and his weakened body wasn’t too eager to cooperate with him. He was about to give up and go back to sleep until his hand found a bundle which he recognized as his cardigan.Yuuri unwrapped it and found his pants, sweater, shirt, glasses and even his faithful little notebook inside of the bundle. Maybe Lilia or Vitka had left it there after his arrival and then after his last incident.Looking back, he could now rationally admit he had had a break down. But his hallucinations, dreams or whatever had been his personal turning point and he had actually accepted what had happened to him. He had provoked it on himself, he hadn’t affected his friends and his professor out of pure luck, maybe he had pushed the boundaries of science too far, but he wasn’t going to run away from the responsibility.“Oh, thank god…!” he mumbled when he put on his glasses. The world was in full HD again.Fortunately, no one had stepped on them or scrapped them by accident; the only flaw on them were some fingerprints on the lenses. The rest of his belongings were in good condition as well save for a little dirt.“Hm, maybe I should finish this” he mumbled low taking a look at his notes on the functioning of his machine. Luckily, his mechanical pencil had also traveled with him and the notebook into the Neolithic “Results… of…experiment…Undetermined.”Yeah, that sounded accurate.“Chto ye la’ate?” a voice asked next to himYuuri screeched and jumped out of surprise at first and then out of pain when he moved his injured leg. Vitka hurried to his side, getting him back to his ‘bed’ with gentleness.“Ye ryadi?” Vitka asked, probably something along the lines of ‘Are you okay?’ if Yuuri had understood the meaning correctly“Don’t worry…I’m fine” Yuuri brushed the incident off with a gesture of his hand to aid the interpretationIt seemed the other man understood his gesture but still placed his leg underneath the covers with a care which could be interpreted as if Yuuri was made of pure glass. He thanked the gesture with a nod.“Ye shdel?” Vitka asked with an evidently concerned faceYuuri nodded and mumbled a “Da”During the first days, he had missed the Google translator terribly given how little he could understand Vitka’s conversation. The feeling hadn’t struck him ever since his first month in Saint Petersburg when he had a hard time even when buying a coffee at the cafeteria. Luckily, Vitka was quite the patient teacher and would usually stop on his tracks to mimic his words.Vitka seemed satisfied with the answer and took the empty soup bowl to a large washing basin and started to rinse it. It had sort of become the routine between the two of them.The other man would help him change his bandages, give him a quick wash with a damp piece of cloth, make sure he would drink the ‘tea’ Lilia had left for him, disappear for a little and then come back with a bunch of vegetables they would peel together, leave them to boil and wait for Lilia to come and eat with them. Yuuri actually looked forward to the peeling part due to some kind of strange potato he liked to examine.The other man started to softly pull the bandages apart, a process he didn’t enjoy in the slightest. Getting even the quickest of glances of his unnaturally placed leg gave him the creeps… and he didn’t even see the full thing: Vitka would only change the ones holding the together the outer splint.“I wonder how you learnt to do this…” he voiced out loud when Vitka was almost done“Ka?” Vitka’s silver hair and bone ornaments moved when he turned his head to see him in confusionIn a way, Yuuri knew saying ‘sorry, my bad’ wouldn’t ease the other man’s understanding so he kept his words for himself and pointed at the healing work instead.“Iselsh?” Vitka wondered after trying to decipher Yuuri’s gesturesThe word he had mumbled almost sounded as if he was saying the word for ‘eating’ again. No, wait. That one was shdel, a little bit different to the ear. Just to be sure, he pointed to his injured leg anew, making Vitka’s attention to focus on the bandaged parts.“This” he explained slowly, caressing the bandages and pointing the small pots of ointments Vitka and Lilia constantly used “and that. Is it iselsh?”Vitka nodded enthusiastically, an endearing gesture really. Yuuri couldn’t help but think about how much his attitudes sometimes resembled those of a small, excited child.As if he was following Yuuri’s line of thoughts, Vitka stood up and sprinted towards a batch of jars Lilia kept on a corner. He picked a few in his arms and returned to where Yuuri was, kneeling down to get on his same head level. After placing the small jars on top of the covers so they wouldn’t get rolling on and about on the ground and break.He picked an empty one and showed it to Yuuri as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Vitka pointed to it, as if he was specifically referring to the object’s material, a rough reddish-brown clay with some bumps interrupting its spiral-decorated surface.“Lina” he explained, rubbing his thumbs over it, encouraging Yuuri to do the same. Aside from the small bumps and decorations, he was surprised when the clay’s texture was soft to the touch.“Lina” Yuuri repeated, earning a nod and a smile from the man before him.Judging by Vitka’s gestures, it was likely that he was solely referring to the clay the little container was made of. Vitka asked for the small object back. This time he gestured for Yuuri to look at the entire little jar.“Yas” Vitka said, his index now specifically pointing to the small opening on top of the jar, then traced its contours, scraping a little bit of the clay off with his nail as if by doing so, Yuuri would understand better.‘Jar’ Yuuri thought.“Yas” he mumbled, a little unsecure of his pronunciation. No matter if he was a few thousand years back from his time, learning a new language was as hard as ever.Unconsciously, perhaps remembering his first weeks studying Russian along other international students at college, he elongated his arm trying to reach his small notebook and pencil. Vocabulary came easier to him when he wrote it down somewhere rather than simply trying to memorize everything, especially when there were words with similar pronunciation like ‘eat’ and ‘heal’.He didn’t even notice that what he was doing was a completely strange and foreign action in the place and time where he was. It was Vitka’s intense staring what brought him back to Earth, he was looking at Yuuri’s notes as if he had just seen a green monkey with tentacles instead of limbs.“Nyepo isuk…” he mumbled while fixing his stare on the notebook’s pages“Isuk?” Yuuri questionedVitka seemed to understand Yuuri’s doubts and placed his index on his Results of experiment notes, brushing a little bit of leftover graphite and staining the page slightly.“Isuk” he stated with a serious expression, but his eyes still glistened with the curiosity of someone who wants further answers.It was understandable how he would be so curious about it. Guiding himself from the decorations carved on the surface of the yas, Vitka was probably only used to drawings similar to them like the intertwined spirals or doubled zigzags. Besides, if Guanghong and the rest of his Faculty were right, the first alphabetical system was created some thousand years further in the future.“Words” he explained Vitka, underlining them with his own index.“Uorgds” Vitka tried to pronounce. One of his slender and slightly rough fingers appointed to one of the drawings Yuuri had made as a primary sketch of one of his machine’s gears “Uorgds”“Ah, no… drawing” Yuuri corrected “Drawing”Vitka blinked a few times in confusion and pointed at the words and drawings simultaneously.“Dar byeng. Uorgds. Isuk”What had started as a boring day, turned to be one of the most enriching days for Yuuri and, he truly hoped, Vitka. They would have forgotten about having lunch had it not been for their stomachs growling close to the time the sun was going down outdoors.“Uu fud?” Vitka asked with difficulty, constantly looking to the ceiling as he tried to get the words he had just learned back to his mind.“Da pazh hal” Yuuri answered with a smile. “My friends,” Phichit mumbled “I believe we deserve some pizza”Next to him, Yuuko laughed softly on her sofa, one of the greatest commodities she had received from the Saint Petersburg police department “If you can convince them of passing us a pizza, then fine by me”That would be slightly difficult, but the Thai boy was quite optimistic on getting one.Having complied obediently to all of the requests the police and the Russian scientists while working at the University lab, the police department seemed to ease down their strict watch on the small group to the point they moved them to a house for themselves. It seemed they had earned their trust.Good, because they would need it.They had already finished copying down the entire equation. Now, they could get to the actual work.“I’m with Phichit” Takeshi stated from the small kitchen “Rice is good and all but a change in dinner would be nice”“Ah, I highly doubt they’ll have anything similar to the one my nonna used to make back at home” Celestino mumbled next to Phichit, where they had been revising the last numbers and signs.They had taken three weeks to copy the entire equation, Yuuko had already signed up for starting the difficult task to ‘solve’ the equation backwards to its original form, the initial form Yuuri had planned his machine from.It may be their only chance at getting their friend back.A phone started to ring in the small living room. Celestino gave a quick look to the screen to check the number before he hurried his students to keep quiet. It was Ivan, their assigned ‘caretaker’, a middle-aged man who seemed to always know when they were busy with their rescue planning.“Privet” Celestino greeted, putting the phone in speaker mode“Privet” a thick voice answered on the other side in a tired tone “Are you alone, professor?”“Hm, you could say that” Celestino lied “Yuuko is asleep, Takeshi is cooking dinner and Phichit is surely playing with his phone in his room”The professor had stablished that policy whenever they were called by the police in an attempt to keep his students as safe as he possibly could.“I see” so far, Ivan never seemed to doubt of Celestino’s answers. He seemed content to just know he and his students just stayed in the house “Tell them to stay away from the windows though, the news just pulled the story back again this morning.”While the public could easily forget something as big as what could easily be labeled as the greatest invention of the century, it seemed people in social media was constantly and daily feeding on Phichit’s video resulting in a constant stalking at the university and the neighborhood they had been settled at by the police after one of their ‘fans’ had followed the police transport all the way.“Ah, I wouldn’t worry. They are quite tired from today”“Good. Tomorrow we’re taking miss Nishigori to the gynecologist for her appointment. She will also have access to a call to her family” Ivan stated “For the rest of you it will probably be during the weekend”“Ah, spasibo Ivan” Celestino thanked wholeheartedly, almost regretting lying to the man. The voice on the other side let out a ‘hmm’ as a vocal nod and hanged the phone, allowing the youngsters to release their breath “Well, Yuuko, do sent our best wishes to your and Yuuri’s family”The young woman nodded with a discrete smile, denoting both her excitement for getting in contact with her family but also her sadness on having to speak to Yuuri’s family and not being able to give them good news.“Soon we will have some good news for Mr. and Mrs. Katsuki” Celestino comforted her, gently patting her shoulder.They just needed a little bit more of time. Yurch’ka wasn’t a fan of fishing, nor of waiting for his pray hiding in the woods, nor sneaking amongst the trees to shoot birds.All of those required a patience he severely lacked and just couldn’t compare at all to the excitement and fun of chasing large prey through the forest and the grasslands, feeling his blood carrying the highest of spirits at every step he took for getting close. It was only then when he could truly understand Vitka’s teachings on how the Spirits guided him when he hunted, he felt actual respect for his prey and actual thankfulness for the opportunity to feed his loved ones.But he still was a Malen Ok’hot, a little hunter, who still hadn’t got the chance to prove he was worthy of being a Hunter of the Petsk when the Manak arrived again into their territory. He truly wished he was preparing right now for such an important happening with his mentor, Vitka.Had it not been because he seemed too entertained with his marsh man, clapping and getting excited at any new word they learnt as if he was taking care of a baby.It had already passed a moon ever since Uri or whatever’s arrival and while he had to admit Vitka had done a relatively good job with him and his talking; at least the man could talk with tentative ease with Vitka, Lili-ya and the other Petsk. Still, he remembered the few times he had tried honey, a paste too sweet for his poor tongue which made him instantly flinch and those two were provoking him the exact same reaction.“I just hope we won’t see a Caring ceremony too soon” he mumbled. While his voice wasn’t too loud, he could clearly see the fish he had managed to get close to the hook suddenly run away.His thought wasn’t made from disgust, not at all.Amongst the Petsk, the Sami, the Alma and basically all of the tribes Yurch’ka knew through trade, regarded Caring as something pretty much sacred, something that could only be done with a single person who had already been chosen by the Spirits even before Birth. And as the union had been done in Otherplace, the recipient it took form into didn’t matter: a body was a case and that was it.It just gave him the creeps because, despite the fact he would never admit it, the other fatherly figure he had besides his Great Father was Vitka. And he didn’t have a lot of trust in Uri.“Tch” he pulled his rod out of the water in frustration, but soon placed it back, creating round traces on the surface.“No fish?”The voice behind his back made him jump in fright and alert, slipping off the wet rocks and falling in the water, still freezing cold from the thaw. As soon as he got his head out of it to desperately gasp for air and warmth, his eyes found Uri before him. He was offering his hand to help him stand up.“Forgive!” he apologized in a weird accent “Yurch’ka good?”“Yeah, yeah” the younger one made it sound as if it hadn’t been a big deal.He was wet to the bone and he needed to change quickly if he didn’t want to get a cold.“Want pelt?” Uri offered while taking off the pelt covering his shoulders, which Yurch’ka recognized as Vitka’s outer pelt “You cold, you sick”He was still dressing in those strange-colored pelts and clothes; they were far too light and thin for their weather. The thaw had already been on course for a moon already, but the thick cold low clouds would still show morning and evening, it wasn’t weird for the Petsk to find fish frozen in chunks of ice in their morning trips and firewood was still a precious good.The foreign man didn’t seem to mind this at all and simply placed it gently on him.“Fish go. Sorry” Uri apologized “I get fish!”The chilly breeze coming from the woods making his bones shake didn’t stop Yurch’ka from letting out a mocking laugh at the other man.“You?” he asked in an incredulous voice “You can barely stand up by yourself and those arms look thinner than an arrow, what can you even fish with them?”Oh right.It was evident that Uri hadn’t understand a thing of what he had said so he repeated it while pinching his sloppy arms, emphasizing his words one by one ‘You. Can’t. Fish’. The other man still took some time to fully comprehend his words but Yurch’ka started to suspect he hadn’t done so, because he started to chuckle.“Can fish” he claimed with a smile on his face “You see”What he did next was strange.Yurch’ka always carried a basket with him whenever he went fishing, full of extra fishing threads in case his was too short, large flexible wooden rods if his own broke, wooden hooks he had craved in previous moons and rounded rocks in which he had managed to make a hole to get his thread through so it would have a little bit of weight. It was a heavy thing to carry around and even more to manage to hit his head with the long rods while walking.Uri didn’t seem to care a shit of how much he had suffered carrying that thing on his back all the way to his fishing spot as he simply tipped it over and spread his stuff all over the ground as if it was nothing, only picking up the thread rolls.“Now what the fuck are you doing?!” Yurch’ka scandalized, immediately bending down to gather up his stuff but his basket and thread were gone. Uri had run with it to a high point and started to tie strands of his thread on the sides of the basket.Uri, seemingly satisfied with his craftwork, threw it away to the middle of the water, farther than what Yurch’ka would usually manage but also the part which seemed to have lured more fishes in.The basket seemed to stay still for a moment on the surface of the water before it suddenly started to move against the current and at a different speed at that. A fish had gotten trapped in it. On top of his spot, Uri was pulling the threads with little to no result.“Help!” he yelled, reminding Yurch’ka his leg was still healing, and his body was weak from being in bed for so long.The malen ok’hot climbed to the high spot and helped him pull, quickly earning harsh burns on his palms, not much worse than Uri’s. What the fuck had he catch? It was heavy as if the fish carried rocks in his belly and his arms weren’t enough to get it off the water.The basket advanced towards them with a lot more fluidity, making him think that maybe his arms had finally showed off their strength, but a single look over his shoulder made him realize it was Vitka who had switch placed with Uri and was pulling three strings at the same time as if it was nothing.‘I’m gonna get a scolding for not taking care of this guy, for sure’ he thought.As soon as the basket and its load were out of the water, Vitka seemed to fulfill his prediction: the hunter turned to him with a severe expression, placing Uri behind his back in a protective manner.“Why on earth would you make him fish with something so dangerous when he has just left Lili-ya’s house?” Vitka’s words came out tight and sharp, as if he was gathering all of his self-control and not slap him or something.“I didn’t!” Yurch-ka defended himself “He made me fall into the water when he arrived, then he said he would help me catch back what I lost, I told him it was useless and instead of listening to me, he throws my stuff away and sinks my basket in the water! If there’s anyone deserving this, is him!”He ended his word-throw up with a finger pointing at Uri who had been discreetly observing the quarrel from behind the Great Hunter’s back after puckering the basket in an ugly manner so their catch wouldn’t jump back into the water. While Yurch-ka’s words had spilled too fast and had been too many, he seemed to understand that the youngster was accusing him.Uri tapped Vitka’s shoulder to call his attention back and nodded.“He fall water, I say I help” Uri explained with his voice and hands in a very slow pace, thinking his words “Many fish, I not catch. Basket catch many fish I can”Yurch-ka was thinking on making an alter to the Bright Mother so she would either give her son more knowledge of the Petsk words or give him more patience because every time he opened his mouth, he got freaked out for seeing someone older than him speaking like a baby.“Many fish?” Vitka wondered on Uri’s last words“Yes! More than stick!”Did he mean ‘more than with a rod’?Curious, Vitka and Yurch-ka bent down to get a look at the basket’s insides. Movement was still felt lightly through the woven fibers Uri had tied in an unpleasing crumple.As part of the Petsk, they were used to hard conditions from one winter to another, to having little from their daily hunts and gatherings. That was one of the reasons they had a Great Hunter, so they could ensure the feeding of the entire community.The quantity of fish achieved by Uri in a single try, was the equivalent of three days of early rising and boring long days by the river, Yurch’ka calculated.On his side, Vitka was even more surprised.“How did you catch so many?” he asked Uri, but he didn’t seem to understand much “Are you also a Hunter in the place you come from? A hunter like me, like Yurch’ka? Have the Bright Ones teach you hunt or magic?”Uri smiled, evidently not understanding the entirety of Vitka’s words.“I know things” he answered simplyYurch’ka knew, deep in his gut and much to his dismay, this guy wasn’t as helpless as he and the rest of his tribe had thought in the beginning.
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Hiroko Katsuki felt as if she had aged twenty years in the span of a month.Her hair had gotten a grayer tone and looked as if it had been barely tidied up, her glasses couldn’t hide the purple bags under her eyes, the before-pretty wrinkles which had been created by her constant smile now looked saggy and heavy on her face.It wasn’t that Yuuri’s disappearance hadn’t affected her husband and daughter, but it had hit her the hardest as it was something plain and simply strange.Had the news assured her son had been killed by his own experiment, she would then accept all of the condolences the crowds entering their home would mutter non-stop, she wouldn’t have disagreed her husband’s decision of placing a black bow at the front door nor the picture of her boy placed in the alter next to his beloved dog which she would remove every night but would find back every morning anyways. But no newspapers nor news programs nor even the news her daughter showed her on her phone and laptop said anything about Yuuri being dead.They only talked confusing words, in her opinion: how his son already was one of the greatest names in the history of science, how his invention should be open for the world of science to investigate it, how he had singlehandedly modified all of the existing laws of physics. But nothing more.All of it mattered little to nothing for her.“Mom?” Mari interrupted her thoughts, entering her room with the kitchen’s phone in her hand “You got a call”Hiroko dismissed her words with a waving of her hand. The only calls she had received were from either the media trying to get an interview with the Katsuki family or an acquaintance giving their condolences. Either way, she was done with both of them.“It’s from Russia” her daughter seemed to read her thoughts, managing to get her mother’s attention back “It’s Yuuko, Nishigori Yuuko”She took the phone from her daughter’s hands with a shocked and confused expression.“Moshi-moshi?”“Katsuki-san?” a youthful voice answered from the other side of the line with evident excitement “Oh, thank god! I don’t know if you remember me, I’m Yuuko, a friend of Yuuri’s from university. Some friends and I were in Hasetsu for a while last summer”“Ah, Yuuko-chan” she didn remember the cute girl who was all-smiles her son had introduced as one of his friends who also was from Japan “Yes, yes. How are you?”A sigh came from the other side of the phone, full of tiredness and stress; much like Yuuri when he called close to having his exams.“I’m good thanks, but what I really wanted to tell you was I was there when Yuuri disappeared”The girl’s words echoed the video that had flooded the news inside her mind. Her boy looking so brightly excited before his invention, his friend’s supporting words in the background and before anyone knew it, poof. Her boy was no more.“You were there?!” Hiroko’s voice urged in the speaker “You know what happened?!”“Yes,” Yuuko’s voice tone was trying to sooth the woman on the other line “I helped him to develop it… he made a mistake in an equation when he turned it on. The government confined the machine, and all of us who worked on it. They are trying to reconstruct it”“What about my Yuuri?”Hiroko knew she was being too pushy, but she couldn’t help it. Each and every single word every person coming into her house had said was about being sorry for her loss, no one could blame her for getting like that when there was someone who finally gave her some news.The girl on the other side lowered her voice so much, she probably wouldn’t have heard a word of what she said had it not been for the fact her ear and the speaker were undistinguishable at that point.“We are trying to get him back” the girl muttered softly “We are working hard to turn the entire process back and bring him back. We believe he is alive and well, but in another time. We don’t know when”“Another time?” Hiroko wished she had documented herself a little more on all of the matters her son studied “You mean, as in time traveling?”“Exactly”The woman’s rational part begged her to remain calm and realize how impossible that had to be. But before anything, she was a mother, a mother who firmly knew her son was alright and safe somewhere she didn’t know. She couldn’t explain it at all, she just felt it and that was enough.“I know it’s hard to believe but the professor and us have proven it through equations…” the younger woman hurried to explain as she couldn’t hear any response on the phone“I believe you” Hiroko blurted; her words whole-hearted “I believe you Yuuko-chan. Please… please bring my baby boy home. Please”“We will, madam. Don’t worry” Yuuko reassured her with confident voice “We will, just be a little patient… Oh! Already? But…ugh, alright. I have to go. But don’t worry, we will bring him back. Goodbye”White noise substituted the girl’s voice, indicating the call was over.“…Good luck” Hiroko mumbled on the empty speaker Inside all of the Petsk homes, the fire should never die. They had a hearth tightly surrounded by standing stones which had been previously smoothed, so the warmth remained latent for long even if the flames were dying. Vitka remembered how worried Yu-Uri was when he explained they would sleep with the fire still crackling by them.“House burn” Yu-Uri declared with fright“No burn” Vitka explained with patience, pointing at the encircling rocks around the hearth, craved with protective symbols “We will be warm, but we won’t burn”“Had he arrived in Winter, he would thank if it if the house burned down” Lili-ya mumbled from behind. She had come with them so she would leave some of her ointments and herb sachets in Yu-Uri’s new home.The Healer would soon start with the preparations for the Return of the Light festivities and there was no way there could be anyone looking how the secret rituals, songs and potions were performed. They were a Healer’s most precious secrets and could only be shown and taught to her successor. Moving Yu-Uri into Vitka’s house was then, the best option.Vitka had turned one of the thickest Manak pelts he had gotten during their Winter journey to the Sun Lands into a comfortable and warm sleeping pelt for the new inhabitant of his home. He had also asked for Anniya, a woman of his tribe with miraculous hands for molding the clay, for a few more bowls since he didn’t have enough at home.After their first day living together, it seemed Yu-Uri had either gotten used to the new place very easily or he was too tired with all the moving and walking, as he was fast asleep in his sleeping pelt nearby the fire without paying much mind to the distance.Seeing that he had no guest to attend to, the Hunter focused on his chores around the house: polishing some arrowheads, repairing the isolation of his door, salting strips of fish, start cooking their late meal with some roots and mushrooms, carried water from the close river if they needed it during the night and assorted some of the medicinal herbs Lili-ya had left for Yu-Uri to take every night while Makka lazed nearby the hearth.The Healer had doubled the doses of her herbal miracles after a harsh scolding when Yu-Uri came back from what was supposed to be just a simple walk to strengthen his legs with damp clothes, smelling of fish, feverish and with his limbs in pain due to the effort.That and the following day, Vitka had missed the chance to talk with Lili-ya about his discovery.He had obviously first suspected it when Yu-Uri appeared out of nowhere in the marsh near the Sky Grounds, carrying those strange amulets with never-melting ice he would always place before his eyes. Then when he had started drawing the nyepo isuk on those strange thin things that looked like dried fish skins; he had never seen them before, but they looked like something serious. And then? Catching such a large quantity of fish after claiming he was in no way anything near to a Hunter.During the Winters he had spent in the house of the Healer and her Cared, he had heard a thing or two about how the Bright Mother was the one who had taught her children the ways of magic by placing them in the stars so they would be able to interpret them. The First Healer was the one to decipher the words of the Bright Mother and then passed them on their first pupil.But if he gave it a little thought, it was obvious Yu-Uri was someone who had been born with magic in his veins and he had been a little too blind to notice it.“Vitka…?” a voice pulled him out of the words in his head.Rising his eyes a little bit, he realized his guest had woken up from his slumber and had fixed his dark eyes on him.“Yes?” he closed the herbal pouch he had been sorting and got closer to Yu-Uri in case he wanted to incorporate from the pelts and needed help “You want food?”He served a bowl of soup, making sure to pour in the largest mushrooms, and offered it to Yu-Uri who accepted it with reluctance and even sniffed it with a suspicious expression. Oh, right. He should have thought it was a bowl full of his medicine, which Yu-Uri hated.“It’s soup. It’s good” Vitka reassured him “You can drink”Maybe he spoke a little bit too fast, but Yu-Uri seemed to understand and agreed to drink. After some sips, he finally felt curious enough to explore his new surroundings without abandoning the warmth of his sleeping pelts.“Night?” he wondered. Vitka had already closed the entrance with a tight Manak skin plus his newly repaired isolation, it was clear there was no way of telling the daytime.“Yes. Night” the Hunter noddedYu-Uri examined the house with even more detail, fixing his eyes on every bowl, arrowhead and dried flower Vitka kept at home. He didn’t seem to notice the bundle of fluff laid next to him which could be easily confused with another pelt.“Other Petsk? Your…uh wife?”Vitka couldn’t understand the last word. He was pretty sure it was something in Yu-Uri’s tongue.“Ua-if?”His guest realized he had spoken in his words but, despite, a clear effort, he didn’t seem to find an equivalent of it amongst the Petsk words he had learnt so far. Instead, he pulled those strangely thin fish skin sheets from his clothes and scratched them a bit with the small twig he always carried amongst the folds.Instead of the usual Nyepo Isuk he did on the skins from time to time, he depicted what Vitka presumed was a person, more specifically, him. Yu-Uri had scratched a representation of the pelt he carried over his shoulder in his role as Great Hunter, his Manak spear and even the paints on his face. Next to him, another figure dressed in the way of the Petsk women, with her hair braided with beads, a pelt hanging from her hips to her knees and feathers in her earlobes. She could be any of the women in the tribe.Yu-Uri pointed at her and repeated Ua-if.“Woman who lives with Vitka” he explained further “You no have?”Oh.“A Cared?” he made some emphasis on the word. Maybe it was his fault as a teacher Yu-Uri couldn’t explain himself since he didn’t remember explaining what a Cared was nor how the Petsk were meant to find each other through their Song; he even felt his face getting warm at the mere thought “A Cared lives with you, protects you, helps you and you do the same for them. Sometimes, you even bear children together”“Cared?” Yu-Uri repeated carefully as he would only do when learning new Petsk words “Where is the Cared of Vitka?”On that question, Vitka soundly felt the exact moment when his shoulders dropped down softly underneath his pelt.Lili-ya had had insisted multiple times with multiple candidates for him to find a suitable Cared. Vitka himself knew he was appealing to many of the Petsk and in some cases, the Alma and Sami people living near would offer him a Cared amongst them when they visited the Petsk village during their hunting trips. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t willing to find someone for him or that he couldn’t appreciate and be thankful for their Songs.It simply was that there was no Song in him when he was with those people.“I have no Cared” he finally answered “But there is someone else who keeps me company”Yu-Uri looked clearly confused by his words, so he decided to show him instead. He gave a soft playful pat on the back of Makka’s sleeping figure. The she-wolf awoke sharply as she did whenever she would smell a prey during the hunt, making Yu-Uri yelp with a screech and falling on his back.“Don’t be scared!” Vitka rushed to his guest’s side, helping him up “This is Makka. She is good, she won’t harm you”Trying to be convincing to the other man, he patted Makka on the head, scratched her behind the ears and even on her tummy. Yet, none of these sweet gestures seemed to ease Yu-Uri’s terrified expression: he was already with his back against the wall on the other extreme of the house. Makka noticed that attitude was because of her but instead of backing off along her human, she walked towards the other human, her nose twitching with the smell of fear emanating off him.“Makka!” Vitka called urgently behind her. He knew her well and knew she meant no harm to other humans, but Yu-Uri looked as if he was about to pass out right there “Makka, come here!”The she wolf seemed to be way more interested in sniffing Yu-Uri’s injured leg which he hadn’t been able to stick it next to his chest like he had done with the other one. Makka must have noticed the foul and bitter smell of Lili-ya’s medicinal salves because she retracted her face with a clearly disgusted expression. The wolf continued her exploration much to Yu-Uri’s horror, until she stopped at his face and gave a friendly lick to his cheek.Yu-Uri didn’t move even after the sign of friendliness. Vitka didn’t dare to interrupt the process, he was silent next to the hearth and was even trying for his breath not to be too noisy. Makka tried another tactic and gave friendly pushes to the other human with her humid nose, making him flinch at the cold gentle touches.Makka, seeing that none of her tactics seemed to be too effective on the other human tried her very best method, a method shared by the other hunting wolves in the village but often frowned upon by her fellow wildlings as it was a little denigrating but not only was it the best method to approach a human. After the initial embarrassment, it was actually great.She lied on her back, showing the human her fluffy tummy.Vitka chuckled lightly in the back.“Touch her tummy” he encouraged his words with his hands as they weren’t words he used too much with Yu-Uri “She will like it. Go on”Yu-Uri nodded lightly, still visibly nervous. He longed his hand towards the bunch of fluff before him and almost took it back when the wolf grumbled happily under his touch. Vitka couldn’t help his laugh.“She likes you!” he cheered happily Yuuri had always wanted a dog but his parents weren’t very keen on the idea of having trouble with the guests on the barking, a puppy running around or the very worst-case scenario in which a guest was allergic to dogs. It just seemed to be a very bad idea to have a little pup inside an inn.He had naively thought that once he moved in by himself, things would be slightly better, but finding a place to stay near the surroundings of the campus was already hard and expensive enough, plus he had to face the fact he was in Russia to study and surely wouldn’t be able to get to spend much if any time to spend with a pet. In the end, and to control the want, he got into the College’s dorms where pets were utterly and definitely forbidden.Makka was quite a slap on the face to all of those past things.She was a gigantic ball of fluff who could intimidate anyone with her finger sized fangs and deep gaze but could also completely leave one completely puzzled when she took advantage of her size just so she could lick kisses on the cheeks or lie down with her tummy in the air, inviting to a session of petting.“Makka…cares…Yu-Uri” were the only words he could understand from Vitka’s entire sentence “Vitka…go…food”Shortly said, he was surely going to the village’s crop field to fetch some potatoes or similar. Makka raised her head when she heard her name and made her way behind the Hunter until he stopped her on her tracks and mumbled something which made her go back to Yuuri’s side.That was probably the most boring part of his day.He had been forbidden from leaving the house without Vitka’s supervision ever since the day Lilia had allowed him to wander off a bit and returned sweaty with fever and his leg injured again. He wasn’t able to understand all of her words, but he did understand she was telling him and Vitka off. The next time he wanted to put a foot out of the circular house, she basically pushed him down back to the pelt sleeping bag.The only times he had been out of the houses were when it was bath time (once every two days) and when they decided to move him to Vitka’s own circular house, much farther from the rest of the village than he had expected and much emptier than Lilia’s.There was a fireplace in the center like Lilia but Vitka’s was very uncovered and dangerous in his opinion, a set of pelt sleeping bags, various deep bowls with what seemed to be bones or carved stones, some cabinets carved in the wall with strange random objects like shiny little pebbles or seashells and a lot of pointy objects like large spears, knives and other tools he couldn’t identify.But nothing else. The house could be presented as an example of prehistoric minimalism. Yet, the most intriguing aspect of living with Vitka for the prior week or so, was how lonely it all was.If he had understood correctly, Vitka was a hunter, a very important position of the prehistoric societies as he had proven when some children and youngsters came for what seemed to be an archery lesson. Then why didn’t he have a wife? He was someone who could easily provide food, shelter and even dressing; he had the respect of his people; he had quite an attractive face and physique; he had a house of his own (a little too far from the rest to his taste, but oh well); he was kind and he even knew how to cook. In his opinion, he was a pretty good bachelor for his time.“Maybe all of his girlfriends have been blind, right Makka?” he didn’t really expect an answer from the happy furball lying next to him.Yuuri sighed with boredom again.Waking Makka with his movements, he got on fours before slowly standing up carefully. A wave of pain came up from his leg to the rest of his body, but it was much fainter than in previous days and pretty much tolerable. Lilia was too far away to know if he was fully complying to his medical regime and he was pretty sure a doctor of his time wouldn’t see anything back in a leisurely stroll nearby the house.Just as he had thought, it was pretty empty outside in comparison to Lilia’s house in the middle of the village. The voices of the Petsk came muted from afar and the sound of the passing river was what he could hear the most.It was all too strange to think a buzzling metropolis such as Saint Petersburg where he sometimes felt like drowning amongst too much people would stand in such a quiet, serene place in a couple of thousands of years. If he was honest with himself, Yuuri actually liked the current landscape more.Makka didn’t seem to like the idea of getting too far from the house she had been told to stay and take care of the human. She looked nervous and gave soft pushes with her nose on his stomach as if trying to convince him to get back in.“Aw, come on Makka” Yuuri whined “My leg won’t kill me, but I’ll be dying of boredom if I stay another day inside that house! Besides, don’t you want to go for a walk? Every dog… or wolf… likes walks!”He scratched the wolf behind her ears, and while she seemed pleased by the gesture, she still seemed angry she wasn’t fulfilling her promise to her human.They weren’t that far from the riverbank Yuuri would be sent to every other day for a mild bath which rarely included fully immersing into the freezing river. He knew that pathway already and there was little entertainment it could offer him other than thinking on how much he disliked the idea of going back the following day when Vitka would drag him to take a bath was enough to send a disgustingly cold shiver down his spine.He knew there was a bridge nearby to move to the opposite shore, but that would be too shameless for him to go when he was supposed to be locked in the house. Besides, he wasn’t sure his leg would let him go that far.Instead, he made for the opposite direction, towards the forest on their side of the river. He had seen Vitka go to with the youngest villagers a few times and he would normally come back with a bird; Yuuri would then ask for the wings just to get a little bit of his Fridays-with-Phichit-eating-takeout nostalgic feels. He hadn’t seen much of the surrounding forests save for that time when his brain went into a zombie mode and decided he should run away in the middle of a blizzard.“Come, Makka” he encouraged the she-wolf into the forest with him “Let’s find some branches to make some crutches”He had to constantly lean on the nearby trees for support, but he was lucky the ground beneath his feet wasn’t flooded with thick roots; he still needed to be careful since he could clearly feel the frosted ground ready to play a prank on him the exact second he got distracted. Luckily, he had Makka, whose body easily reached Yuuri’s ribcage, was his ultimate safety precaution on the side unprotected by the slender trunks. Still, he hoped he wouldn’t use said precaution at all.They had walked for quite a while but not that far from the village since the noise coming from it was still clear in Yuuri’s ears. He had been cautiously looking for a set of branches to build his crutches but every piece of wood he found was either too small, too big or too rotten to work. He had been far too naïve to think wood would be dry in the middle of the thaw.“Let’s go back Makka” he admitted in defeat “Before Vitka sees I’m not thereHaving turned around a little bit, he actually considered to take a slightly different route to get back now that he could see there was a part which looked less frosty. He would have to walk a little more but in exchange, he wouldn’t have to be afraid of slipping off the ground and breaking something more important than a leg.They had just started to walk on the newly decided path when Makka ran into another place as fast as she could, taking Yuuri down with the sudden impulse.Alright, Yuuri tried to ease himself, I’m fine. Nothing’s broken.“Makka!” he called out loud while trying to find support on the tree to stand up “Makka please come back!”“Yu-Uri!”Oh shit.Vitka had come back to the house, evidently didn’t find him where he left him and on top of that heard him screaming from the forest.“Dammit!” he mumbled low trying to grab ahold of the tree trunk “Vitka! Vitka! I’m here!”The Petsk man came running desperately towards him with an expression midway between concern and anger, like a mother whose child had ran away in the supermarket. He seemed completely in tune with his surroundings and clearly knew the forest like the back of his hand.“Yu-Uri! You good?” Vitka immediately crouched to check on Yuuri’s leg with a worried frown on his painted face “Why… out? I tell…stay in house!”“Forgive” Yuuri apologized while being wrapped in the other’s pelt “I want to… Makka!”The she-wolf came back running and started to anxiously pull both Yuuri’s and Vitka’s clothes in a clear sign to follow her to where she had just been. She was so insistent, Vitka resolved to follow her once he had securely placed Yuuri on his back and properly covered with a pelt.Yuuri could feel the tension between him and Vitka, but the hunter was too focused on what his wolf seemed desperate to show him.Makka had stopped on her tracks next to a tree which didn’t seem to be different from all of the others in the forest. Yet, she was insistently digging her nose in the snow that covered the tree’s roots, but she seemed reluctant to use her paws to move deeper into the white mass. Vitka put Yuuri down, with special care to place him close enough so he wouldn’t stubbornly move away again. The wolf guided Vitka’s hands to the small hole she had made with her nose.The hunter dug gently, understanding that if his wolf didn’t want to do it was because her paws were too harsh for the task. Yuuri jumped in surprise when Vitka let out a little surprised scream; he tried to move in closer to see what the hunter had pulled out of its snowy prison.“Small Makka” Vitka mumbled, showing him a glimpse of the wolf cub he was holding in his hands.The poor thing had its litght baby fur covered by frost and despite it, malnutrition was visible from its popping ribs and was shaking feverishly. Instinctively, Yuuri longed his arms to hold the cub and immediately placed him underneath the pelt cloak Vitka had lent him, sending shivers on how cold the little fur ball felt.“We go with Lili-ya” Vitka said before taking him on his shoulders again.Yuuri simply nodded and secured the baby wolf closer to his body to share some of his own body warmth.
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“Little Makka… to Yu-Uri… Yuuri and Little Makka learn… like Vitka”While there were many gaps in his translation, Yuuri could completely understand the first part of what Vitka said the night after they had found the little wolf cub.Vitka had taken both the cub and Yuuri, despite the latter complains, to Liliya’s house where the woman severely scolded him in a way in which he didn’t even needed to translate her furibund rambling and copious angered glances at Vitka. Yet, the anger didn’t linger on her painted face for too long before she completely devoted herself to the bony, freezing and shivering creature Yuuri handed her from underneath the pelts.Both Vitka and him couldn’t take their anxious gazes off the cub which was clearly holding with everything they had to the minimum hope to survive. Even Makka was letting out small worried whimpers from behind their backs.“Weak… no mother near?” she asked after a through examination. Vitka shook his head negatively “No… drink milk…many days”Yuuri clenched his fist over his heart as if that gesture could control the painful throbbing inside his chest. Vitka later explained him it was likely the mother had died while hunting, otherwise, she would have never left her cub in a burrow threatened by the incoming blizzard. The worst part for him came when Vitka said he had actually felt other little bodies in the freezing hole of the forest, but only Little Makka’s still presented a faint warmth.Liliya said she would keep the little one with her for the night. If the Spirits didn’t come to take him to Otherplace, then it would surely survive; Yuuri interpreted it as a very poetic and sort of pretty way to call the death.Fortunately, Little Makka had begged for milk as soon as the sun came up according to Liliya.And it would soon be under Yuuri’s care.“Little Makka for me?” he asked, still a bit incredulous with the news. Of course, there were differences between getting a little doggie and a little wolf, but he supposed the excitement was all the same.“Yes” Vitka replied with a smile and a hand on his shoulder “Yuuri and Little Makka learn to be like Vitka and Makka”That part he hadn’t understood yet. He frowned and tilted his head lightly in confusion.The other one must have read behind his confusion since he stood up from the pelts they had wrapped themselves with to ease the effect of the sudden storm outside the walls of the house. Vitka grabbed one of the figurines Yuuri had seen him carve in his rare spare moments in either bone or wood. This one represented what he identified as a mammoth and what Vitka called a manak.Yuuri initially had the intention of wearing down Vitka’s intention of making him a prehistoric sculptor since he didn’t consider himself to have talent for that. But his thoughts quickly shifted when the other one also grabbed a spear from his weapon collection and mimicked the actions of the hunt.Aw shit.“Nani?!” he even replied in his mother tongue out of shock before switching to English out of pure custom “I can’t hunt! Vitka, it would take me years before I could even dare to poke a mammoth! Hell, I can’t even use a bow with my bad eyesight! If you say this because I caught some fish, you should know that…!”He had to swallow his words when Vitka held his face in his hands.Yuuri had had some crushes during his teenage years but none of them had lasted for too long in his mind or in his heart. He was a man of science and as his friends, colleagues and professors had found before him, he would soon realize the path he had chosen was both lonely and unpopular when it came to flirting. As a result, he had never had any romantic experience other than a few otome games he played when having too much time in his hands.As a result, that moment felt too overwhelmingly intimate for his poor self.From that angle, he had a perfectly detailed view of the markings on Vitka’s cheeks and forehead which, now that he had become slightly more familiarized with the Petsk motifs, he recognized as those of the hunters with swirls depicting bows, quick strokes like birds, waves in the shape of a river and lines whose meaning he still didn’t get. Their wine color seemed dull in comparison to the hunter’s bright eyes, so blue and luminous Yuuri thought he was staring at a mirror made of the ocean itself.Despite their apparent dullness, the markings did a wonderful job highlighting Vitka’s bone structure, gentle and masculine at the same time. They even seemed to be soft and tender in the glim of the firelight. The frame that was his normally cold silver hair shone brightly like the sun and Yuuri could swear he would go completely blind if he stared any longer. Had Vitka always had such rosy lips…?The last rational part of his brain mentally slapped him. Get your shit together, Katsuki Yuuri!He turned his face away from Vitka’s hypnotizing presence, feeling his heartbeats resound in his ears as if he had headphones on. With lots of effort, he managed to formulate a phrase in Petsk.“Yuuri can’t be like Vitka” he murmured timidly, not fully recovered“Vitka teach Yu-Uri, like Yurch’ka” the voice seemed eager to convince him and maybe… softer than usual “Makka teach Little Makka. So Yu-Uri can live with Yu-Uri”That last phrase almost, almost made him turn his attention back to Vitka’s face.Of course. The same way Liliya had only had him in her home for a determined amount of time, meant that his situation with Vitka would be something similar. In the end, Vitka also had a number of responsibilities on his shoulders of which he had seen nothing but the peak of the iceberg.Eventually, he would need to move out of Vitka’s house, probably build a circular house of his own (preferably not as far from the others) and make a life in there as he evidently couldn’t get back home. And since it was obvious, he couldn’t live off weird potatoes, green broths and disgusting mushrooms, he needed to know how to hunt.“Yes, Vitka teaches Yuuri”The warm and calloused hands retired their touch, making feel a slight loss but the action encouraged him to finally look again the other’s way, the other man was smiling.“Vitka teaches Yu-Uri” he nodded.Vitka even seemed happy to cook some meat broth with more colorful veggies in it for a change, handed him salted seeds and even boiled water with honey as a sort of dessert. While Yuuri was kind of nervous during dinner, Vitka was flashing a full smile.The anxious sensation didn’t leave his body and mind even when they dimmed the hearth’s light and wrapped themselves into their furry sleeping bags for the night. Professor Celestino Cialdini hadn’t always wanted to be a scientist.During his youth he had the wildest of dreams to become a film maker. He had an old recording hand camera, an expensive gift from one of his uncles in his teenage years, and a huge collection of antique films in tapes and VHS. Actual relics he wished to honor through his own work.His favorite ones always were the ones with mystery and spies in them. He was always surprised to see the risky but smart tactics all of the heroes would use to not only save their lives but to get their missions completed and save the lives of millions. His work was a way for him to kind of live his dream of becoming one of those heroes.He never really thought he would ever live the dream of working on a secret project to save people as a physicist.“For this… we need more isolation” he mumbled while absently playing with a screwdriver in his left hand “Phichit, do you remember how many layers Yuuri had on the containers?”“Ah yes!” the Thai boy answered in a very muted tone unusual for his normal loud cheerfulness “Three layer over the connecting ones and six over the main ones”Professor and student had been working two weeks nonstop ever since finishing the equation copying. Yuuko was in charge of deciphering the entire sixty and something pages backwards to get the initial input, her fiancé Takeshi was the one acting as security guard right outside the door while also playing as material carrier for Phichit and Celestino who dedicated themselves to build a replica of the machine.It had been Yuuko the one to find the door connecting to the seemingly abandoned basement of their building once she was instructed by her medics to stay in the apartment for a few days in which she wandered around the place when she had nothing to do, eventually finding the back of her room’s closet wasn’t just any sealed door.The basement was a little too dusty for Celestino’s liking but he had to admit having some old but good quality metal from the abandoned washing was quite the plus if they wanted to have good materials without lifting suspicion.“Hmmm, then we’ll make sure to bring our big pocket jackets with us” he mumbled lowly to Phichit.The boy nodded happily and continued fixing the spaghetti of wires he had been working with the entirety of their off day.Some knocks on the metal staircase railing made with a coin signaled them to go back up to their apartment. Urgently, as Takeshi’s three knocks hurried.“What is it?” Celestino asked in a faint voice, taking off the improvised fabric slippers they had made to annul the noise of their footsteps on the metal staircase and the empty resounding basement “Is it the officers?”“Almost” the other student mumbled when the pair handed their lamps “The patrol came to drop Yuuko. She was calling her family and said she’d try to reach Katsuki-san”Oh true. Yuuko had been given permission to get a call to her family as her gynecologist had already given her an approximate date for her delivery and were managing to see if she could have her family come to Russia for it or if they would send her back to Japan for it.“Spasibo” said Yuuko as soon as the officer dropped her at the department’s entrance door with her backpack over her shoulder.The accompanying officer simply nodded and left after a short look around the apartment to check if the girl’s friends were where he had left them: the professor on the armchair while revising the project’s papers, the chocolate boy on his laptop watching Rutube and the Japanese boy checking on the cookpots for lunch.“Phew!” Yuuko allowed herself to sigh in relief when her fiancé assured her the patrol had left and they had lowered the volume of the apartment’s cameras, personally hacked by Phichit “I did manage to communicate with Katsuki-san but it was very short: they managed to translate it all sooner than I expected.”Celestino could tell the mother of his student had had a hard time during the call. Other than his students, he had no children and could only and barely imagine what Mrs Katsuki would be feeling both when her son disappeared in a flash of light and then when one of his friends said her son had time traveled.“How was Mrs Katsuki?” he finally managed to ask, making Yuuko seemingly deflate in exhaustion of the memory “That bad?”“She sounded sad” Yuuko explained “But it is truly understandable if you ask me”The air inside the small apartment had suddenly gotten thick with uncertainty. Fortunately, Takeshi interrupted and lightened up the mood when he handed steaming soup bowls for everyone, serving his fiancée first of course.“You shouldn’t worry: it could make the babies feel ill” he caressed her swollen belly with tenderness and concern. He was curiously soft despite being such a robust man “Besides, I’ve seen how hard you and they work every day, we will find how to bring him back!”Perhaps Takeshi was right, Celestino thought while receiving his own bowl of soup, they already had all of the encouragements they could ever manage and were evidently making some inhumane efforts to build an impossible machine while going against one of the world’s most powerful nations. In movie theory, when every stake was against the hero, then it meant a clear path to victory.Didn’t it? Vitka woke up before the Bright Father was up in the sky. It wasn’t as if he had gotten much sleep anyway.The previous night Yu-Uri had had the same reaction some Petsk children would have when their parents came one morning to his door to entrust their hunting learning to him in the first days after their return from their walk to the Sun Lands. Most of the children were excited for their lessons to begin, being all grown up and completely done with plucking vegetables from the Grand Mother’s body and collecting berries in the woods. Chores only fit for small children and not grown-ups like them!Yet, sometimes there was one or two of his students would start panicking and screaming on not wanting to take his lessons. He had the makings of a hunter, but not everyone did, much less all of the kids he would receive each time. Instead, he would take a little extra time with those especial children: he would only teach them the basics so they wouldn’t starve when they grew up but he would teach them fast, so they were out of lessons before anyone else.Yu-Uri had panicked just like them, to the point he started speaking in that strange tongue full of musical sounds of his while making desperate motions with his arms.His memory recalled how Petsk parents would often ease their children down and he didn’t have any better idea than to apply it. So, he took Yu-Uri’s face in his hands and pressed his forehead on his.And it felt strange.Not strange like that time he had opened a deer’s skull and Ya-Kov told him to touch it. The sensation of that warm thing so liquid and solid at the same time was too much for his poor self, making the boiled mushrooms he had had for lunch go outside his stomach.Instead, this felt like that time when, still not fully a man nor a Hunter, he distinguished a blue spark in the midst of the thin soil at the edge of the water of the Sun Lands. When he approached the source of it, he got a strange but happy sensation from the tips of his fingertips to have found such a curiously beautiful thing which would be the first in his trinket collection.That was exactly how he felt with Yuuri in that moment.Besides from the obvious things like his odd hair color and the strange circular amulets on his nose bridge, he hadn’t realized up until then the softness of his skin, the true depth of his eyes and the shape of his lips, as if someone had split a berry in two. Before he began wondering if they had a similar taste, Yuuri got away from his grip and remained quiet for the rest of the night.The Petsk were quite free to go around along everyone they liked, a freedom Vitka had kind of grown scared of since most of the people his age had taken that lack of rules far too seriously for his own liking and could, without much mistakes, pinpoint the Petsk who had stolen a touch of his lips, the ones who had cornered him to sneak underneath his clothes and the ones who had straight up asked to share both their Songs and lives with him. But he knew none of those actions had actual meaning to his fellow villagers.As a result, he had grown used to both: assuming none of those displays had any value and to how he would most likely would spend his life only in the company of Makka just the way he had been doing so far.“But, the days with Yuuri have been good” he mumbled low in the middle of the night, discreetly glancing to the sleeping figure coated in pelts less than an arm away from him.It was nice to have someone to share some of the chores like peeling the vegetables, taking care of the boiling water and the meals at the fire. Yu-Uri had also learnt to stretch and prepare the pelts before sewing them and had also learnt to knit the tall grasses of the nearby marsh into a layer that kept the warmth even during the harshest of Winters.Yu-Uri had also shown to be talented in fishing, a good sign now that Vitka would begin to teach him to hunt. Not to mention the fact he was a Son of the Bright Mother and inherently knew the Nyepo Isuk sacred to the Petsk. He would make a fine Cared for pretty much anyone!Including Vitka…?He chuckled at himself, brushed his thoughts away with a gesture of his hand and decided it was already time to get up.As a hunter, he stepped around and outside his house without making even the faintest of noises while also taking out some of his hunting tools, one of each type and always the lightest. He had a standing practice target laying around somewhere in the outside he used with his young students; he would make Yu-Uri practice with it.With utmost care he laid them on the floor the ceremonial way, resembling the Bright Father coming out from behind the hills of the Alma People. It was customary to do so on the first day of Hunting instructions for any young Petsk, symbolizing the youngsters’ incoming to a new, more mature age.That morning, Yu-Uri wasn’t meant to eat anything either until he had chosen a tool for the Hunt. The sole thing he could place in his mouth was a thick drink made by boiling the birch of the first Marked Tree in the forest on the other side of the river and dried flowers of the kapi-kovi bush before their whiteness was substituted by a small but delicious berry the color of blood. The drink meant to evoke the bitterness the new malen ok’hot would feel when taking their first prey with the taste of birch while the flowers had the sweet flavor of being able to come of age and provide for their homes, families and, eventually, Cared.Yu-Uri woke up when Vitka was in the middle of mixing the ritual concoction, probably disturbed by the scent of the Marked Tree.“Blagsleiv izobiye” Yu-Uri greeted with his eyes swollen by the sleep and forgetting to bow his head slightly in the middle of his doziness.Like every morning, Vitka chuckled and lowered his head before answering ‘Blagsleiv izobiye’ too. He invited his newest apprentice to sit next to the boiling pot with him and handed him a steaming bowl full of the thick drink.“You can drink” he reassured with a smile when he saw Yu-Uri’s face twitch with some doubt at the smell.Yu-Uri drank, choked on the strange flavor and made funny faces after he had gulped it down with disgust. Vitka couldn’t help his laugh any longer and fell to the ground amongst shrieks of laughter while grabbing his happily aching tummy.That had to be his favorite part of initiating his future students!All of the grown-up Petsk kept the secret behind a mysterious smile only to enjoy the brief pleasure of watching the children make such disgusted faces after being all serious and ceremonious for their first instruction.“Here, this will wash the flavor away” Vitka handed Yu-Uri another bowl of murky white water made only with the kapi-kovi flowers. The other man backed away from him as if he had seen a large bear in the woods, making Vitka laugh again “Don’t worry! This one isn’t like that one. This one is good”After the fun of the ceremonial drink, Vitka conducted Yu-Uri to the outside (after convincing him there wouldn’t be thick drinks anymore) and presented him his own collection of tools.“You will try each tool until we find the one you like more and the one you’re most comfortable with” he extended his hands to show him all of the options he had to choose from “You just need to get them through the center of the target”Vitka had become a teacher only days after becoming Great Hunter, and in all those winters, he had never seen someone whose touch seemed dreadful by his weapons.The harpoon’s rope tangled midair and ended up exactly underneath the rock blade of the weapon; Vitka assured him it was an easy reparation and that he would do it after they fetched Little Makka from Lilia. The spear Vitka carried so gracefully around the Petsk village ended up weighting so much for Yu-Uri, it made it loose his balance while taking impulse to launch it and ended up receiving a hit on the back of his head when he fell. After a brief moment of Vitka having a crisis over his head, came the bow.Despite the small quivering of Yu-Uri’s arms when he pulled the bowstring towards his chest, Vitka could already see him as another archer along Yurch-ka. However, he quickly changed his opinion as soon as his student let the arrow go with a loud twang of the string.Instead of making the long wood piece go through the target, the scream of one of the nearby fishermen pierced through Vitka’s ears. Fortunately, the arrow had only brushed past his hip and struck close to his foot.Anyway, and just as a precaution, Vitka discreetly hid the axe back in his home. Just in case.“Do you use different tools for the Hunt in Otherplace?” he questioned Yu-Uri while munching on their first meal of the day at Lili-ya’s house.Yu-uri nodded after a few seconds. Every day it seemed as if he was getting a better understanding of the Petsk language.“Hunt with tools like basket with Yurch-ka” he answered with a little effortPerhaps the Hunting tools in Otherplace resembled what he had made with Yurch-ka’s basket and that was the reason he was so little talented with his own collection? Because they were completely foreign to him? Though that would actually make a lot of sense: many of Lili-ya’s teachings came from how the people and animals in Otherplace lived in an eternal harvest where no hunger nor Winter hardships haunted them.If everyone in Otherplace hunted that way Yu-Uri did, then afterlife was certainly easier than what the Petsk had to put up through the Winters.“Here he is” Lili-ya interrupted his thoughts when he arrived with a small and fluffy ball carefully tucked in her arms “We had a difficult night, but luckily, he has already begun to drink with normality. I tried getting him milk but instead I got him some bone broth”The Healer placed the cub on the ground with utmost care, its little legs still shaking slightly. It was indeed a smaller version of Makka, Vitka thought to himself, so small and fragile but with the potential to grow into a wonderful companion. Little Makka looked so much more alive and energetic than when he had brought him from the frosty forest, eyes sparkly with a child-like excitement and fur softened after a good bath.Yu-Uri seemed completely enchanted with the little one and was already happily stroking it behind the ears and calling him sweet words in the tongue of Otherplace. Kawaii, perhaps a cute name… a name?“Have you thought of a name for it?” the Healer wondered as if she had read Vitka’s thoughts“Vicchan” Yu-Uri said without any hint of a doubt while looking at Vitka for his opinion “Good?”The little cub had barked happily when he heard his new given name and continued to explore the valley and mountains formed by Yu-Uri’s legs with evident fun.“Yes, really good” he conceded with a content smile
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March 7th (approximate date), 20 000 B.C. (approximate year)
My name is Katsuki Yuuri. I am Japanese physicist who not so long ago was a student at the Saint Petersburg University who, due to a school project gone strange, has ended in the Neolithic past.
I have to admit my first impression of my situation was quite petty. Especially considering the fact numbers have made me used to having a cold head for most of my situations. Still, I believe my life in this time has come to a point stable enough that I can begin to document it through this notebook.
Most people would believe my transition to this Neolithic lifestyle has been nothing but harsh and a burden to my mind; however, I don’t think I can complain given that, despite my strange situation, I was very well received: It appears that during this time, there was a semi-nomadic people who call themselves the ‘Petsk’ who have warmly welcomed me after extending the legend my sudden appearance from the sky meant I am the offspring of one of their gods.
During my first days in this village close by to the marshes of the Neva River, I was attended by a woman called Lilia since it appears my transition through time and space weighed heavily on my body. Lilia, as I have understood with time, works as a sort of physician with great knowledge on medicinal plants and their properties though she is also a priestess who officiates births, marriages and (I have been told) burials.
As of now, I am under the care of a hunter named Vitka, a job I understand has quite a lot of social prestige within the Petsk. Recently, and given I have fully recovered both mentally and physically, he has insisted on teaching me his line of work for my imminent independence within the Petsk society. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I have ever missed supermarkets until now.
I can’t think of anything else to write about for now. Perhaps by the time by family and friends exist, the pages of this notebook will have turned to dust or perhaps they will read it at a museum. Either way, I believe I’m living something extraordinary and want to document it.
P.S.: Vitka has rescued a wolf cub for me; I have named him Vicchan as a wink to Vitka’s own name, but he doesn’t know it.
“Nyepo isuk?” Vitka asked while handing him one of the fishes from the day’s catch.“Yes, uorgds” he replied before closing his notebook and munching on the roasted fish.Yuuri had grown to understand that those words meant something along powerful or magical lines, just like the ones his friend the hunter wore on his face and shoulders. According to Vitka, these were only taught amongst Healers and once drawn on someone’s skin, they acquired the strength, luck or intelligence of the Spirits they symbolized. Also, they were a symbol of the role each Petsk had in the village.Vitka the Hunter, Liliya the Healer, Yurachka the Apprentice, Mila the Carver, Anya the Mother and so on. He had heard some of the village’s children calling him Uri the Stranger.Vitka had used his technique of pushing another basket down the stream to catch their lunch, with much less luck than Yuuri, who had been born and raised in a fishing village in southern Japan and unconsciously learning the proper way to do it. Instead of a plentiful catch which they would distribute with other Petsk, they ended up with only three fish for them.The Hunter had even shot a bird from the sky to give something to their fluffy companions to chew on since their catch wasn’t enough.On the other hand, Yuuri had not been able to have some actual success in making a small or any improvements in his Hunting lessons other than having learnt how to kind of hold the bow sort of correctly.“Maybe” Vitka interrupted his thoughts and meal “you could keep hunting like you to in Otherplace if the tools aren’t useful to you. You are good at hunting this way”Coming from someone whose work was to ensure the feeding of some thirty people, including children, in the middle of the Neolithic world was quite flattering in Yuuri’s opinion. He thanked the gesture with a small nod and a smile behind his half-chewed fish.Lately, he had been feeling useful in a way which he hadn’t felt like ever since starting college: everyday was filled with stress and lack of sleep, sometimes his only drives were seeing his face in a wall and not throwing away the money his parents had spent on his education. Here, even holding a pelt to brush it and curate it was genuinely appreciated.If he was being honest with himself, life amongst the Petsk wasn’t a bad life at all. Sure, he missed things like his family, internet, electricity and instant noodles from time to time but he was also enjoying fishing in the clear streams in the early morning, watching Vicchan happily roaming around his legs while trying to train him and even doing simple tasks such as peeling vegetables for dinner. Life was simple for the Petsk, and back in his world, that would have been a really expensive luxury.However, speaking of electricity…“Vitka,” he called his companion “what do Petsk do when ‘cold’ comes back?”Vitka took a little bit more time than usual to process his words but he finally answered with a term still foreign to Yuuri “Osm? The cold after the Time of the Sun? The village is too cold to stay and the prey go elsewhere too, sometimes we follow them but we usually go to the Sun Lands for five moons and then return”The Sun Lands? He wanted to deduce Vitka was referring to a place further south as the Petsk searched for a little bit of warmth. Those were excellent news for him who had never been good at handling the harsh Russian winters of Saint Petersburg despite the innumerable layers of clothing he put on. He didn’t even want to begin to imagine how much colder the winters in the Neolithic were if no trace of the Climate Crisis existed.“Where are the Sun Lands? Which direction do you walk to reach the Sun Lands?”The Hunter decisively pointed towards the path the stream running closely along the Petsk village followed towards what Yuuri knew as an ancient Neva river which would end in the Gulf of Finland. As far as he knew, winter temperatures weren’t that different from the horrifying freezes in his apartment.“We camp for a few Moons right close to the Great River and then we walk along its shore down to the Sun Forests” the Hunter poked at their bonfire slowly to make it die softly “Manak do not go there at all but it is there where we can constantly meet the Len spirits with branches on their head”Deers? Yuuri wondered inside his head. Either way, it seemed like he wasn’t getting a tan in this Neolithic world any time soon.“Don’t worry!” Vitka said suddenly as if he had read his thoughts “When the Manak arrive at the Great Hunt, I will make sure to make you a coat for the Walk! I won’t let you have cold at all”Yuuri let out a soft chuckle to those words. An event like that would be a wonderful addition to his Neolithic diary.“Thank you so much, Vitka” “Just look at them Beka, Vitka looks like he’s melting like ice in the summer” Yurch-ka mumbled while scrunching his nose “Disgusting”Normally, Yurch-ka was at his happiest when the Great Hunt came around. The occasion marked the return of the Manak to the valleys of the Infinite Plains in which the Petsk, the Alma and the Sami would organize a hunt between the three people, there would be dances and songs to celebrate the Time of the Sun and a great banquet where everyone could grab a taste from the large cooking pots. While most were happy with all those celebrations, what Yurch-ka enjoyed the most was meeting with his friend Beka once again.Unless Beka surprised him with random visits so far from the valley like this.“Why? Ya-Kov was telling me he actually thinks it’s a good idea to get a Cared for the Great Hunter” his friend replied while following him along the stream.Beka had escorted Ya-Kov back to the Petsk after a long stay with the Alma people and had been offered hospitality by Yurch-ka’s great father at their house. However, it seemed he had been too much of a surprise guest since they had to go into the forest and fetch some of the meat and mushrooms Kol-Ya had left to salt in a sunny clear for lunch.“But surely not him! I mean, how can you Care for someone you have only known for less than three Moons? It’s stupid!” since they weren’t hunting that afternoon, Yurch-ka didn’t have much intention of keeping his walk through the woods a quiet affair and was thumping every tree on his way with a stick.“Maybe. But it can happen” Beka replied, blunt as he had always been and earning a chuckle from the Petsk boy.Almost nobody was able to say how much of a romantic the stoic and blunt son of the Alma Chieftain’s was but his own sisters and his best friend. How he claimed to have found his Cared when he was nothing but a child still. How he had met them one day after meeting Yurch-ka.
The Petsk camp that Hunt had been placed too far from the water stream, and his and his great father’s house had been placed even farther. The Hunt itself had already began and there was no one to help them carry water into their home but Yurch-ka wasn’t going to let his great father carry heavy pots so, he guided himself towards the sound of running water.
When he came back, he did so to the place where the previous year’s camp had been settled. Instead of the painted tents of his people, he found himself in a maze of embroidered houses with things that looked like trees enclosing strange large beasts which looked like Lens with no crowns on their heads. One of them tried to munch on his loose hair, his cries startled the animal who kicked his pot and scared a frightened Yurch-ka away.
Yurch-ka ran and ran until he tripped and fell in front of one of the embroidered houses which seemed larger than the others. A child older than him was sitting inside, minding two babies lying on embroidered cushions. Yurch-ka couldn’t help but to let his tears all out amongst choked sobs.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked while crouching next to him and allowing him inside the house “Are you lost?”
His skin was tanned, his cheeks were flushed by the Bright Father, he had a thick braid decorated with colored threads and yellow markings on his forehead. He couldn’t be a Healer being so young, could he?
“My name is Beka. Can you tell me what’s yours?” he insisted, voice expressionless
“Yu-Yurch-ka” he sobbed “I-I thought my great pa was there but a beast bit me…”
There was a bowl with clear water next to the sleeping babies, the boy soaked his sleeves and used them to softly clean the dirt of the fall from Yurch-ka’s face.
“I see. Who is your great pa? What’s his name?” Beka helped him push his messy blond hair aside “We can look for him if you tell me who he is”
“Beka? Who is this?” a girl much older than them asked from the entrance of the tent. She looked much like Beka aside from being a girl. Even her forehead had a similar mark in bright yellow.
“A-Zar, this is Yurch-ka. He got lost.” Beka exited the house, grabbing Yurch-ka’s hand and making the Petsk boy follow him “We’re going to look for his great pa”
With those few words, both boys crossed the Alma camp hand in hand until Yurch-ka recognized the paintings of his people in the most distant tent cluster. It took them a while but Beka and him finally found his great father who wasted no time in hugging his little Yurch-ka who had disappeared for hours already. He invited Beka to come in for a bite and even visited, Kal-mir’s, the Alma Chieftain, house the following day with a gift while the children played outside.
It was then when Beka told him he had already found his Cared.
“Already? But you’re just seven” Yurch-ka protested in shock while they munched on a berry puree during a little playtime break “Also, didn’t you say you have only met them once?”
“Mhm. But I know it’s them, I’m sure” Beka passed him a small piece of what him and the Alma called nan to accompany his puree “I just have to wait until I can offer my Song”
Yurch-ka allowed Beka to choose any of the Len salty cuts his great father had placed hidden enough from the awakening bugs and animals in high hangers on the tree branches. They had also picked some early berries on their way to have something sweet and warm to drink near the fire.“Speaking of, you already are a Great Hunter of the Alma, your people want you as their next chief, you have already mounted to the Sky mountains and back… why haven’t you said anything to your Cared then?” Yurch-ka inquired with bright curiosityHe could understand Vitka’s case where he had been so pestered by other people around him, he had begun to completely doubt of any people’s intentions and had decided for solitude instead. But Beka? Sure, he was a little too serious, but he still was kind and well mannered besides from talented and handsome. Nobody would ever be ashamed of calling him their Cared!“They…” Beka began softly, getting Yurch-ka’s attention back “They want to accomplish something important. I want them to feel happy with their own dreams before I offer them my own”The Petsk let out an indulgent smile and denied softly with his head, making some of his beaded braids to ring softly.“Sometimes I wonder if you are too good for them, you know?”“Well, I want to be good for them”His friend’s words only corroborated his own conclusions.If he ever met his best friend’s Cared, they better be someone talented as a Spirit in any of the tasks a village required, they better be kind and loving and an incredible beauty. Otherwise, he wouldn’t think twice before fetching his friend someone better than that. Playing in the still-frozen rivers was a big part in the childhood of the Petsk children: skipping rocks to see who could make more cracks on the thin layers the ice remains, watching chunks of the translucent materials go liquid on their hands, picking berries to place them in a stick and freeze them inside the current to get a chilling snack and, most importantly, trying to win the diving challenge.Every child knew the enormous status which came from winning the challenge amongst their peers and every little Petsk would be more than willing to participate despite the threats from their elders on how they would catch a severe cold more often than not… even though the elders themselves had played the same challenge in their youth.Vitka had been the lucky one in his generation: getting past all of his friend one late spring afternoon when the kids got their parents distracted with their return to their village from the Sun Lands.That afternoon he felt as if he was seven winters old once again when he prompted Iu-Uri to help him prepare some of the fishing hooks he would be using with his younger students the following day. In reality, that was the easiest task he had to perform almost every morning and it wasn’t that complex at all… but he seriously needed to dive himself inside one of the freezing streams for a reason much less innocent than a competition amongst the younger Petsk.The previous morning, right after the children had finished their lessons with him and Yurch-ka told him he would be skipping lessons since his friend Beka had arrived, he decided he wanted to learn the ways of Otherplace and convinced his guest to teach him in one of the already flowy streams a little far from the village.Bad idea. His worst idea ever, probably.Not only for the fact he discovered there was one way of hunting he was an absolute ignorant in and that left him and Iu-Uri hungry when he was unable to catch anything but three thin fishes which looked more like bait than a meal for two people who had been walking all morning.Not eating well had been the easy part, but everything came crumbling down when Iu-Uri entered to the shallower part of the stream with him to show the proper way of setting the basket they had borrowed from Yurch-ka. Vitka had tried to warn him to be careful and not slip off with one of the rocks, but they were too many unknown words for Iu-Uri who fell into the water, nonetheless.Vitka was quick to pull him out of the water and get him near the fire he had roasted their food over. He told him to get rid of his wet clothes so the hearth could dry them along the Bright Father who surely wouldn’t let his son get a cold after a little dip in the water.Still, he was quick to offer his guest his own pelts so he wouldn’t be stark naked in the middle of the woods… well, not quick enough.The Hunter still had a chance to catch a glimpse of the smooth and pale skin which made him immediately think of the lean and fluffy body of the Gor’tai hiding amidst the snow with their white fur. Many times had he wished not to hunt one but to simply catch it so his hands could finally tell if the long and graceful animal really was as soft as it seemed… just as he wanted to caress Iu-Uri in that moment.His guest seemed a little puzzled as to why he had been avoiding direct eye contact for the rest of the day until they got into their sleeping pelts for the nights. And while Iu-Uri was fast asleep rather quick, Vitka remained awake though his eyes were covered.The icy water welcomed him with a moment of absolute silence underwater before the spring cracks of the remaining ice on the river started to speak to him in their echoing language, a signal of the Water spirits waking up from their white and cold slumber.Vitka, tell us, why are you visiting us? they seemed to ask him
Because I need to clear my head! I-I shouldn’t think of a friend like that
Why? We the Spirits gave you the ability to Care and Want. It is fine if you use them.
Lili-ya would have slapped his nape if she knew he wanted to tell the Spirits how they didn’t seem to understand a thing of what he meant.
It feels wrong to just Want him! I don’t want that…!
Then why don’t you Care for him?
The answer of the Spirits shocked him so much his eyes flashed open underneath the water, giving him a view of gradient blues and small fishes roaming close by.Care for Iu-Uri?Spending time with him was easy and calm, both learnt a lot of things from each other, unlike lots of people, Iu-Uri simply treated him as any other Petsk instead of seeing him as if he was an incarnated Spirit, Vitka found him extremely interesting and wouldn’t deny that despite his strange appearance, he was a good-looking man.He had never had experience with Caring for someone, but Iu-Uri was a wonderful place to start.Vitka emerged from the freezing water with a tight gasp for morning air to warm his chest. He dried himself and got dressed as soon as possible so he could go help Iu-Uri, then they would set on a hunting lesson with the Petsk children, Vitka would make sure to catch something tasty and they could even go pick berries in the late hours of the Bright Father.He longed to know more of Iu-Uri, to learn what he liked the most and maybe see if he was part of those likings.Light noise of the morning routines could already be heard through the village. He received and answered with blessings of plenty through his walk towards his house.“Vitka!” he heard a voice behind his back, coming from the Healer and former Great Hunter’s house “Ah, good thing you’re here. Come in, come in”The inside of the house was warm with remnants of a hearth at the center along the smell of a freshly made breakfast lingering in the air made his shivers stop, unlike Lili-ya’s scolds.“Why is your hair so wet? Your ears are too red for this weather… did you dive into the Great River?” she turned to her Cared “Can you believe him? You’re not seven winters anymore!”“Listen to her, boy. The Days of Light are close, but the village still needs their Hunter”Ya-Kov had come back the day before along the son of the Alma chieftain but he basically enclosed in his house as soon as he arrived. Nobody would ever mention it out loud in front of the cranky Hunter, but he was already a bit old.“Ya-Kov! Blessings of plenty!” Vitka greeted cheerfully“Blessings indeed boy” the Hunter conceded to a puzzled Vitka “Sit, sit. I got something to tell you”Both Hunters sat close by the fire while Lili-ya served warm soup for the three of them. That was a common ritual whenever he paid a visit to them but that time the air felt heavy instead of the usual easy going and chatty feeling.“I spoke to the Chieftain of the Alma: they have already found a good leader for their people in the young Beka. Kr-Gel feels safe with their choice since two of his daughters have been Cared in other villages but her eldest daughter remains…” the Hunter felt a knot on his chest for an unexplained reason “The Alma women are strong but amongst their people, Caring is considered vital. So, we talked about it and decided to bring her to the village so you two can meet and see if this arrangement can work”
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“As thankful as I am to the Chieftain, I cannot take her daughter” Vitka stated decisivelyYa-Kov sighed. Ah, this was tiring, so tiring.It wasn’t the first time his son-of-heart wanted to go through life doing nothing other than poking Manaks in the valley with his spear and laying around with that Makka wolf in the Ground Skies. Didn’t he realize there were other things in life? Did he think their journey through the Great Mother Earth was so easy it could be done alone?Even his Cared, known for always being a stoic and cold headed woman, rolled her eyes in defeat and sat at his side to strengthen their position. It seemed she too had feared this outcome when he came back along Beka to give her the news. With the boy’s parents gone, couldn’t he see they were simply trying to do their best for him?“Vitka, my boy, we have talked about this already” the former Hunter pressed his nose as if that could stop the angering wrinkles Vitka gave him “Perhaps you think life is just like what you have now, but life as a Hunter will be lonely the more time passes by”“He’s right, Vitka” the Healer agreed “As much support the village gives you in return for, protection, there are other things in life we cannot protect you from”“We cannot deviate away from the cycles the Great Mother has destined to each of her creations!”“You shouldn’t take Caring for granted just because there are free people amongst us and the other tribes”“You still are in a good age, but youth passes by faster than the Days of Light!”The home of the Healer and the Hunter had been almost silent for days already while Lili-ya prepared spells and prayers for one of the most important Petsk festivities but now was slowly filling itself with the noise of both of them while calling off Vitka who seemed to get smallet at every word either of his parents-by-heart spoke. For a moment, Ya-Kov thought Vitka would finally accept to his and Lili-ya’s suggestions.Until Vitka opened his mouth.“Because I intend to Care for someone else.”That phrase, they were absolutely not expecting.Ya-Kov had prepared his second-father mind to hear that line when Vitka was Yurch-ka’s age but as Winters went by, he began to worry of different matters. But now? He seriously doubted Vitka’s Cared had been spontaneously sent by the Spirits in the exact moment he had decided on telling him about Kr-Gel’s daughter.“Vitka, you better not be lying…”“I’m not! I do believe I have found them!” blush- yes, actual pink blush not caused by cold- extended over the Hunter’s cheeks “Well, him”Him? Him who? He was away for two moons and suddenly one of the Petsk boys Vitka had so earnestly ignored for winters and winters turned out to be not just interesting enough to catch the eye of the Great Hunter but to actually make him consider to Care for him. Being Cared to a Healer who spoke with the Spirits himself for so many winters, Ya-Kov was well aware that sometimes the Spirits tended to manifest themselves in mysterious and wonderful ways his Lili-ya called ‘miracles’.But this was absolute nonsense! Vitka, his Vitka taking a Cared from their tribe voluntarily? No matter how great any Spirit was: this kind of miracles was clearly an impossible kind.“Him, Vitka?” Lili-ya wondered with a suspicious glance “Him as in Uri?”If the boy had been flushing in a light shade of pink suddenly there would not be clear distinction between his color and the red paint they used for ritual markings. But Ya-Kov still didn’t understand who those two were talking about.“Bright Father in the Skies…” Lili-ya mumbled next to him only to scream so loud afterwards she made him jolt “Are you mad?! The child of the Bright ones? What will the Spirits say of this?! Vitka, there is no way they will consent to it! Much less to grant a blessing to this Caring”“I thought the same!” Vitka replied hurriedly “That’s why I went to ask the Spirits at the Great River this morning and they… consented I court him”“Can somebody tell me who in the whole Great Mother Earth are we talking about?!” Ya-Kov finally snapped.Vitka then proceeded to explain the night he had felt something odd in the air nearby the marsh, the fall of a man dressed in strange pelts and fabrics, the strange words he spoke and how frightened he was of the world around him, how all of his habits and all the things he knew were clearly a sign of something else than a mere human. The former Great Hunter also described how quickly he seemed to learn the Petsk ways and at the same time show their people new methods for things they had done for ages, just as the Bright Ones had done when the humans first appeared on the Great Mother and didn’t know the ways of living.Actually, most of what Vitka said was nothing but incessant babble to Ya-Kov’s poor ears; the words of a fool who has found its own Caring story just as the one between the Bright Mother and Bright Father. He had seen and heard it too many times amongst the Petsk youth already.Still, as annoying and surprising all of that mess was, what surprised him in the happiest of ways instead was the fact it seemed little Vitka had truly found someone.“Alright, alright, alright” Ya-Kov had to cut out the boy’s never-ending mumbles “So this boy is nicer than the gold of the bees, wiser than Lili-ya and the Healers before her and he is the child of the Bright Spirits. And just how do you expect to make him your Cared?”There was silence from Vitka, a loud sigh from Lili-ya and a face palm from Ya-Kov.
March 8th, 20 000 B.C.
Today was pretty weird: Vitka left me to prepare fishing hooks for his youngest students in the early morning, and by that, I mean he basically dragged me out of the bed at dawn. I ended up breaking my fingertips on those hooks until he came back looking like he had just received the most shocking news on Earth.
Since I’m still a newbie on Hunting (and yes, with capitals since for the Petsk this is extremely important amongst them) I joined Vitka and the little Petsk ducklings to one of the nearby river to fish. We each caught at least one but our instructor seemed too off to notice. Still, I’m happy enough with our roasted lunch.
Later, Yurch-ka, a teen I understand is on his way to become a renowned Hunter in a few weeks, came by to drop a few of the strange potatoes the Petsk harvest in the center of the village. Turns out, these are a primary food source during the first times of spring and the beginnings of the cold weather since they are really easy to plant and they still survive through the Winter. Each household picks one every two days but Vitka was missing today.
Speaking of, Yurch-ka brought a friend along. He is a little shorter than the Petsk people, his torso is far broader, his hair is darker as well without being jet black and his tan skin is pretty much impossible to achieve in this place. His name is Beka, also a Hunter from another tribe my friends here denominate the Alma who live in what they call the Infinite Plains which I assume must be somewhere in Central Asia… and I’m certain he has a crush on Yurch-ka.
I’ll be honest and say Yurch-ka is really beautiful. His hair is a pretty blond shade, his eyes are a really bright green and has a petite physique. If we were back in my time, he would be the sensation of any Instagram teenager.
Still, I thought I had left Head-Over-Heels Takeshi and Oblivious-As-Hell Yuuko: Beka was staring in his direction all through our meal (oh yeah, they stayed for lunch), filling his soup and water bowls, making sure the sun didn’t bother him… and of course Yurch-ka didn’t notice. I got a good laugh out of it honestly.
Yurch-ka mentioned something interesting during lunch: in a few days, the Petsk will set on to look for seeds to plant so they can have food during what they call the Days of Light which I relate to the latest days of spring, summer and the early days of autumn since the Petsk only have two seasons (Days of Snow & Days of Light) per year (Winter).
I think it will be an interesting experience and maybe I can document their methods and the care they give their crops as well as the variety for fellow academics in the future.
My Hunting classes are going slightly better: I can finally hold a bow and shoot without snapping open my cheek which I consider a great achievement. However, I’m actually quite surprised they didn’t know the use of a sort of net to catch more fish than with plain fishing rods. It has been a discovery for many of them including Vitka himself. It was pretty funny and satisfying to see I was better than Vitka in something even if I say so myself.
Vicchan has started to get better day by day and can walk for longer spans of time. Today he actually accompanied Vitka, Makka and I to fish. Vitka told me tomorrow we will start training him for fetching so he can be of help when the Manak mammoths come to the valley.
That’s something I look forward with a lot of excitement: I’m going to meet mammoths!
March 9th, 20 000 B.C.
Yesterday, I went seed-collecting along the villagers.
I remember Guang Hong, a fellow student at the Saint Petersburg University, once told me plenty of the ground underneath the Siberian plateau was layered by thick sections of permafrost which was his ideal place for finding all the stuff interesting to paleontologists since permafrost basically creates a sort of freezer Mother Nature would place all of the interesting bones and leftovers.
Well, during our expedition today, I discovered basically all of the ground in this time has this permafrost in some or other degree, yet, the Petsk have found these little spots where they bury pots inside pots which contain the seeds that are cold enough to preserve them while also being not so cold that they freeze them. Genius, really.
However, I was more amazed from the fact they collected SO. DAMN. MUCH. They had like three pots full to the brim for one single type of seed. Vitka told me they were so precious because only very few really give a plant. It isn’t the seed’s fault though, I gotta say.
I had a chance to see how they actually plant, water and organize them. And the same admiration I had for their careful thinking on seed storage, I had in disappointment for their methods of actual planting: imagine throwing the seeds as you would with rice at a wedding and then cover them with a layer the thickness of a paper sheet. And that’s it.
Guang Hong once told me most of the diet in this time were meat and collected stuff based. Now I understand why.
I haven’t seen Liliya around the village in a few days, so perhaps I will take the lead and try to correct this with what I know without risking myself to have someone send me back to seat at home. Mushrooms and dried meat are alright but my mom says healthy children eat vegetables.
Who would I be not to listen my mother’s words even in this time?
March 10th, 20000 B.C.
My back hurts like hell after two days of barely planning how to plant prehistoric veggies. Thank God or the Spirits or Hawking or whoever is over our heads because Liliya hasn’t come out of her house, but I found this place still lacks a whole ton of things for having good crops. Today I barely didn't cough my lungs when I went to measure some things up the river...
Sprouts!After two weeks of waking up barely a few hours after falling asleep, working underneath the scorching sun rays (who would have thought such a weak sun could be so damn burning?) and crouched for so many hours trying to create the closest thing to planting paths on the harsh soil had left him with a destroyed back and a sunburn so bad on his face Vitka had been asking him for two days straight if he had caught a fever.The first days had gone a lot smoother than he had thought actually: in his head, the most likely scenario was the Petsk completely disagreeing with him changing the way they had done agriculture for what probably were centuries already. However, it seemed that being the presumed son of the Sun and Moon spirits had its pros since basically all of the villagers had wanted to learn the ‘way of the Spirits’.With the help of the villagers, the first day he managed to build a nice set of basic planting hoes and shovels with literal sticks and polished stones. It wasn’t too much of a good idea though, as it turned out the Petsk thought it was the greatest idea to plant their food in the clay-filled soil nearby the river so the plants would have a source of water.“Why not make the water go to plants?” he asked as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.As any form of an answer, he got glances which made him think he had told the Petsk the craziest and most innovative thing ever. Oh, right.The second day, it was his brain he got tired instead of his body. Yuuri managed to sandwich some calculations between the pages of his Petsk studies and day-to-day journal; paper wasn’t exactly a thing in the Neolithic and he really needed to dose his notebook and pencil. He calculated the pressure of the river now that it was mostly liquid, the distance to a proper patch of non-permafrost soil and the mobility the water would need to have in order to give the Petsk a proper irrigation system. He got a lot of confused looks from the Petsk’s colored eyes when he began tracing the lines he would need to dig with perfectly useful thread.When the children began touching it and moving it, Yuuri had to tell them if they moved the nyepo isuk for his wonderful spell, water would flood their houses. Not even museums would see such respectful distancing between spectators and works of art.The third and fourth days he had to split the population in two, the ones with the most muscle (meaning Vitka and his fellow Hunters mostly) would help by digging through the marks he had made with thread, the artisans of the village followed the scale model he had made during a sleepless night to create a series of gates and clay curved tiles to cover the canals and avoid the water from filtering back to the Earth before reaching the crops. In order to have the children with busy hands, he got him smaller and lighter shovels to dig the little holes to put the seeds.The fifth day was about the actual planting. The entire village poured themselves in the crop patches, excited to see if Yuuri’s magic would actually make a miracle such as sprouting the crops right after they had been covered with soil. Of course, they got disappointed.“I thought your nyepo isuk were for crops growing fast?” asked one of the children, pouting at the little bundle of soil hiding the seeds he had just placedYuuri thought quicker than all the times he had forgotten his formula cheat sheet at the dorm in the middle of a Celestino midterm.“Nyepo was a part of the spell, it is not to grow faster but better” ugh, he felt such a big liar. Like a parent telling their child about Santa Claus “Only my Great Mother Earth is able to do things like grow faster. She teach me things, but not so much”The child opened his eyes wide in amazement, attracting a bunch of other little ones who observed Yuuri with the same mix of sheer curiosity rather than the respect the parents treated him with. Even Vitka, who actually lived with him and had seen some embarrassing sides of him, had begun to treat him like glass.“Can you do other kind of spells?”“I heard you have a spell for catching fish!”“How about spells for attracting Manak?”“Or for getting toys!”Yuuri chuckled while helping the little Petsks bury their seeds. He wasn’t too sure about the Manak as he told the kids, but he would make his best with the crops, fish and even the toys though they would have to have a lot of patience.Liliya was quite shocked the following week when she finally emerged from her home seclusion and went to supervise how the planting had gone in her absence. Yuuri didn’t remember her having all those other extra bracelets around her elbows nor those yellow beads in her hair, also, were those paintings in her palms and eyelids new?As much as her appearance was different after her two weeks apart from the village life, what surprised Yuuri the most was the man walking beside her: if he had understood correctly, those marks in bright blue were only for Vitka as the Great Hunter, they were granted to a single member of the Petsk community and it was considered the job with the most responsibility aside from the Healer. And then there was that man, with the Great Hunter marks intertwined with the yellow of the Healer. Yuuri had seen that some other times, in other villager’s faces and arms: two different color marks braiding with one and other and creating pretty patterns often in greens from the collectors with the red of crafters or the grey of fishermen with the pale beige of the weavers. It was a much louder symbol of marriage than a pair of rings.Then, that should be Liliya’s Cared, he though for himself.“Blessings of plenty” he greeted in his best Petsk pronunciation.“Blessings of plenty” the Healer and Hunter greeted back. She almost did not pay much attention to him, rather fixing her feline eyes on the crops and the way they had been arranged, but the man fixed an angry pair of eyes on Yuuri and began examining him from top to bottom.“Uri, what are all of this?” Liliya inquired, lifting her left browYuuri had convinced the village that the best thing to do to ensure the seed’s proper growth was to set a hotbed where they would wait for them to sprout before actually planting them in the crop patches. Liliya was obviously dubious of his methods.“I… I show Petsk to plant like Spirits” Yuuri mumbled, bowing his head slightly to the sheer amount of power that woman exuded “The crops grow well and fast”“True!” Vitka assured as well, making Yuuri jolt with surprise “All the seeds we planted have sprouted! That had never happened before… and we don’t have to worry for watering them with the little rivers Yuuri made”Had Yuuri been paying a little more attention, he would have noticed Vitka making a sort of puppy eyes to his fellow Hunter who finally took his gaze away with an almost inaudible ‘tsch’.Liliya walked along the ‘little rivers’ with a mix of an elegant and martial step, crouching down from time to time to inspect the pathways the village was helping dig and create the canals. The few children who were tasked with plucking off the random weeds stopped on their tracks and bowed lightly in respect for the Healer. She kept walking until she stopped by the hotbed to caress the little and fragile plantings.“Uri” Yuuri felt creeps up his spine when he heard his name being called out so bluntly “Is your leg better?”“I… Yes!” he answered as quick as possible. Days were slowly getting warmer and Vitka was still careful to have their house’s hearth lit or at least warm through the night.“Good” Liliya bobbed her head absently before turning on her tracks and making towards one of the weaver’s house “Come tomorrow to my house. I have something to show you”Yuuri’s leg suddenly didn’t feel that great anymore.
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March 17th, 2000 B.C.
Today I got an especially strong reminiscence of my friend Yuuko back in my modern time.
During our first months at Saint Petersburg, there was no weekend she wouldn’t drag us all to the theater to watch a ballet because she insisted there was no way we were going to miss that experience while being in Russia. I’ll be honest and say there were some very impressive ones like the Spartacus one and La Fille Mal Gardée actually was a really funny discovery. But there was this one that struck in my mind to date called the Sacre du Printemps.
A lot of years have passed since I was really invested on dancing but I can swear on my time machine that was not classical ballet: it was far rawer and more savage, more directed by the music around it than from the aesthetics or technique. Even the story was as well.
A prehistoric tribe somewhere in Russia welcomes the spring by franticly dancing until one of their young virgins falls to the ground several times. This means she is chosen by the Earth to be sacrificed by dancing ‘til she dies.
It seems the reason Liliya was happily shut in her house for two weeks on a row was because she was making preparations for a sort of spring celebration and today, she pulled me out of bed before sunrise and dragged me to a sort of clear surrounded by large rocks, literally. Probably thrice my height engraved with patters that are very similar to the ones the Petsk themselves paint on their bodies to denote their responsibility position within the village.
Of course, she didn’t give me time to explore a little further before she made me dance nonstop. Let’s just say I realized Liliya the Healer is probably a Neolithic prototype of the classical trope of the strict Russian ballet teacher.
I even learnt a new word: sno. Meaning again. Probably the Petsk word I have heard the most on repetition. And I really mean the MOST.
Apparently, since I am some sort of demi-god for the Petsk, I am going to be an honorary dancer in their spring celebration which is supposed to mark the beginning of the Days of Light, which I understand is the equinox and the schedule change.
Now, I will be honest with this diary: perhaps my dancing will be mystical enough so the Spirits take me back to my temporary line? It’s worth a try in my modest opinion.
For the meantime, I’d rather rest because it seems these insanely intense rehearsals are going to keep going until the actual celebration takes place.
Good night then.
“So, you and your little marsh man”The words had not even fully left Yurch-ka’s lips when Vitka practically spit out his mouthful of water. Apparently, the small herd of game they had been targeting the entire morning, felt just as disgusted over that gesture as he did when they decided to run away.“Great. Job. Vitka” the younger hunter hissed“Sorry-ugh! I just got-um, surprised” Vitka replied amongst coughsPsh. Not like the entire village had not noticed and Beka was already on his way back to his people with a negative to the arranged Caring proposed by the Alma chieftain. How on the large skin of Great Mother Earth was Vitka suddenly surprised?“Who told you that?” oh for crying out loud, he really seemed surprised. Yurch-ka threw his arms into the air with exasperation.“You. Right now” he was seriously getting worried he would get more stupid as he grew older by looking at Vitka and Ya-Kov “I was excited we would meet more if you and In-kar were to Care but then Beka told me we would meet at the Hunt. Who was the reason you rejected In-kar was the easiest part”With no more prey to hunt around and his instructor momentarily useless, Yurch-ka simply lied on the mossy ground. He hadn’t gotten a really good sleep during the previous nights, not with his body aching thanks to Uri’s weird ideas on how to plant thigs; not that they weren’t effective, but they were a pain in the ass.“And- what do you think?” Vitka wondered“Well, you’ll certainly have a lot of use of your Hunting if we consider he can’t shoot an arrow for his life”Sure, he knew how to catch fish, but what would he do when they had to swim away from the Great River in Winter? It would be a miracle if he was even able to dry meat for the Great Walk. His knowledge with crops was also quite good but there was no way one could survive by eating potatoes, leaves and gushy mushrooms.The thought of Vitka’s Caring life being an unending cycle of mild and tasteless meals under Uri’s food collecting skills made him chuckle.“Hm, I will assume that if you rejected In.kar, you have already asked him to begin hearing each other’s… you know?”Vitka blushed at his question… and Yurch-ka blushed at his question as well.“I… I haven’t” the older Hunter confessed.“Then you surely will get him to accept your Care” Yurch-ka simply stood up and began walking deeper into the forest.If the rest of the Hunters and Fishers had had such a good spree as them, they could already count with more than enough food to give both a proper offering to the Spirits and a good feast to their village for the Festival of Light. Really, the only reason they hadn’t got back to the village was because his Great Pa and him were running thin on meat after Beka’s surprise visit.Speaking of, his friend was apparently sure he would offer his Song to his future Cared before the next Winter came by.Psh, it was as if everyone was getting a Cared as of lately.That was something that had him with far too little worry. He had his Great Pa to take care of and couldn’t begin to bother himself with stupid thoughts or the gossip some of the Petsk would mumble when he strolled by the village.“What would you do?” Vitka wondered, his voice breaking in the soft murmurs of the forest “If you wanted to offer yours I mean?”Yurch-ka felt his cheeks burn. What kind of question was that?!“Aren’t you supposed to be the experienced one here?!” he retorted angrily, stomping away from the Hunter.What would Yurch-ka do was the wrong question here. He would almost certainly just stare from afar, too embarrassed to make a move until he lost his chance. Contrary to how impatient and eager he was during the Hunt, his usual self was much more of a timid nature, one that preferred to stick around the people he already knew rather than venturing off with somebody else.A better wording for him was: what would Beka do?The identity of his best friend’s mysterious future Cared was still unknown to him but from the attitudes he had seen, Beka was always putting the other’s wishes and aspirations before his own, attentive of his Cared’s wants and needs. He also bettered himself far more than he needed, in Yurch-ka’s opinion, with the excuse that he wanted to be a man his Cared would be proud of walking besides of.However, with each passing year, Yurch-ka had deduced something on his own which could perhaps be helpful to Vitka: Beka’s future Cared belonged to a different tribe than the Alma.A few times, his friend had slipped a few more words than intended during their long conversations which had led Yurch-ka to think another reason he was making so much to be an ideal future Chief to his people was because he was afraid his Cared would not follow him outside their own tribe to the Infinite Plains.“Why don’t you get more into whatever Spirit-project he’s into or whatever?” he tried his best to make his words sound as casual and uninterested as possible “He likes those. If you want him to stay, you should pay more attention to that stuff”Ugh.That, that damn corny smile was the reason he preferred so much more to go Hunt on his own than to have Vitka moping over Uri.“Thank you so much Yurch-ka!” Vitka dared to lift him off the ground in a tight embrace despite his kicks to the other’s knees “I really hope the Bright Mother protects you and yo-umf!”“Shhh!”Yurch-ka muffled the other’s mouth with his hand while hissing to get some silence while pointing to the point before them.There was a young female fawn digging her nose into the moist ground in the search for food. It’s tummy wasn’t swollen, indicating a lack of pregnancy despite her size. It was the perfect prey!He signaled at Vitka with the intention of retaking their previously planned Hunting before he decided to scare away the game but got no answer from the other man. Taking a quick look behind him, he realized Vitka still had that sappy smile plastered all over his face but had something else behind it. Something like… pride perhaps?Without saying a word, Vitka lifted an open hand towards him. This is yours, he seemed to say.Yurch-ka gulped down. Besides from the birds and fast fish at the river which he used to practice his archery, he had never actually taken down something that large without help. He was usually the one to shoot once the game was lured to him by the Hunter’s spears.But the Manak were coming soon.And just like Beka did with his future Cared, he had his grandfather to procure. He was not a child anymore; he was going to become a Hunter to make sure his Great Pa would always be safe and healthy and proud of him.Yurch-ka emptied the air of his chest, pulled the arrow towards his cheek, fixed his green eyes on the fawn’s neck and one clean shot pierced through it. Yuuri’s last dance recital was probably when he was twelve years old.He had began dancing when he was about three years old in a small studio opened by his mother’s best friend Minako, a retired professional ballerina who, against all stakes, had decided to get back to her natal little town by the sea instead of taking in the offer from her previous company in New York and teach the future great promises of ballet.That year, Minako had some especially prominent eyebags after none of her girls was able to master Cupid’s solo variation for her Don Quixote staging, much to her dismay. She was constantly complaining at Hiroko of her student’s slow and dragged feet over a good pint of beer at his parent’s inn.“Ah, but they enjoy not doing the jumping passes, don’t they?” she would grumble in anger “All of those cows thinking themselves sylphides already. Psh!”“Why don’t you try with Yuuri?” his mother had suggested casually, draining all of the blood from his faceIt was true he had a really small frame, similar to a girl’s and his petit allegro was probably better than most of the older girls’ at the academy. But he was already a constant gossip material over how favored he was by Minako and as much as he enjoyed dancing, he knew a solo would mean less time preparing for the physics contest next summer.Still, his mother’s comment struck past Minako’s and, the next day, she stayed with him two hours after class, routine which she would repeat until the rehearsals came by.After that role, he stopped going to Minako’s ballet lessons with the same seriousness. His attention and efforts were quickly absorbed by school and his own personal projects which would then lead him to college.And as much as he recalled that last recital with fondness, he had to admit it was no match to what was probably about to be the performance of his life.The entire Petsk village had poured themselves in the clearing Liliya and him had been dancing for the past three days nonstop, but the place was looking way more different.The long carved stones surrounding the clear circle had been decorated with some sort of large beaded necklaces, each matching the color of each working division within the Petsk community as well as having an offering before them whether it was fish, a set of pottery or even the impossibly long tusk of a mammoth. Yuuri was awfully tempted to touch it but stopped himself after thinking perhaps being the son of the Spirits didn’t deem him important enough to do so without punishment.Even the Petsk children were respectfully keeping their little hands behind their backs.On the side facing the Petsk village and the way to the river, they had left a creepy show of ribcages and skulls topped with what seemed to be some kind of roughly woven blanket made of the grass one could pluck by simply walking along the marshes.Its opposite side had instead been covered with a carpet of bright yellow and white flowers he had seen Yurch-ka and the other teenagers pick in the early morning. On the middle of the circle of flowers, the Petsk had disposed all kinds of food in large plates which Yuuri hoped was to feed the entire village rather than to be burnt down like he had seen the people in movies do.There was smoked and dried meat strips, roasted fish, large pots of thick and hearty soup so different from the usual broths he was already used to, salted potatoes and mushrooms and even dried fruits with honey he was determined to know where the Petsk had been storing for so long.Even he had been dressed in a special attire for once.Normally, he would be reluctant to let go of his jeans except every three days to wash them on the riverside and would comply to using the thick skin parkas the Petsk used in the coldest hours of the day over his blue woolen sweater. This was probably the first time since his arrival that he wasn’t using any of the clothes he had time-crashed with.He was using a sort of long sleeved tunic with small triangular embroideries surrounding his neck as well as a set of long necklaces made from a myriad of materials: from flowers matching the decorations to what seemed to be fangs intertwined with ceramic and wooden beads. His jeans had been substituted by a pair of pants made of some sort of prehistoric linen dyed with the same pigment the Petsk used to paint their bodies with.The only problem he was having were his feet. His bare feet.“We have to be as close as possible to the heart of Great Mother Earth” Liliya’s words remained imperative as ever “The cold will fade away when the dance begins”Yuuri was seriously hoping they would be allowed to get their socks and shoes back on instead of being bare-footed the rest of the celebration.A loud horn interrupted his thoughts.The background chatter ceased immediately, every single Petsk, from the youngest child to the most fragile elder kneeled around the stone circle, without daring to touch it in any form, even careful of the extension of their shadows. Liliya kneeled on one end of the circle, only a few meters away from the mountain of bones. Yuuri took his place on the other side, the flowery banquet on his back.Once the silence was so pristine one could even hear the morning water droplets fall off the trees, a delicate flute sound invaded the air, Yuuri and the Petsk moving along its tune, like the last winds of winter fleeing the region of the Petsk.During the time he had spent in Saint Petersburg, he had learnt that while the full coming of spring was something good to every person in the city but needed to pass over a troublesome process which wasn’t always very gentle, but it all acquired a new dimension being in the Neolithic..There was always the storm before the calm.The drums began resonating like the thunders in the gray nights before the lightning seized the sky. Liliya, glanced at him, a signal to leave his glasses on the ground, the world lost its focus while getting clearer at the same time.He had forgotten it, that sensation which only came from dancing. The mere joy and chaos of creation.The drums, flutes and horns in the background weren’t there to guide him and Liliya, but merely to reflect their own movements. Yuuri could feel it.The eloping winds were his flowing hands.The birds and him flying off the ground.The return of the fish were the moves of his hips.The growth of the greens were the elongation of his arms.The Manak were coming back in the runs of his feet.The hard work were the loads on his shoulders.He prayed, prayed wildly to both the Sky and the Earth. His feet weren’t cold anymore, his body exuded warmth like the Sun itself.It was no different from physics: the dance made him feel small, tiny, compared to the sky above him and the cycles of the planet. He was but a mere servant to the greatest forces around him. But this time, he wasn’t trying to understand and dissect them. He simply let himself be along those forces.A pronounced bow, extended arms, a knee to the ground and the other next to his chest. The prayer had ended. Only then did he allowed himself to lift his glance.And a pair of twin skies were staring at him as if he himself, was a Spirit.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After the ceremony of the Days of Light, Yuuri was seriously questioning if his and Liliya’s dance had indeed worked some sort of magic for he sensed a lot of things had changed around him.The most curious one, at least for Yuuri, was that he felt somehow more in tune with the Petsk. They didn’t just regard him as a foreigner who had landed in their village by sheer chance anymore, and instead had even changed the way they called him from Uri the Stranger to Yuuri the Newcomer. Yuuri had to applaud the effort they had put to pronounce his name correctly.The most evident one was the weather, of course.In the house, his feet were not covered in red cold burns over the night, Vitka and him would place smaller quantities of wood in the hearth each night and Makka would not tremble feverishly anymore. Outside in the village, the fishermen had bigger catches, the other Hunters would come with larger game, the sprouts in the orchard were growing faster and Vitka was taking his young students on slightly longer excursions to the woods now that the ground was not so icy anymore.And speaking of Vitka!The Hunter’s attitudes HAD to be the strangest things that had happened ever since the Days of Light and Yuuri did not really know neither how to feel about it nor what to do about it.It wasn’t like that those attitudes were bad or anything, only that they were plainly odd for someone who had presumably spent a good deed of his life mastering his body to master the craft of the hunt. Things like walking on light feet to avoid been noticed or having great balance after those insane excursions Viktor so much enjoyed seemed to disappear from the Hunter’s muscle memory overnight.In the times Vitka would help out with the crops, he was apparently always falling over Yuuri if he happened to be next to him; at home, he would make the most noise possible if he was cooking dinner as if wanting him to notice such fact; he didn’t hide the fact he was looking at him without any discretion when walking around the village and was apparently really interested in the things Yuuri wrote on his notebook at the end of the day.It wasn’t as if the Hunter had previously neglected his presence, Yuuri actually considered what they had something like a good friendship, but these attitudes were all too new for him.“Are you feeling sick?” Yuuri finally asked one night when Vitka had stuck his shoulder to his own while he sat by the fire to write the preparations the Petsk were having to expect the come of the mammoths.“I’m not” Vitka answered plainly, locking eyes with Yuuri’s.Lies, the physicist thought to himself, your face is so red and you still say you are not sick?Maybe they had not left the hearth burning for long enough the previous night or Vitka had slept too close to the entrance, either way, Yuuri placed his hand over his forehead to decide if he could take matters in his own hands or if he had to go and bother Liliya in the middle of the night.Hm. No fever it seemed, but it seemed Vitka was ever-so-slightly warmer than what was normal, nothing too serious to bother Liliya. Yuuri would have given it all for a thermometer in that moment but oh well, he would manage.“Lie down” he told Vitka while he wrapped himself in a pelt and exited the house with a pot in his hand before the Hunter could say anything.The river still carried cool water, making Yuuri concerned for the roots of the crops getting a frostbite or something. But it was a good option for lowering slight fevers along a cup of warm tea.While the medicinal scent of the boiling herbs flooded the house’s air, Yuuri placed a few damp patches over Vitka’s forehead while he himself waited for the tea adding some notes to his journal.There was just so much of this world to write about! The organization between different human groups, the spiritual practices, the level of knowledge on exact sciences they possessed, the way they had told him the concept of economy was so dumb when he explained it to them. It wasn’t his field of study, yet it made him so excited.Perhaps too excited. He gave a pitiful look to the pencil in his hand: the poor thing had shrunk significantly these past few days with Yuuri’s records on the crop garden, the Days of Light and now the coming of mammoths. Now it was barely the size of his pinky finger.“What is it?” Vitka questioned“Oh. It’s nothing” Yuuri eased him, while replacing the damp fabric with a new one “I think I won’t be able to make isuk anymore”Maybe he could make some experiments and try to get ink from the things available around? He could get a pretty good amount of ashes from the large village hearths but he would have a harder time getting oil. Brushes would be relatively easy to make if he managed to get long furs from the Hunters and even convince one of the Crafters to make the handles…“It’s like a rock, yes?” Vitka had sat up and grabbed what little remained of the pencil “Softer than a rock, but similar”Yuuri nodded and Vitka imitated his motion before being softly pushed back to his original laying position with the cold fabric on his forehead. Thankfully, it was nothing but a passing fever for in the following morning, Vitka was feeling good enough that he was gone before Yuuri woke up.This wasn’t the first time he did something similar but he would often be around guiding the Petsk ducklings, practicing with Yurch-ka by the river or fixing his hunting tools. That morning though, there was no sign of the Hunter.“Have you seen Vitka?” he asked Yurch-ka when he found him practicing pierce through a target nearby the river along Mi La. His frown was deeper than usual.“That should be my question!” the teenager replied angrily “The Manak are less than a moon away and he thinks this is the best of times to disappear!”“Oh! I saw him!” the redhead Huntress chirped next to Yurch-ka, shooting an arrow straight through the bullseye “I wake up early because I’m waiting for Sa-ala to come so I saw him leave for the place where the Bright Father comes out”“Pah! I’m sure he only wants to practice with real moving things… and of course he won’t take me with him” Yurch-ka complainedVitka was the Great Hunter and thus Yuuri didn’t believe there was no Petsk who knew the village surroundings better than him, but that just didn’t give him any ease of mind. Not when Vitka went missing the entire day.Not that he had any reason to question him, Yuuri reminded himself.Liliya didn’t give him much time to think about the matter either when the Healer pretty much pulled him along with her to supervise the preparations for the journey that would take the Petsk to the Hunting Grounds with the Alma and Sami peoples.It basically consisted on packing large quantities of dried foods, cooking utensils, clothing and mattresses, materials for building sleeping tents and, perhaps the most important, gathering hunting goods which would need to be sharpened.These were gonna be some tiresome days. Vitka had taken in Yurch-ka directly under his wing when the boy was eight Winters old after seeing a lot of potential during their hunting lessons: while other children simply were there because it was mandatory for every Petsk, Yurach-ka would leave his taciturn-self aside and become quite serious when holding his own spear instead of fooling around like the rest of the kids.Now, with fifteen Winters on him, he was almost a complete Hunter, but he still lacked a little bit more of Spirit instead of his perfectionism.However, Vitka would have never expected that the day when his pupil would surpass him on an important matter would come so early. And then, there he was, asking a boy who was absurdly oblivious to the feelings of Caring someone else had harbored for him for basically his entire life, about wooing the foreign man he was so enthusiastic about.He began investing a little bit more of time on the things he would often find Uuri interested into like the crop garden or the isuk he would draw on those strangely gathered leaves. That’s when he realized the small wooden tool he used, had grown too small for him to grab it properly.Uuri allowed him to touch the small object. It was odd on Vitka’s calloused hands, an exquisite carving work since it was so smooth and had no splinters, the color was so bright and shiny and even though they were indoors.The exterior was evidently made of wood, with a shiny cold piece like a thin piece of warm ice wrapped around the end of it. The most interesting thing of the tool was the dark part of it.It was similar to a rock but much softer and smoother. When he touched it, it left a faint trace of an ashen color similar to the traces left on the fingers after cleaning the blackened bottom of one of the hearths in the village.Something rang in the back of his head.The following day, he woke up as early as possible, grabbed a bag, the tools he would use to scrape the fat and meat off the bones of his hunt. With the instruments in his pouch, he left the house, making sure he did not wake Uuri up.It was quite a long trek, but the hardest part would probably be to extract what he needed.Some days before, the Collectors had come to his house to borrow some of the protective garments he used for dangerous hunts such as bears and other predators which could threaten the life at the village. The Collectors would borrow them before the rites of the Days of Light and before the preparations for the Long Walk began.They would travel towards a certain part of the woods to collect a precious good that, just like anything good, needed a sacrifice to be obtained: painful red spots with ingrained small thorns which would have Lili-ya a full day plucking them out.If he wanted to be regarded as a possible Cared by Yuuri, this sacrifice would be nothing. Still, he hoped this would be appreciated.Because it hurt. Oh Spirits, it hurt.He made his way back to the village at a very slow pace as he tried to smooth out the impact on his poor body, so of course he arrived when everyone in the village was beginning to slowly return home for the day. He made a roundup and walk a little more so he would make towards Liliya’s house instead of his own.Needless to say, the Healer raised an eyebrow when she saw him. An equivalent reaction to anybody else screaming in surprise.“Where in the name of the Spirits were you?” she stoically turned around to her medicine-full pots once she closed the flap on Vitka’s face.“I visited the stinging bugs” he confessed while sitting down carefully “Not for the sweet water, before you ask”Sweet water was usually so scarce and difficult to collect from those damn guardian bugs that it had long been deemed to only be used in special events such as the Days of Light, the Great Hunt, Caring Ceremonies or illnesses. Collecting for oneself was considered a selfish act and would automatically earn the loss of trust on the individual on behalf of the entire village.“Then?” Liliya questionedVitka rustled a little bit with a pained expression until he pulled out a container from his pouch. It was covered by a coarse piece of weaved long-grass but some of the substance had solidified outside of it in his rush to finish the task and get away from the bugs.The Healer before him allowed he brows to knit in a questioning expression.That thing was not exactly edible, and the collectors would often offer it as sort of treat for the Petsk children to lick for there would always be some remnant of the golden sweet water on it. Aside from that use, Liliya would use it to create some of her medicines.“I want to try something” Vitka said bluntly without going into further detail.Liliya clicked he tongue while she applied some salves on his red and swollen skin with a disapproving expression.“If you want it to be an unexpected gift, don’t let him see you in this deplorable state” she pointed at the place he was sitting on “Stay here until it’s late”Vitka bowed and smiled in thankfulness. Yuuri would have slept until his sleeping pelt threw him away if possible.But the responsibility of a Great Hunt supervisor on his shoulders was hammering the inside of his sleepy mind and made him wake up when he heard the early life begin in the village and saw weak rays of sunlight filtering through the closed door-flap. He stretched his arms patted his cheeks to make his body wake up a little quicker.His blurry sight scanned his surroundings when he remembered the fact he had stayed up until late waiting for Vitka to come back to the house they shared along Makka and Vicchan until he fell dead on his sleeping pelt. It wasn’t until he put his glasses on that the realized the Hunter was still sleeping soundly on the other side of the house.Weird. The wolves hadn’t made a sound when Vitka arrived and by that moment of the morning, the Hunter was already awake and cooking breakfast for both of them or be right outside the door flap preparing his tools for the day.Yuuri approached the sleeping figure as silently as he could and took a look at him.His trek the previous day must have been a dangerous one if he had remnants of Liliya’s healing pastes over a good portion of his face, Yuuri thought. He seemed to also have bodily injuries of some sort, judging by his sleeping position.He might as well take on Vitka’s tasks then!He hadn’t yet mastered the art of getting fire from a scrap with rocks or twigs like the Petsk to turn on the indoor hearth, so he had to borrow a little from the village’s main firepit. While he waited for the flames to extend over the firewood, he fetched water from the center of the river to boil some of the Petsk potatoes he had harvested the previous day during the only break he got from supervising.Recently, he had discovered a certain blend of Petsk cooking spices would have a similar taste to tea, especially when sweetened with a spoonful of one of Vitka’s preserved fruits which swam in golden honey. He boiled a little of it in a smaller pot, so Vitka could regain a little energy.There were also some soup leftovers from yesterday’s lunch which he couldn’t finish on his own wo he had kept them inside the small ground cellar. It was really cool, like a prehistoric fridge!The smell of food must have gotten to Vitka’s nose because he grumbled a little in his sleep before stretching and crouching in what seemed to be pain. Yuuri ran to his side.“Vitka? Are you unwell? Should I get Liliya?”Holy smokes. Now that he could see clearly and through the faint pastes, it seemed Vitka’s face had been smacked with a red paintbrush: he had tiny spots all over him and certain parts of him appeared slightly swollen.“I’m good” Vitka’s voice sounded a little coarse, more than his usual dozy tone.Yuuri hurried to offer him a sip of the ‘tea’. If he had arrived late, he had probably gotten all cold and got a sore throat.“Come eat and go back to sleep” he recommended. If Vitka was sick, going out to work, it wasn’t gonna do him any good to exhaust himself.“You cooked?” Vitka opened his eyes in surprise and excitement tinted his voice. Yuuri nodded sheepishly while placing the full bowls before him “Blessings for you!”Both ate slowly, adjusting to Vitka’s rhythm. The Hunter’s hands were also swollen, his fingers had difficulties holding the bowls to his mouth to the point Yuuri had to help him peel the potato.“Are you sure you don’t want me to go for Liliya?” he was seriously worried by those red spots.Vitka smiled what Yuuri could only tag into a category of dumbstruck smiles, and, denied with his head. It was pretty similar to the ones he would sparingly catch Takeshi directing towards Yuuko while they hung out around the campus.Alright. If he wasn’t feeling that bad, then he could simply leave Vitka be inside the house and mind his own business outdoors. He informed this to the Hunter and made his way to the center of the village, he would be looking up to the sun while working.“So I can come back to have dinner with you in time” he said to Vitka while making his way out. While he did, Yuuri thought he had seen that dumbstruck smile again.Thank the Spirits he had given it all the previous day and had slightly less work to do along the rest of the Petsk. Still, slightly was a very small quantity, especially when considering all that had to be done.Still, he found a little bit of spare time to ask Liliya for a little bit of the ointment she had applied to Vitka’s wounds. For some reason, she raised a brow and let out a sigh when she handed a small pot with some gooey substance in it.“Blessings!” he greeted hurriedly when he arrived to the house. Late enough that some smoke from the hearth could already be seen “Forgive me! I got you this from Liliya-nani kore?”He couldn’t help the Japanese that came out of his mouth with the shock and curiousness.Vitka was polishing what seemed to be a stick. A stick with a suspiciously similar look to his pencil in its best days, not only the exterior case of it but also the graphite-colored tip. If only, it seemed a little bit opaquer than his own pencil.“I don’t know how you call this in the Otherworld,” Vitka examined his creation with a frown “but it is for you. So, you can continue your isuk”With the shock slightly more subdued, Yuuri realized the ash smears over Vitka’s face, the small splinter cuts on his fingertips and the opaque film on his hands. Too similar to when one lets a drop of wax fall on your hand when holding a candle.And he had done it all while having his hands swollen and in pain.He felt his cheeks suddenly become damp. Vitka stood up and went to his side in a rush only to be welcomed by Yuuri in a tight embrace.Maybe back in his time, a pencil wouldn’t hold much meaning. But being stuck in prehistory made the gesture feel completely different. The work and attention it implied made him feel truly cared for.“Arigato” he mumbled in Vitka’s ear.