Eln did not understand her answer. She did not seem to be hurt in any new ways, however, and this was good enough for him. But she was stubborn. And commanding. The more he watched her, the more he decided that she must be the daughter of a clan mother. And that sealed his fate, though somehow it comforted him that she would live a good life. He wondered why she had wandered so far from her village without a protector.
He held the stick in one hand and accepted the bark with the other. What she constructed with the reeds, he did not understand, but this medicine he knew well. He inclined his head in thanks and stuck the bitter stuff next to his worn back teeth.
A thought struck him as he watched Wakine work: perhaps there was another way they could understand one another. It was a way he recalled communicating with the men of other clans, though the messages that they left one another on the cliff walls were ones of warning. He shifted, careful not to burn the fish, and with his off hand, he cleared and patted down a circle of earth next to his thigh. With his finger he drew three things. First, a roundhut: a shallow triangle atop a rectangle, with a door in the center. Second, a simple person holding a spear. Third, a taller person without a spear, but with two lines protruding upwards from its head.
"Wakine," he said to get her attention. He motioned to the pictograph, then hovered his hand over the two people, and then the hut. "Yei vatu nami ta yori."
