Timpoochee squinted his eyes, trying to see if he could spot a bowl of sofkee on the ground outside Rising Fawn’s house.
“You have repeated the conversation we had the other day, haven’t you mother.”
“Perhaps I had a word or two with Rising Fawn’s household,” Swift Deer replied in mock defense. “There is nothing wrong with that. It's time you start thinking about young women.”
For some time a fire had been stirring in Timpoochee. He wanted desperately to experience the same pleasure with a girl described by the older students of the Medicine.
There was in the community an easy sexual climate for the young, as there was in most towns in those days. The young girls and boys were encouraged to experiment with each other before getting married. After marriage, polygamous relationships were strictly forbidden and punishable by death if discovered. Courtship or marriage within one’s clan was forbidden, too, considered incestuous.
Timpoochee paid attention to Rising Fawn often since the days when they were young. She was a delight to watch. Her shining skin the same beautiful color of the cedar branch after it’s rubbed to a golden hue. Timpoochee watched her at public ceremonies, her bright black hair shimmering like a crow’s feathers, her breasts bouncing with her graceful rhythm only just enough to display their firmness and through them the strength that is within her.
Just a season younger than Timpoochee, Rising Fawn had been watching him, too. He noticed.
It was not only the color of his skin which made Timpoochee stand out nor, even, his stature as son of Eufala Ulagu but also the sharpness of his features and his manner, the way he smiled patiently, his attentiveness to the elders, his physical strength and his abilities on the water.
Timpoochee was not the only in whom a fire was growing. It was growing within Rising Fawn, too.