First, a bit of anxiety

As we were nearing our campsite I couldn't take the awkward suspense anymore, so I suggested to the group that we have some fresh meat for our evening meal. At first Daxon was **** to let me do all of the work, but even he got the message that I just needed some time to myself.

Hunting small game is probably what I'm best at. Usually, it comes so naturally I can do it without even thinking. But this time I was off balance, distracted. Fortunately, I had the foresight to set up a crude snare before I went clumsily trampling through the underbrush, and it yielded a modestly sized rabbit.

For most of my life, I had done my best to avoid thinking about sex. I had needs, like enough I suppose to any boy or girl my age, but I pressed them down with all the mental **** I could muster. Sometimes I told myself that I did this because I had to maintain my focus, that it did me no good to make deep connections with the people I met out in the world because my goal was to leave them all behind. But deep down I knew the real reason was that when I thought about pleasures of the flesh, I could not avoid thinking about my flesh. About my curse.

It was even worse, in a way, that most often the object of my distraction, as in this case, was a beautiful woman. I knew that in many foreign lands unions between two of the same gender were common. Even in my homeland such things must happen, in darkened rooms and behind closed doors. Sometimes when sleep eluded me my exhausted mind would reason that surely the Amazon sisters must find some physical comfort amongst themselves. Yet despite all of this, I also knew that women were meant to hold attraction for men. And in my darkest moments it often seemed that the fact that a woman's body stirred such yearnings in me was proof that in truth I was a man, and that I only deluded myself that I could be something other.

But today those thoughts were not the source of my anxiousness. I was not conflicted about my feelings now that it genuinely seemed they might bear fruit. Instead, what plagued me was fear. Because in order to feel the intimacy I longed for, I would have to reveal who, and what, I really was.

When I arrived back at the camp, Jonar and his companion had already returned. Lyra was describing our quarry to the rest of the party. I had already heard most of this earlier, so I set about preparing the food. There wasn't really enough meat to go around, so I combined what there was with some of the provisions I had brought to make a simple stew. This distracted me enough that I failed to notice Lyra had finished her lecture until I felt her hand on my shoulder. "We need to talk. Alone."

As she pulled me away from the group, excuses started pouring out of me unbidden. "I'm sorry about what happened, it's just I got sort of caught up in the moment and carried away and I-"

"What? No, I didn't mean about that." Her sharp dismissal filled me with an odd mixture of feelings, equal parts relief and disappointment. "This is getting really serious. I need you to tell me why you're really here."

"I told you before, I'm looking for-"

"Your sister, right? But you haven't said two words to any of us about this family member you supposedly miss so dearly. You haven't even bothered to describe her." In hindsight, I probably still could have talked my way out of this, but my reactions must have given me away. "Look, whatever it is you're holding back, it's not going to drive me away. But I think I deserve to know."