Zoug and Ayla stayed at Mog-ur's hearth for another moon phase, with Iza watching over her recovery. Ayla was quiet and withdrawn, and her eyes watered often, but she accepted food and drink and let Iza wash and untangle her hair.

Despite her still being under the woman's curse, Zoug had dismissed the idea of leaving again - how was he to know that Ayla wouldn't relapse? It seemed safer to stay with her, and Mog-ur had no objections to Zoug's presence at his hearth. Instead, everyone was greatly relieved, since Ayla seemed to respond to him better than to Iza or Uba, and to Zoug's own relief, there was no comment on what he had revealed of his feelings to Ayla. He had no illusions about Mog-ur and Iza, and maybe even Uba, having witnessed his words, but he didn't regret speaking them.

Finally, Iza deemed it safe for Ayla to return to Zoug's hearth. He was somewhat nervous - wouldn't it be better if she stayed around her family for longer? But Iza assured him that Ayla was out of danger, and Ayla herself insisted that she would like to return to his hearth.

"It's my home now," she signed, leaning into his embrace; they often sat next to each other for long parts of the day, with his arm wrapped around her. "Our home. I'd like to go home, Zoug."

He couldn't say no to that, and so, after that day's morning meal, he carefully helped his mate to her feet, leading her the small distance to his hearth. She was still weak and shaky, but Iza had devised an exercise plan for her that could be carried out inside the cave, and according to the medicine woman, it wouldn't take too long for her to gain back her strength if she stuck to it and ate properly.

"Aba and I will make sure of that," Zoug had promised. The old woman would again stay with them for a while, until Ayla was well enough to take care of the hearth alone.

Once they were there and Ayla had sat down, Zoug wasn't sure what to do with himself. Part of him wanted to ask her if she needed anything, but it went against every instinct - it should be the other way around. Just then Aba arrived, whom Brun had informed the evening before. Relieved, Zoug ordered her to make some tea after she had put away her things. Grod had already been here, before Zoug and Ayla had arrived, to re-light the fire.

The day went by quietly, with Ayla resting most of the time, though Zoug was glad to see that she did her exercises, made an effort to eat, and also helped Aba with the cooking. In the evening they lay down in their furs, Ayla's head on his chest, her arm and long legs wrapped around him, and like every evening during the last moon phase, he held her until her eyes stopped watering and she fell asleep.

The next two moon phases passed in the same fashion, and while Zoug missed Ayla's liveliness that had lit up his hearth before, he was above all simply glad that she was still with him. With time, he hoped, she would recover; he couldn't expect it to go too quickly. He wished he could do something for her, though, something more than simply being there when across the day, without warning, her eyes would begin watering and she would stop whatever she was doing, sometimes curling up on her furs until the bout of acute grief was over.

It was on the evening of a day when Ayla had been even more quiet than usual. She'd responded when Zoug had spoken to her, had helped Aba with the hearth, but hadn't started any conversation, or spoken to the old woman when she didn't have to. In the evening, she had lain down immediately after eating, while Zoug, who usually went to sleep at the same time with her, had stayed up longer, until everyone else had gone to sleep already.

He'd felt the need to be alone for a while - in winter, that was a hard thing to do, since it was often impossible to leave the cave due to the high snows. Looking into the flickering flames, he'd sat and contemplated the events of the last moon. He, too, felt grieved by the loss of the boy he had never got to meet and who should have grown up at his hearth. If not for him, he would never have taken Ayla for his mate, and he had been looking forward to a little one tugging at his beard and asking for stories once more.

He would have gladly welcomed a little girl whom Ayla could teach about medicines, and he was certain that any daughter of hers would have been as hardworking and smart as her. But to know that it had been a boy . . . It stung to imagine how their life could have been. How he - and Ayla, too, he thought with a mix of surprise and pride for his mate - could have taught him the sling, how they might have gone out to hunt, coming home proudly after the boy would have made his first small kill.

He still remembered Grod's first kill so many years ago: he had speared a fat hamster by sheer luck with the first little spear that Zoug had made him, and Uva had prepared it for his evening meal that day. At least he had those fond memories, Zoug thought when he finally banked the fire and slipped into his furs next to his mate.

He would have expected for Ayla to be long asleep, but she turned around to snuggle against him, and he felt the wetness of her cheek on his chest. As she began shaking in his arms, pressing closer against him, he petted her hair as he usually did. Had she lain awake all this time, waiting for him?

Finally, she was silent, but he could feel from her body language that she was still awake.

"Ayla." Zoug sat up, and she did the same, wiping at her wet cheeks with her hands. "Is there anything that you need? Anything that Aba or I, or anybody could do to help you?"

Ayla shook her head. "I am grateful, Zoug, I truly am. I'm lucky to have such a considerate mate. But there is nothing to be done."

She seemed to want to say more, her hands hovering uncertainly, and Zoug patiently waited for her to formulate her thoughts, like he had been used to doing with Uva, who had needed more time and more prompting than Ayla to speak to him more freely, the way he preferred it.

"I just . . . . I'm trying so hard," Ayla said in the end. "I try to distract myself with work, talking to you or Aba, or thinking about the Clan Gathering next summer. But it never works for long. I can't seem to really think about anything but my baby. My son. I imagine how it would have been, how he might have grown up, but then . . . I don't even know his name, Zoug. He'll never have one. He won't run or play or hunt, and I can't ever hold him at night, or watch as he takes a mate one day. All of that hurts, but to think that I'll never even know his name - that's the worst thing of all. It's like he never even existed."

Zoug was at a loss. What was there that he could do or say? Ayla's son hadn't lived, had not been counted among the Clan. Ayla was right in that he might as well not have existed at all. That was the tradition. And yet, hadn't he been growing inside her for several moons? Hadn't she and Zoug felt him move, strong and alive? Zoug looked at the face of his mate, seeing the puffy redness of her eyes - the visible sign of her grief - even in the low light from the banked fire, and he made a decision.

"Durc," he said softly, so that none but her would hear it even by accident. "I would have asked Mog-ur to call your son Durc, after the legend."

Ayla was staring at him wide-eyed - naming a child before the naming ceremony was against all tradition, and thus, the name a stillborn baby or a baby who hadn't been accepted into the Clan might have had was never spoken.

"You can't tell anybody," he added quickly.

Immediately, Ayla shook her head. "I won't." Slowly, her happy grimace spread over her face, but it was strange in that it looked more sad than happy.

"Durc," she said. "He would have been ours, Zoug. My son, and the son of your hearth. We'd have raised him together, taught him to hunt with the sling together." There was some more water running down her cheeks, but she didn't seem as upset anymore.

"Yes," he agreed, struck by the fact that she had been thinking about the same things as he. "Doing that would have brought me great pleasure. But we shouldn't say the name again," he cautioned after a short silence. "He was not truly named, and it might anger the spirits. We don't want to bring their displeasure down on us."

"Just knowing it is enough, and knowing you chose it for my favourite legend," Ayla said. Zoug was gratified that she'd immediately understood his intention behind the name. His mate truly was an intelligent woman. "But do you think the spirits are angry with you for telling me?"

"I'm not a mog-ur, so I can't be certain, but I'd like to think that they will understand."

Her happy grimace turned just a little brighter, then, and she moved back into his embrace, not resisting as he pulled her down on the furs again.

.-.-.-.-.-.

As time went by and spring came closer, Ayla found that while she was still grieving, her daily tasks, and life in general, became easier again. She didn't feel anymore like it hurt her to even breathe, and often, when she would have let grief overwhelm her in the early days after her loss, now she would look at her mate and remember his words of love, and the night that he had revealed her son's name to her.

Durc. She never said it out loud, but knowing it somehow helped her to feel more at peace, as if she now held a piece of him that couldn't be taken away. Durc had existed, had been a real child inside her, no matter what Clan traditions said.

She knew that once the snow would melt away and the ground thaw, she would have to go and bury him - Iza had not been healthy enough to go out into the high snow and dispose of him for her, and Ayla wanted his body buried properly so no predators could touch him. But she had decided to think of that when the time came, or else she wouldn't be able to face each day. She would go and do her duty, and then she would go home to her mate, and he would hold her, and the next day would come, and the next, and it would get easier, bit by bit.

And then, when the snow was almost gone and the first warm winds blew, coaxing the clan out of the cave, the spring fever hit them. Most members of the clan fell ill; Iza and Ayla spent their days tending them, assisted by Uba, and Ayla had no time to think of anything else.

Zoug was among the first, and in between caring for the rest of the clan, cooking rushed meals, and spending short, interrupted nights in the furs beside him, Ayla constantly begged the totems for his survival. To her great relief, his sickness was only mild, and he was on the mend again only a couple of days after his first symptoms. She wouldn't have known how to cope had she lost her mate as well.

Aba was less lucky, and within the three days of contracting the fever, she succumbed to it. She had gone home to Droog's hearth only a moon ago, and Ayla was glad that at least she had been able to spend her last days with her family again. She wouldn't forget Aba's help and care.

Old Dorv, too, was on the brink of death, but he recovered. So did Borg, Groob, and Ika, who all had been seriously ill, as well as Grev, Oga's second son, whose little body had burnt so hot that Iza was amazed that he had survived it.

In the end, while everyone else was recovering again, Iza fell sick. Ayla was alarmed at how quickly her illness progressed: in the morning, Iza had still been tending Ika and Dorv, who were still weak; in the afternoon, she was already burning with fever, and that night, she developed a deep, rattling cough that was audible in the entire cave.

Ayla spent every moment at her mother's side. When it had become clear how serious Iza's illness was, Zoug had suggested he live at Grod's hearth for the time being, and she had accepted immediately. Now, assisted by Uba and the girl's memories, she was using everything she had ever learnt from Iza to make sure that she would survive.

It took a phase of the moon and two more days, and more than once, Ayla thought she would lose Iza. Most of the time, her mother was delirious, and at one point she had begun coughing up blood. But Ayla didn't give up, trying ways of healing that Iza had never shown her, but which she had come up with by herself by combining what she knew with new ideas. Finally, Iza's fever broke and her cough subsided, though it didn't fully disappear.

"You truly are a medicine woman worthy of the first line," Iza praised her when she was stronger again and they talked about the innovative methods Ayla had employed over a cup of tea. "Some of these things, I might never have thought about. To use the herbs for Creb's rheumatism as a chest plaster - how did you get the idea?"

Ayla could only shrug. "I thought about your symptoms, and what I could possibly do to help them. I knew what those herbs do, how they penetrate deep with warmth, and I thought that would loosen the phlegm and help you get rid of it without coughing so hard. It seemed to make sense, even if it was new. But I don't know why I think this way, I just do."

"It does make sense," Iza agreed, "and now that treatment of yours will be passed down to future generations with the memories. Your different way of thinking is valuable to the Clan, never doubt it."

Ayla flushed with the praise; usually, her differences were looked at as something she needed to suppress. But recently, with Zoug showing his appreciation of her unusual ways, and now Iza praising them aiding her healing skills, it seemed that maybe being as different as she was wasn't quite as terrible. Maybe she could be all that she had hoped: a good mate, a hunter, a medicine woman.

But not a mother. A lump formed in her chest at the thought, and it only grew when Iza spoke next.

"There's something we need to talk about, Ayla. Spring is coming, and the ground has nearly thawed. Just a few more days, and the time will have come for you to bury your baby."