With each passing hour, the world darkened yet more. The ocean smelled bloody. Yetu wanted to dive into it and revel in the coming storm.
She didn’t know where she belonged, if returning to the wajinru would mean the death of her. But she wasn’t suited for life here.
And where was here?
“What do you mean?” asked Oori.
“Where are we? In the world? If you tell me a name, I might know it,” Yetu explained.
“Why? What does it matter where any place is, unless you are trying to return to it? It’d do you well not to think of here at all. You’re trying to find yourself, aren’t you? To do that you must go. Thinking of this place will only hold you back,” said Oori.
The storm had arrived and hadn’t stopped. It had been raining on and off for two days, and the worst of it was yet to come. Yetu could tell by the look of the waves. She felt… She felt a shadow in the water. Even in the little tidal pool. She could liken it only to the vague whiff on her skin she used to get as a child when there was a shark nearby, hungry for her organs.
“I’m trying to get oriented,” she said. If she knew where she was in relation to everything else, she could better read the sky and the waves. How big was the land mass they were on? She couldn’t get a sense of it locked away in this tiny cage.
“You need to be worrying about out there. Not here. You have healed. Only fear keeps you locked in this thing. What did you tell me before? That you stopped being a historian or whatever it was so you could be free of all that pain. Not so you could waste away your days in a tidal pool,” said Oori, who was sitting in the pool bathing herself. She’d started doing that now. In addition to her morning visits, she came after supper to bathe in the tidal pool.
Yetu wasn’t sure what the etiquette on these kinds of matters were, but she appreciated seeing more and more of Oori’s body. Two-legs covered every part of themselves with clothing, their bodies held in secret from one another. Yetu had wondered at first if it was something like a clam, a defensive casing to protect the soft flesh.
But their clothes were not protective. They were soft. Little more than a bit of woven kelp.
“Stop staring,” said Oori.
Yetu looked down at the water. “Apologies,” she said. She’d only been curious about the differences between two-legs and wajinru. There were so many. “But may I ask you a question about your body? Well, not yours in particular, but two-legs bodies.”
Oori rubbed her body with a mixture of ashes, beef fat, and numerous different flower petals. She scrubbed it all in with a cloth, rubbing till her dark brown skin turned red in places, revealing the blood underneath, the aliveness of her.
“You may ask. But only if I may ask questions of you, too,” said Oori.
Yetu’s heartbeat quickened when she heard Oori’s proposal, but she told herself to remain calm so as not to scare Oori off. Yetu forced her face into a picture of stillness to hide her excitement. How pleasing to think Oori had questions for her just as Yetu had questions for Oori. Oori wanted to know more about Yetu. She believed there was a Yetu to get to know at all.
“Go on, then, before I change my mind,” said Oori. “Ask.”
Yetu wasn’t sure how to phrase her question, as she sensed such topics were taboo among the two-legs based on some conversations she’d had with Suka.
“Come on. Anything,” said Oori.
Yetu wiggled her tail fin in the water to take in oxygen, a way of breathing she found more calming than sucking air from the sky through her mouth. “Why is it that some two-legs’ genitals hang out such that they are visible through the thin cloth they wear, and why are others’ genitals tucked in, only to come out during coupling, I presume?”
Yetu expected Oori to laugh, the way Suka had when Yetu had asked them about breasts. Oori didn’t laugh, though. At best, she raised a brow. Bit her lip.
“I’m actually not sure where to start with that,” said Oori.
“Is it a choice?” Yetu pressed. Wajinru bodies didn’t tend to have differences along those lines, but like two-legs, there were men, women, both, and neither. Such things were self-determined, and Yetu wondered if two-legs had body self-determination too. “You keep yours inside of you. Is that a protective measure, then?”
The cloth Oori used to clean herself had become brown with dead skin and dirt, so she dipped it into the pool to clean it off. When she was done, she worked more of her ash mixture into it and rubbed it over the parts of her body that gave off odor.
“It is not a choice, really. People have different bodies. Different… configurations. There is nothing tucked up inside of me. Just a vulva, which is, hmm, a passage that connects—”
“I know what it is,” said Yetu. “Does sperm come out of it, then?”
“No,” said Oori, unflustered by the questions, which relieved Yetu. Wajinru discussed bodies openly. They were largely if not always naked in front of one another. Through the water, they could feel and hear private things that happened miles away.
Suka, Nura, and the other two-legs on this piece of land seemed less frank about matters. Yetu only knew the precise details of Oori’s nakedness because she’d taken to bathing here.
“Does sperm come out of yours?” asked Oori.
Yetu shook her head. “Wajinru have a place to envelope, and then there’s something else, and that is what gives sperm. Yet it is always tucked away until the time of mating.”
“You have both?” asked Oori.
“Of course.”
Oori nodded. “That explains your questions, then. Humans aren’t like that. Not everyone is the same. Not everyone can mate with everyone else and expect a child.”
Understanding now, Yetu decided to press further. “When two-legs mate, does it feel good?” she asked, shocked at her own brazenness. Even among wajinru, such questions were considered a personal matter.
“For many,” said Oori, as usual, matter-of-fact. Though she showed no signs of continued interest in this conversation, she showed no signs of annoyance either. “For me personally? Only with someone who is quite special in a specific kind of way.”
“Someone like who?” asked Yetu.
Oori shook her head. “It is my turn to ask a question.”
Smiling, Yetu nodded. “Fair enough. Ask me anything. Please.” Perhaps she was too eager. As Oori requested, she wasn’t looking at her, but she could smell her and feel the shape of her strange two legs, her split fins, in the water. And the contours of her belly, breasts, and shoulders.
“If wajinru all have such similar parts, how do you choose who does what when you couple?” asked Oori.
Couple was an odd word choice, given it could involve any number of wajinru, frequently up to five, but Yetu didn’t inquire further. “What do you mean, who does what?”
“Say you, Yetu, found another wajinru you wanted to be with. Do you… untuck?” asked Oori. It was the first time Yetu heard a hint of nervousness and embarrassment in her voice. “Or do you leave it away so that the other may untuck, and… you know, insert it into you?”
Heat flooded Yetu’s body at Oori’s words. She felt dizzy. There was a tugging at the bottom of her belly, a need.
“It is my understanding that it is most common for everything to be… engaged at once,” said Yetu. “And when not, I suppose it is decided based on the preferences of the wajinru involved in the heat of the moment.”
“It is your understanding? Have you not—?”
“I haven’t,” said Yetu. The urge to avert her gaze overwhelmed her, but it was supplanted by the need to examine every detail of Oori’s face. She saw it with her eyes, but she also felt it against her skin, the shape of the passing breeze painting a picture of it on her scaled flesh.