Ancient Eden

Mu Qing, with a pale face, almost flew to that ditch in the settlement. She forcefully wanted to expel what he had left in her body the night before. She was aware that doing that even right after the matter wasn’t very effective, not to mention doing it after an entire night had passed? But she couldn’t help herself, she had to do it.

She nervously felt that she had to do something about it, there was no other measure of remedy in this place.

When Mu Qing walked all the way back, her entire person was in the daze, and she didn’t even hear Youyou calling for her name. She only reacted when she came forward and grabbed Mu Qing’s hand. She forced herself to smile at her and said, “I’m not hungry.”

She thought Youyou was telling her to go eat breakfast, and she answered using the native words she had just learned.

She had absolutely no desire to eat at the moment.

Youyou chuckled and shook her head, before pulling her towards the hut of her family. Mu Qing followed her, and bent her waist to go inside, only to see that Naduo was sitting cross-legged on the floor, slowly rubbing something with a very smooth and polished pebble.

It was the snakeskin that had been hanging in Li Mang’s hut. She was now using the pebble to rub the inner surface.

When Naduo saw her coming, she revealed a smile on her face, and beckoned to her. That’s when she took the snakeskin, which had now turned much more soft because of her polishing,  and gestured around Mu Qing’s waist.

Mu Qing somewhat understood her meaning. According to her understanding, this morning Li Mang had probably handed this thing over to Naduo and entrusted her to make a snakeskin skirt for her.

She hurriedly waved her hand and took a step back.

These past few days, she had not washed her jeans, fearing that they would not be dry in just a night time and that she would have no pants to wear the next day. Adding to that the fact that it was very hot during the day, she did want to get herself a miniskirt to wear like the women here did, so that she could alternate wearing the skirt and her pants. But this snakeskin, although she saw it every day hanging there, but she never thought about having it.

She still remembered very clearly the look in the eyes of that young plump girl when she first laid her eyes on this thing.

Naduo forcibly pulled her back to have her body measured. Seeing that she was still refusing, she smiled brightly and pointed to Youyou, before extending her hands towards her small belly to gently stroke it. She then said a few words. Mu Qing guessed that she was speaking about having a child.

Much later, Mu Qing would learn that the snake was a symbol of fertility in this clan. When women wished to have children, they would beg their men to hunt a female snakeskin and bring it to them, so that they could make it into a skirt to wrap around themselves. It was believed that this could allow them to have the same ability to reproduce as snakes.

And this snakeskin, was the very kind they dreamed about.

It was the kind that was difficult to see usually, the method to catch it was to light a fire in places where they might appear. The female snake, feeling the fire, out of their nature that feared fires, would swarm towards the fire, and secrete mucus with their body to extinguish it. That was the only good opportunity to catch them, but the chances to draw them out using this method were very low, so each one of these snakeskins was invaluable.

At this time, naturally Mu Qing did not know the meaning behind the snakeskin, she only thought that it was probably something like a luxury and precious kind of item. But she guessed more or less the meaning behind Naduo’s actions. Naduo was obviously talking about her getting pregnant.

After spending so many days with each other, she guessed that Naduo was probably Li Mang’s elder sister or some other kind of very close blood relative, which was why their relationship was so close.

But that didn’t mean she could calmly accept Naduo’s good intentions with open arms. Just thinking about what the man had done to her the night before, before early in the morning, carrying in a haste the snakeskin to tell Naduo about it, and then asking her to make a snakeskin skirt for her, she felt embarrassed, her face and her ears turned red, feeling like she had been insulted. If felt as if the snakeskin was a reward in exchange for her flesh, or like he was paying for the service of a prostitute.