The Mountain

I took Tamara on the safety tour first. Down to the cliff so she knew the danger of walking at night. I showed her the shirt I tied to the tree and mimed being lost, finding the shirt and pointed North, toward the camp. She tapped her temple and smiled.

The snow was melting quickly as the sun reached its zenith. The trees protected a lot of it, so we would probably still have water the next morning. We traveled east, looking for supplies and rocks. Tamara thought ahead and brought an empty suitcase to carry what we found. Being a man, I tried to carry it for her. She snatched it back, pointed at her breasts and then put her hand on her hip with an expression of disgust. I smiled and raised my hands in surrender. "Yes, because you're a woman. It won't happen again." She smiled when I understood. She would pull her weight whether I liked it or not. She was so damn intriguing.

We found a wheel assembly that had been ripped from the plane. I saw nothing of value, but Tamara was able to salvage some of the wiring at its base. Three, two foot long colored wires that might come in handy. I tapped my temple to her.

Rocks were hard to find. A lot of the stone we saw was structured in layers and would flake. Slowly we gathered some useful solid rock as the snow melted and exposed them. I was walking, looking at the ground when I realized that Tamara had stopped. I turned and saw her standing by the suitcase, looking at it like she didn't know what it was. I moved back to her, shrugging my shoulders to let her know I wondered what was going on. She blushed a bit, pointed at me then back at the suitcase.

I grabbed the handle and lifted what was now a very heavy rock-laden carrying case. I put it back down and gave my best impression of Tarzan and beat my chest. I enjoyed making her laugh. The irony of her having to give up her women-are-equal for a brief moment was forgotten as we laughed together. I hefted the case with both arms and decided it was time to head back. I wasn't going to admit the case was nearing my weight limit as well. I liked being stronger since she was beginning to seem smarter.

On our way back, I spotted the shoe. Tamara picked up the small tennis shoe and nodded her head and cradled her arms. I set down the suitcase, and we began a quick search of the area. I was again surprised by the lack of deep emotion from Tamara. She obviously had an interest in finding her child, but there was none of the misery I had expected. I was upset that she wasn't upset when we gave up the search an hour later. His shoe may have been here, but his body was not. There was always the slim chance he was with another survivor. Alone, I didn't see him lasting a night.

Tamara took a deep breath, sighed with one last look around then pointed back to our camp. I hefted the suitcase and followed her. She was rather callous for a mother, the first unpleasant thing about her. My impression of her was changing and not for the better. If it were my son, I would be cursing God to fight the anger and grief, not shrugging it off as an unwelcome loss.

We set the rocks we had gathered around the fire. Close enough to absorb the heat, but not so close as to be easily blackened. Tamara smiled at me while we worked. I didn't smile back, and she noticed. I shouldn't be judging her, but I was. I couldn't understand her uncaring attitude toward the death of her child. Without thinking, Tamara tossed her son's shoe toward our hovel. She didn't even look where it landed.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I shouted. The shoe was the only thing she had found of him.

Tamara was startled and looked at me like I was insane. She shrugged her shoulders and said something that sounded like a question. Her eyes narrowed along with mine. I stood and retrieved the shoe and pointed it at her. She shrugged again. I threw the shoe at her. Not hard, but the throw contained my obvious disgust.

Tamara stood and backed away. I saw some fear in her eyes. I raised my hands, palms out to stall her panic. It didn't. She began yelling at me and pointing at the shoe. Her finger made circles around the side of her head. She thought I was the crazy one.

I pointed at the shoe then made a motion with my hands to indicate a pregnant belly on me. Cradling my arms, I then rocked an imaginary baby. I followed with the plane crash, one hand flying into the other. I pointed at her and imitated shrugging off the death of her child. "How can you be so damn cold?" I watched her think. "What would your husband say?" I added, miming putting a ring on my ring finger. Tamara shook her head and tried to erase my mime with her hands.

Tamara duplicated my ring gesture and shook her head. She wasn't married. She copied my pregnant movement and pointed at the shoe shaking her head while speaking desperately. It wasn't her child. She reached into the fire and retrieved a stick that hadn't begun to burn, moved over to the log and sat down, waving me over to sit next to her. I did.

Tamara drew a stick figure in the dirt. Another next to it. She added a heart above then drew a smaller, child, figure next to the parents. She looked at me and I nodded my head, the shame beginning to show on my face. I shouldn't have judged her so quickly. She drew a line through the heart, breaking it. Using her hands, she made angry PacMan like chompers, facing each other, symbolizing a bickering couple. The tone of her words emphasized her play. She drew an arched line from one of the parents to about a foot away, then redrew the figure there and erased the original. I nodded, recognizing a divorce.

Tamara drew another figure between the parents and pointed at herself. I nodded. She drew a symbol above her stick head that I didn't recognize. She thought for a moment then replaced it with the Euro symbol. I borrowed the stick and drew a dollar sign above that. She smiled and nodded. She drew a line from her to the child, then moved the stick back and forth between the parents. It was her job to transport the child between the parents who must have moved far apart from each other. I was a fool.

I took Tamara's hand in mine, patted it and tried to look contrite. "I'm sorry I misjudged you." She squeezed my hand and smiled. I was forgiven. She pointed at her rendition of the child, made an arch across the sky, symbolizing a day and held up two fingers. She had only known the boy for two days. Enough time to feel sad, but not long enough to fully bond. Her empathy was normal. My idiocy was reaching new heights. For some reason, I repeated the ring gesture and shook my head. "I'm not married either." I could have sworn she blushed.

I stood and grabbed the cook pot. I filled it with snow that was protected from the sun by the trees. We would have water today and possibly tomorrow morning. After that, we were at the mercy of the weather. Tamara relieved me of the pot and set it near the fire.

While the snow melted, Tamara tied the ends of wires together to create a six-foot length. She went to the wood pile and found a stick about three feet long and an inch thick. I watched her work, wondering what she was thinking. She gave me a sly smile, proud of what she was creating and having fun watching me try to figure it out. She took one of the old man's long sleeve shirts and used the stick like a hanger. She held up her creation to me.

"You made a hanger?" I asked, shrugging my shoulders. Tamara bit her bottom lip to hold back her smile. I think she didn't want me to feel stupid. She pointed toward the cliff then walked over to a small tree and mimed tying off the other end of the wire, then tossing the shirt over the cliff. Ingenious! A symbol announcing our location. Something that could be seen from the air if a plane was searching in the valley. I rose smiling, pointing at her and tapping my head. "You are one smart woman." A smart woman with a glorious smile.

We went to the cliff immediately and found a suitable tree that was close enough to the edge, but a small enough diameter to not need a lot of the wire to be secured. Tamara laid down and lowered the shirt over the edge. When she squirmed back and rose, her prideful smile had grown. It was infectious. I held out my hand, and she folded hers into it. I walked Ms. Einstein back to the camp. The first pot of water was on me.

As the sun went down, we went to work on setting up the hovel for the night. Using our sock mittens, we loaded the hot rocks into the suitcase and hauled them into the hut. We placed them in two piles, front and back. Hopefully, that would make them last the longest. We brought in everything we had. No need to expose our necessities to the weather. When it was done, I let Tamara enter first and pick a side. I crawled in and sealed the entrance as I had the night before. It was nearly pitch black, which I assumed was what Tamara was commenting on.

I moved to my side, accidently crawling on Tamara for a moment. "Sorry." She giggled and pushed me lightly to my side. We organized the blankets blindly, and we both lay on our backs. I wasn't sure how to broach the subject about conserving our body heat by sharing. Now that she was awake, I would need permission. Without a shared language, it would be difficult to explain. If it got cold, it would be a necessity.

Tamara shifted, I sensed toward me. Her hand found my arm and she pulled me toward her. Ms. Einstein already figured it out. I rolled toward her, and she laughed and gently rolled me back. She would spoon into me. I assumed it made her feel more chaste. I rolled to the other side and tucked myself back into her. Her arm reached around me and drew me close. She snuggled her hips toward mine and reset the blankets. A few whispers of something I didn't understand and she became motionless. "Good night, Tamara," I whispered and closed my eyes.

The next two days were a series of exploration and improving our camp. We found nothing of the rest of the plane or any other debris from the crash. I guessed that the rest of the plane was below the cliff. Twice we had heard a plane engine and twice it never came close. We sent up our smoke signal and received no recognition. Our food would run out the next day, and our water supply had dwindled to two juice boxes.

We had been trading words, trying to improve our communication. Simple things like fire, water and I have to go pee were now understood without hand signals. We were building our own language from pieces of English and her language that I now knew was Armenian. It took a while to decipher that, but we worked it out by drawing rough country borders in the dirt. I surmised from our time together that her job of transporting the child was a lucky break. She was from a low-income family without a lot of opportunities. I had a basic understanding that Armenia had not fared well when the Soviet Union broke up. State imposed jobs had disappeared and little had been done to replace them.

Tamara had already figured out I was an American. She knew of Chicago, which was as close to my home as I could get without confusing her. I think I was able to describe my job fairly well. Describing an importer to someone without language was difficult. She may not have fully understood, but she gathered the gist enough to know I traveled a lot.

I found out she was from a family of five. A mother, her, and three brothers. Her father had passed away many years ago. Her job transporting the boy was the only job the family had at the time. Her brothers did odd jobs when they could. Other than that, they survived with money from the diaspora, Armenians that lived outside of the country. I was familiar enough with the concept that I caught on quickly.

Tamara was very comfortable to hang out with, not that we had a choice. We never seemed to feel pressure to fill the silence. We always sat on the same log around the fire, always within an arm's reach.

My thoughts drifted to Kimberly as the third night approached. She, or I, would have jumped off the cliff by now. There was none of the comfort I felt with Tamara. Kimberly and I needed a goal to be with each other. I looked over at Tamara, and she smiled at my attention. I smiled back, and Kimberly drifted from my mind. I was more comfortable with a woman that I could barely talk too. It didn't hurt that the woman was awfully cute. She could use a bath, but so could I.

I spooned into Tamara that night. We couldn't keep sleeping on one side, not without something softer than pine needles. When I wrapped my hand around her, she took it and tucked it under her breasts and whispered something. I suspected it was to tell me not to get any ideas. Well, she couldn't tell me what to think. I smiled, and I knew she felt it when she gave my hand a squeeze. I ignored the stirrings of desire. The last thing she needed was to feel my reaction growing. I kept my thoughts as clean as I could, closed my eyes, and dreamed dirty.

The wind woke me well before morning. It was strong and sounded like it was coming in waves from different directions. The hut was colder than it had been on previous nights. It felt as if the rocks had already lost their heat. Tamara said something that sounded desperate. "It will be alright," I responded and hugged her closer as she tucked deeper into me. I could feel her shivering and wasn't sure if it was from the cold or the unrelenting sound of the wind. We nodded off and on the rest of the night. The wind never ceased.

When the hovel somewhat brightened with morning light leaking through the cracks, I braved the cold and left the blankets to look outside. The wind was still violent, so I only disassembled a small portion of the seal at the door. Death was outside.

A blizzard had covered our campground in an undulating blanket of white. Cold specks of snow whipped through the opening and stung my cheek. I hurriedly replaced the seal as the temperature inside dropped quickly. Tamara was awake with eyes wide. I knew what the blizzard meant; I could see she saw it as well. Winter had come and we had run out of time. We were in our grave.

"I'm sorry," I said to Tamara. I should have tried harder. I could have found a way down, maybe attempted the cliff. I didn't want her to die here.

Tamara held out her hand to coax me back under the blankets. The concern on her face made me want to cry. I was useless against a blizzard. She pulled me into a hug and gripped me hard. I could feel warm tears fall on my neck, and there was nothing I could do. "I am so sorry," I repeated. Her head pulled back, and I saw her wet eyes in the dim light. She whispered something warm. Lovely words for the end the world.

I wiped the tears off her cheeks with my finger. "I wish I would have met you years ago," I admitted. There wouldn't be enough time for her understand. No charade could convey my meaning. Her eyes closed and she tilted her head forward. My lips found hers. She understood the meaning if not my words.

I had forgotten how much feeling could be spawned by soft lips. Tamara's hands encompassed my head as she drew me in harder, nibbling on my lower lip, tickling it lightly with her tongue. I broke through the last barrier of hesitancy and threw myself into her passion. A warmth spread through my body as the blizzard raged outside. Our lips danced wonderfully, our tongues embracing gently, then with heated passion. I wanted all of her. In her arms was where I wanted to die.

My hands roamed down Tamara's side, caressing poorly through her clothes. Her lips separated from mine, and she whispered something. "I don't understand," I returned. She knew my ignorant look, a cue often used between us. She took my hand in hers and pulled it slowly between her legs. She whispered the same words, almost as a question. "I would never deny you," I whispered as I cupped her sex through her pants. She had no idea how much her smile excited me.

Death was blowing hard outside, inside we were laughing. It was a glorious struggle to remove each other's clothes in such tight confines. Tamara was laughing so hard at my efforts; it made it nearly impossible. We finally had to surrender to the inevitable and remove our own clothes after I nearly broke my wrist trying to get her shirt off. Once we were done, the real exploration began.

Sometimes beauty takes your breath away. Sometimes you fear that touching will forever alter it. Sometimes beauty is in the touching itself. That is how I experienced Tamara's beauty. Her exquisite reactions to my hand traveling along her abdomen, moans that needed no translation when I found her breasts, and soft caresses urging me along. I tasted her neck and left a trail of kisses to her breasts. Luxurious words came from her mouth as my lips found her nipple. I could only translate the feelings, for they echoed mine.

My lips found hers again as my hand traveled slowly down between her legs. She smiled as she spread her legs and let me explore. I shared the air of her moans, teasing her carefully, her wetness urging me to be bolder. Her hand found my erection, and she opened her eyes. "Jonathan," she moaned, her accent making my name sound so wonderful.

I moved onto Tamara, careful to keep the blankets over us. We might freeze to death in an hour, but right now, I wanted to live. Smiling, she guided me to our first coupling. Watching her expression change when I entered her increased my desire. She lost her smile and sucked in a deep breath as I lowered myself into her. When our hips met, she exhaled and kissed me with such force, I thought we might merge into one being. Her legs wrapped around me, altering the blankets and allowing some cold to enter our space. It didn't matter anymore.

"Jonathan," Tamara whispered as her hips began to move into me. I countered the movement, enjoying her desire, trying to stall mine. We moved as if we had always been together. She seemed to know where I needed her and her moans told me that is exactly where she wanted to be. There was no struggling for comfort, no wasted movements, just shared joy. Each movement brought pleasure that added to the pleasure before it.

Tamara began to shake and her hips were driving into me, grinding on my down stroke. I was near my limit as I watched her near hers. I dropped my lips to her ear and whispered, "Tamara my sweet." Her back arched, and the most wondrous moan escaped her lips. I held myself in as deep as I could as she ground her pelvis into mine.

"Jonathan," she yelled. Bliss exploded inside of me as I felt myself empty into her. Her hands were pulling me deeper as her legs weakened. I struggled to breathe as conscious control of my body left me. I recognized my own groan as the wonderment overwhelmed me. A moment of ecstasy that not even a blizzard could compete with.

I collapsed on to Tamara, using my elbows to lesson my weight. My breath was coming in gasps and, despite the cold, we were sweating. I felt the beginnings of her chuckle before I heard it. I looked up at a beautiful happy smiling woman who spoke quickly then chuckled some more. "Yes," I agreed, "we are quite good at it." I have no idea how I knew what she was saying. I could just feel it was right.

Tamara squeezed me inside of her which caused me to twitch. She found that funny and I found it sexy. I reached up and pushed her hair away from her sweaty face. This time, I kissed her like a lover. Soft with the intent that she never forget. Her smile disappeared, and her eyes looked into mine. More lovely words were spoken softly, with feeling. "I love you as well," I said. Her tears told me she understood. I buried mine in her shoulder.

The killer blizzard was its own worst enemy. It blew snow under the tree that piled onto our hovel, insulating us from the bitter winds. We spent the day, as it blew on, making love like the last two people on earth. I found where Tamara was ticklish. I tortured her till she grabbed my scrotum with a devious smile. Not wanting to be neutered, I relented. This time, she beat her chest like Tarzan. I loved playing with her. I loved being tender with her. I loved just being with her. Touching and kissing were all the language we needed.