She half-awoke angrily, as if someone had shoved her.
Juan was asleep. Yolanda rolled off their mattress and crawled to the far corner of the room. She scratched at the dry tears on her face, shivered in the warm midnight air. She felt rubbed raw. A sticky fluid flowed down her leg and she thought she was bleeding.
She was confused. She liked Juan, much more than any of the others who had chased and teased her. He had held her hand and twice he had kissed her and it was gentle and nice, like her mother's touch. This was not like that. In the cool dark she washed the burning between her legs.
"Leave me be, Juan!" she grumbled. She moved instinctively, pushed one hand out in front of her to keep him away. The other gathered a clump of skirt and stuffed it between her legs, her fingers splayed like iron rungs on a grate.
He was a sly jackal, that one, and as horny as a goat. A virgin of thirteen when they married, she’d learned quickly not to fall asleep with her back to him.
Not a good night for hunting, the moon full tricky with shadows and the jackal appeared double his size. His yellow grey fur was matted with burrs and dried blood. He stunk of three days of mating with females stringy and old. But he also was long past his prime. His tail hung in tatters, one rear leg was shriveled and slow, many of his teeth had rotted in pain and his right ear hung folded in half.
Out here, life was hard for the healthy. For the old, it was keep moving or die.
"Stay away, animal," Yolanda mumbled back into sleep.