Lowest-5

"Knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock." A faint cracking sound slipped through the wall of the yurt and woke me. “Knock-knock... knock-knock...” Smiling in the dark, I gently removed a woman’s hand from my chest—wet with the sweat of the night—and carefully got up from the fur bed. Feeling for my clothes, I dressed without hurry, crawled out of the warm yurt, not forgetting to draw the curtain. I shivered, looked at the small fire barely still burning in the center of the tent, and went outside. Yawning at length, I closed the slanted wooden door and, walking around the stone-lined yurt, sat by another yellow-and-blue fire. The kettle softly whistled as it boiled on the tripod, and the burning gas, almost hidden in the earth, hissed with a barely audible hum from its pipes. Old Gyrygol, sitting on an old white deer hide worn thin with age, didn’t even look at me and continued his work..."