Mudminnow River fiend

there it was - a red barrage of hateful words, strung along by perilous emotional injury. indra might have withstood the force of the gale, but it was pained tremor in his tone that drew the russet she-wolf's contemptuous attention. he had no right to act hurt - to play the victim when it was she that had received the cruelest cut.

she had put her faith in him -- and he had taken it, chewed it around between the harsh glint of his snapping teeth, and spat its' shriveled form out on the ground for all the world to mock. here sits indra's faith, soggy and tattered like sheaves of rotted paper and woefully, woefully small.

she hated that for a moment she might have believed where she had done him wrong - just for a second she entertained his perspective: that she had shifted him and the rest of bearclaw around like little strategic wood-carved pieces on an admiral's carefully laid war-map. that she had pushed them to new places without considering their own opinions on the matter.... or worse yet, their feelings....

the horror of that realization slapped her like a cold crest of a wave. but she would not let him see it -- especially not in the heat of their derisive exchange. she had committed to the move for all the right reasons: they couldn't rely on xan anymore, the valley was not their own and their children would not truly grow there, they were slowly becoming rotted and rooted in place -- the move was an assurance for her children's futures, not her own private happiness.

a thorny glint remained in her eyes, even as he fumbled ineptly over his own designs - for him, for her. a flash of something cold rinsed through her expression -- did he truly think her just an object, some little piece to compete with and then hang up on some distant shelf, a relic of a past endeavor won -- and not a living, breathing thing to coexist right next to him for the rest of his life? not something with her own individual needs and wants, private pursuits or sighing hopes?

tadec would have never treated her this way -- a twinge of something rueful and bitter stirred within her that he was gone.

contempt bladed her, needling down into curled and cynic frown. she had a hot retort for every cutting flaw he pointed out in her -- but in the end, what was the point? they wouldn't see eye to eye, they wouldn't reconcile -- he would go on seeing her as some stupid hunk of meat useful to him only for her uterus -- and she would go on seeing him as a hot-tempered, insecure snake.

in the end, there was hurt too -- hurt that she had misinterpreted his original discomfiture with the valley, hurt and shame that she had not considered anyone else but her and laurel's children (oh god, was that really true?), that no matter how hard she tried to fix or assay the trickling flaws in her life, eventually they bulged wildly out of her control..

"just like you are forcing me -- without asking my own opinion on the matter -- whether or not i was willing to be.... yours?" the hurt spilled out into a grievous war-wound -- and something not unlike the turbulent rush of blood stemmed from the gaping wound. "i did it for their happiness - not mine. not yours. not laurel's. they are my future." and she would not apologize - not to him - for her devout belief that ensuring her children's (both adopted and blood) futures was somehow a nobler pursuit than her own personal happiness... consequences be damned, his judging eyes could go to hell.

something else slipped in her guarded heart besides the pangs of aching grief - something quiet and demure, content but restless -- the strange and buzzing realization that he... liked her?