Sequoia Coast [m] sun feathers

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"go and get the packs," cen said evenly.

but for all the calm in his voice, his eyes burned with near-hate into @Red Leaf. once more she had humiliated him, but this time she had seemed to revel in it.

he pointed to the pile of driftwood beneath which he had placed their things. she would have to grovel to get down so far with her large belly. cen waited.

perhaps it was the hormones which created a rising bitterness within red leaf, but today, she was much less complacent.
rodyn had been kind to them, welcomed them into his home. he had tried his best to exchange words with her, and all cen had greeted her with was an infantilizing ire. he had lied to her. he had laughed at her.
and so she followed him in a storm of stomping feet and a putrid gaze. what is wrong with you? it came more as a plead than anything despite her anger, lips curled and strained tight as her ears bend to a slant. you lied to me! you told me that i could not speak because these people could all be the flesh eaters. that is useless paranoia. these are nice, friendly folk! and the only reason we are going to have a place to sleep tonight is because of me!
she stands far away from him, seething, defiant. her fists strike the sand beneath her. she almost dared him to hit her. would he, if it would be noticeable by the villagers? you can get them yourself. i am not going to be treated this way.

cen approached with the same assured calm. "you are hysterical because you are weak. you do not trust me, red leaf. but you trust too easily any other man who is not me." accusation and anger vied in his voice now; he closed the space between them and thrust his face closer.

"i see the way men look at you. i see the way you invite it. i am not a fool, red leaf." his voice was dangerous, quiet. "you do not know who he is. you do not understand how kindness is used. i protected you from the glacier, all the way across the lanzadoii land. and here. and now you speak and shout against me, your husband."

cen pointed toward the village. "go, wife. if you do not trust me then go. the chieftain does not have a wife. or perhaps he has many, and i can trade you as another."

his eyes were mocking. "go. i do not need a weak woman who questions me on the long march. if you believe yourself wiser than all i have said, red leaf, then leave these things to me and make your own way in the village."

alone, with nothing, days from delivering the children of another man — what a prize she would be, she and her mouths to feed. and cen; if he left, no one would provide for red leaf as he did. was hunger and life as a third wife or a warrior's ease-woman preferable to being with him? cen waited for her decision to be made.

i am not a fool, cen, where had this spirit come from? red leaf stands against him like an iron wall, unflinching, unflappable. but even now as venom spills from the hot mouth, she looks at him with gentle eyes. perhaps that was where he saw weakness. that is not what this is about and you know it. do you think so little of me to assume that i am a cheater? that i am a slut?
she turns to face away from him before continuing, an ooze of scarlet from a bleeding heart placed upon her sleeve. he tells her to go — she will not. i do not want to leave you, it is almost a peace offering, a bargain. she pretends his words are not so sharp as to cut through her paper-thin skin. i married you. i am carrying your children. i only-- i only wish you were nicer to me.
what happened, cen? what happened to us? she knows the answer to this and yet she does not speak it aloud. sometimes, i just don't like what you have become. i am learning. so much has happened so fast, you have to understand that! is it a crime to want to raise our first children in a way that i know? a crime to want to make things easier for us as a family when we do not yet know how to be one?
she wets her lips with a pass of her tongue. the spark still rests in her throat, prepared to be lit, but she dissolves into a bleary-eyed shadow; fracturing beneath the weight of the stone cold husk of her lover, red leaf begins to cry. i want my husband back. i feel like i've lost him.

whether or not he would ever admit it, cen was moved by red leaf's tears. his heart ached; he wanted to wend her close and allow the warmth of her good true love to soothe the pain in his chest.

but gheli was between them. and ghaden.

an exhale.

"it is not wrong to want comfort. but it is not lanzadoii, red leaf. we do not live in shelters. our children are born beneath the sky. they grow beside the caribou calves. these people, this village — it is like what you have known."

ghaden! "a part of me drowned with him on that river." the hoarseness was so great in his voice that cen was forced to be silent for a moment. "yes. i have changed. i have become more lanzadoii. i have learned to trust myself. i know what i must do and who i must be. and i must never sacrifice any part of me, for anything."

he had come back here with the intention of beating her. now they only regarded one another with a near-mutual sorrow. at last he stopped and dragged the packs from beneath the pile of smooth, twisted wood. "i am unhappy when it seems you still do not understand who i am. or that you do not see I brought you here so you would not be forced to give birth as a lanzadoii woman. it is clear you do not want to be that."

cen felt a thousand ways, and then nothing. "i have been unkind. you anger me. and yet i keep this amulet because i cannot — because i cannot accept losing you. ever."

he turned away, hard teeth flinging the heavy hides over one shoulder. "but i mean this, red leaf. if you find some other man here who will accept your sharadoii ways, then i will not interfere."

wounded, cen wheeled from his wife's beautiful and stricken face, stalking in the direction of moontide.

it was the most hurt she had seen cen since ghaden had died.
silence clings to her for a long while before she rushes to stop him from walking away. the thought of finding another man, letting go of the last vestige of home and the love they once shared — this terrified her, and even more so was the idea that he thought she would ever do such a thing to him.
cen, look at me, she swallows the hard nodule in her throat, eyes glittering with stormy tears. i love you! i want to embrace the lanzadoii. i want to be strong, to raise our children strong! but it is not an adjustment that will be immediate, and i cannot pretend that it is. this is-- i am frightened, my love. my body is not yet used to the march. i am terrified, so very terrified, that the stress has harmed our children. i cannot shake this horrible fear that something will go wrong and that--
a breath.
that we-- you-- will lose another. and that i will lose you more than i feel i already have.
a trembling, teary gasp lifts from her lungs as if it had been trapped there.
sometimes it really hurts, cen. the things you do to me. do you know? know that it hurts?

the stiff muscles of his back knotted in anger and surprise as the passionate voice of his wife rose behind him. cen did not turn his eyes on red leaf, but he was still, eyes fixed unseeingly on the nearby sprawl of the trees which marked the edge of the plateau.

ghaden! he had held so much of gheli in him; her smile, her eyes, the way the boy put his head to one side when questioning his father. had cen ever laughed so much? when was the last time he had grinned in genuine joy? red leaf; he had thought her dancing eyes and sweet softness might ease him, might return that joy to his heart.

and for a time, she had. those days after gheli's death, cen had thought he might follow her. red leaf had danced with him when he had come to her valley, had guided him, had taught him sharadoii and loved ghaden.

yes. she had. the caribou hunter had never recognized it but he had always known it. red leaf had adored ghaden as deeply as if she had nurtured him with her own body. her screams of pain and pleading rent his ears again. 

it had been his uncles who had dragged her back; the hunters returned, the lanzadoii ringing red leaf and claiming that ghaden's death had been a punishment, an act of vengeance. cen had not understood; he had shoved his way to the front of their crowd to demand why the accusations had been leveled against his wife.

long ago black stick had raided a lanzadoii camp as part of initiation from boy to man. such raids were more good-natured than anything, for in the end they were all caribou. but the chieftain of that camp had not welcomed the insult, and took a war party after the sharadoii boys shortly thereafter. in the fray, startled caribou yearlings confused as to why they were truly fighting, a sharadoii wolf had been killed, cen's relative explained. he was grey stone, a hunter on his first raid, and ghaden's age. the shedding of blood during a boy's raid had not been forgotten.

it was then that cen found out his marriage to red leaf had been arranged, something he had never told her. yet while their meeting had not been organic, the feeling he felt for her was. surely his lanzadoii kin did not think that his wife, born generations after that conflict, had carried a blood feud forward?

tsaani had scoffed. cen had been gone trading for a long while, all his life. he had not stayed to know the politics of the caribou people, how inside factions they are divided into bands, how cen's father had been born to bitterbrush clan and so his sons were also. black stick's mother was round horn clan. now there was a blood debt between them, and if cen had not been so mired in grief for gheli and desire for red leaf, he might have questioned! might have questioned why a chieftain of the round horn had offered his daughter to a bitterbrush man. it had been a marriage made away from the lanzadoii and out from under the oversight of elders. and now cen had put them all into a mess.

red leaf was accused of carrying out the blood vengeance of her clan. ghaden's death paid for that of grey stone. 

after that, there had been an uproar. cen had refused to let them drag red leaf away for her own demise. all their words thus far had been in lanzadoii, even as his wife cowered; would this not only enrage round horn again? if black stick sent red leaf here to do this, he knows what we would do to her. and he would see justification in bringing warriors over the glacier, this time not as a boy's raid but as a war.

but the lanzadoii elders had said that only blood repaid blood, and if blood must be repaid for years, the lanzadoii must be the final ones to stand. if black stick wished to lose a daughter as well as a half-forgotten boy, then it would be done.

but cen had not let it happen. then i will leave. i will leave bitterbrush and i strike the name of sharadoii from red leaf. i will teach her new ways. the right ways. but i will never come back. then black stick has no reason to strike again. he has taken my son, if this is correct, but i will have his lineage.

the caribou hunter blinked, returning to this moment; his wife spoke of her hurts but not once had he ever told her of what he had surrendered to have her. if he asked of her black stick now she would only lie, her beautiful eyes flying wide and tearful —

"i should have left you with the sharadoii." his voice was quiet. "i do not have time for you to learn as slowly as you have. our children should have been born beside the caribou. but you were not ready." a weary sigh; he thought of ghaden. "i also do not wish to lose more children. so i bring you here, red leaf. you are not strong enough to be without others. i do not want you to die either trying to birth as a lanzadoii woman."

for her he had given up the glacier, the grave of his wife, the home of his people, and the name of his clan. now he even gave up the caribou march for her. and she spoke of her hurts.

resentment ate inside him. cen said nothing else, only began to walk once more.