the berrybright eyes glowed as if they were red moons. night fell across moonspear.
he stood in the evening light toward the base of the great village, breathing in the good scents as he faced in the direction of moontide.
he did not want to go.
chakliux turned away, bound by the ways of his people; and now he sought
@Tullik with long steps.
There had been scents on the breeze recently that made her stomach twist uncomfortably. Tullik retreated into the mountains until they smelled clear, and slowly came back down when she was sure it was over.
The sandpiper moved quick, her strides lengthy, corded muscle pulling and pushing her steps into a half jog back towards her den. In her maw, she held a horn, a very old one at that, one that must have fallen the past season from one of the goats. Why she had it, she did not know. But she had coveted it, so down it came with her.
The snap of branches made her freeze mid step, her periwinkle eyes widening. A thousand scenarios ran through her mind, all quieted when she found those bright eyes in the dark.
She carelessly let the horn drop to her feet.
Chakliux.
Now that she was looking, she could see his figure.
You startled me.
Truthfully, she had not expected anyone to be still awake.
"i did not mean it, tullik."
but there was a gravity as he bent his head to scent the thing she had dropped, then sought her eyes again. "tomorrow i go to moontide."
chakliux did not ask again, but his eyes held the desire for an answer.
his lodge would be empty, save for kannoyak. but he wanted tullik to take his share of it, and with that, him. and with it, a companion when chakliux was away, perhaps even a man she could grow to love in kannoyak.
seal hunters had their ways.
he wished some answer. it did not have to be the words he truly wanted.
She was saddened by his words. It showed in the little drop of her expression, the small curl of her still raised paw.
I will miss you.
She tried, but it sounded a hollow sentiment. He would be to the shore, and she to her mountain.
Unless..?
Do you..
Her throat felt tight.
Do you mean to ask me something?
Tullik needed to hear it spoken aloud, not in her fantasies.
chakliux let out his breath in a self-deprecating laugh, for it was true that he had never asked.
an inhale; a clearing of his throat. "seal hunters choose one another, as many times as they wish. my lodge is made for many, and half of it is mine. i wish to give this to you, tullik, as second wife. this will be your home, you will not have to leave your mountain place."
he was smiling now, somehow shyly. "i know among the sunshine people there is talk of bride-price. dowry. i will pay this, if you ask, to prove i am hunter. and husband."
Second wife. He had asked this before, and yet she was just as surprised as the first time. But she was older now. Such a small time from her second year of life. She should have married by now.
Chakliux, he understood. Perhaps more than any other man she had ever met.
He was still speaking by the time Tullik made up her mind. She took a step forward to rest her paw atop the seal hunter’s own, offering him a reassuring smile.
There is no need for a price.
The night shadows cast his face in sharp relief. She found she did not want to look away.
I will accept this.
chakliux stopped a moment; he stared at tullik for a long second of time and did not allow himself to believe.
she would not be alone here, wife in name but not bound only to him. few things changed, save that they would share the lodge when he visited.
and his heart thudded, and he felt himself twined with the sudden feeling that they were upon the ice of his homeland, and he was speaking into the eyes of a wife for the first time.
"come then. i will show you your new home."
and he stepped away, into the shadows, though his eyes held her own.
"annak."
The mountain she had lost everything upon had given way to this.
The mountain where she had come to gain so much.
As woman, and now as wife.
Chakliux faded into the muted grey of shadow, and Tullik reached down to pull her horn back into her mouth. Then, perhaps a bit overeager, she would tumble into pursuit. Her heart hummed like the noise of a beetle’s wing, feeling ever so fast as warmth burned in her ribs. Not the angry boil of her grief, so hot it felt choking, but the warmth of a hearth.
Tullik was second wife, with a home instead of her lonely outpost upon the mountain. She would have to return there tomorrow for her pelts.
She followed at Chakliux’s flank until such a time as he stopped, where she would hover uncertainly there like a hummingbird unsure of where to buzz to next.
the lodge of the seal hunters was large enough for five grown wolves, with a sleeping-place to one side, an area for preparing meat in the middle, and a farther place to lie along the opposite wall. chakliux had often slumbered with nasamik and kannoyak and raiyuk alike, seeking the warmth of mingled bodies through the winter.
"kannoyak, path-finder man. he is my brother, and will live here with you."
there was a cache beside the front entrance, a large clearing ringed with stones. pelts of various stiffness and need of discarding hung here and there; a man's place, now that nasamik had taken her softness away.
he looked to tullik now, motioning for her to enter.
"a lodge belongs to a woman. this is yours as much as it is his."
chakliux did not enter, and would not until she bid; this, her first privilege as a wife.
He allowed her entry, sweeping open the door as though he were a Ritz Carlton footman and she a rich lady waltzing to her suite.
Tullik ducked her head, shy even now, even as wife, but she did as gestured. Ducking into the living space, glancing around it, taking in the scent of another man who lived here. It did not bother her much, communal sleeping was the best way to stay warm in the cold she knew best.
She set the horn down to a side, figuring what to do with it. Her mouth now clear, she turned to the entry and spoke.
It is beautiful here.
Her eyes twinkled.
You should come in. It is dark.
Quite the lame excuse, she winced, but she wanted him near all over again.
his eyes followed tullik as she moved from one space to another. he felt she might want to arrange her own sleeping-furs without his input, and decided then he would hunt for the cache before he departed.
chakliux was not a man who was tentative, he was full-chested with his wants, his appetites.
but it was with genuine softness he entered the lodge that now belonged in part to tullik, and was his no longer. "you are beautiful in it."
a lodge had a spirit of its own, and chakliux was greatly glad that tullik now was here to tend it.
He came to her, a walking vision of the snow covered peaks she had left in her wake. She stepped closer, pulled by some raw magnetism she could not name nor did she want to.
She did not know if she could say more, merely looking up at Chakliux with her eyelids held low. She inhaled the scent of them both, inhaled the scent of the other man who lived within the lodge.
Tullik dipped her head low, snaking out her neck some. Her face broke into a smile.
I cannot wait to know the face of it in every season.
last for me! <3
"i cannot wait to know yours."
chakliux would settle with her that evening, and into the starlit night he would speak of the seal hunters.
the ice floes, the long dark. those who died. those who lived.
the shaman mother.
the hunting father.
those of his village he had once danced with, and the girl-cousins he had seen his aunt bury in the snow.
the experience of those from the north was shared in this way.