The past few months have seen Asun learning how to be scared all over again.

Though she had not been particularly loved or even liked on the river-stones of Piedras Negras, there had been at least the reassurance (or something close to it) of a safe bed, and food in your stomach.

But alone, the wilderness could promise you nothing.

In truth, her nerves are frayed, and long stretches of solitude have warped her usual relaxed self. She now flinches at peripheral movement, her brain refusing or unable to discern the difference between a threat and the quotidian.

She pauses to catch her breath, but the scent that fills her nose sees her pupils constrict and her heartbeat stutter.

Kusuma? She thinks, the colors of her world sharpened by disbelief, crashing out into something like hope.

The voice she hears is modulated by anger, but still unmistakable -- and there is a certain heartache that comes with it, because while she has seen Kusuma agitated before, it has never been so intense and directed at her.

She hardly parses the words. Her world elides further into unreality.

Those ears! As if the voice hadn't been enough, surely this was the woman who had come into her life and changed it irrevocably, as a planet -- even a minor one -- does to the trajectory of a comet.

Kusuma! The name tears itself out of her throat of it's own accord.

She takes another halting breath, and the arc of revelation strikes her once more: nursing-scent, cloying and nearly mawkish, seeps from the mouth of the cave.

They embrace, but such a fundamental overlap of space still feels dreamlike to her, even as she cradles the smaller woman's head against her shoulder, smoothing her hair back with a shaking hand.

Again? she murmurs into her fur, her voice watery, but she can hardly linger on it. Kusuma, you have a child?

She draws back to search her eyes, knows that the tremulous smile on her face must look ridiculous --

A boy or girl? What is it's name?

-- before gathering her into another hug, this time longer and more studied; she feels the coyjackal's heartbeat slow down and imagines that Kusuma could feel the same thing, the initial shock tapering into a dizzy relief, so powerful that every nerve of her is tricked into experiencing real temperature: a scalding heat giving way to a chill real enough to provoke gooseflesh.

Her chest expands with an upsurge of many emotions; she fears that there might not be enough room to contain it all.

There is love, of course, for Kusuma and Harta (and how their names went together, hand-in-hand!), but also anger towards the absent father, and perhaps even an ugly pearl of jealousy which sits in her stomach like an accumulation of heavy metals.

It isn't fair, she doesn't know the whole story, nor does she need to -- but despite herself, despite the girding of countless rational reasons, the vexation persists, an unsightly cockroach skittering along the woodwork of her interior.

She prunes these ill humors at the root. What matters most is that Kusuma and Harta are safe.

When the coyjackal sighs into the junction of her neck and shoulder, she cannot suppress a shiver, and pulls back so she can see her smile.

Yes, she responds, in the same reverent whisper. Will Kusuma and Harta have Asun?

Claimed land! How had she missed it? 

Zug is a kind man, she squeezes in, still breathless. I will find them. After -- after this --

She tucks her narrow face into her chest, takes a deep breath, and follows the darkwoman into the milk-scented den. The back-and-forth switch of Kusuma's plumed tail inspires yet another host of emotions inside of her. Strange, how mundanity can trigger so many memories.

The space inside is small enough to be warmed by the heat of two bodies. It is the sort of dark that is comforting instead of ominous.

Little Harta has been moved from one womb to another. Asun greets him with a gasp and a smile so large that it hurts.

Nene, she coos, her eyes adjusting to the dimness, but knowing that although she could not just yet see him, she loved him all the same.