Mature Content Warning

lying still upon the sunspire beneath the swelter of her own skin, muskrat pulled all the faces of the men she knew into her mind, forcing them together into an amalgamation that was no one and everyone. 

the face that grew in her mind's eye held shades of them all, but none of cloud singer. 

rain softly fell and she arched beneath it, letting the droplets collect into a small pool along her hard belly. cloud singer, the only one she had ever wanted to follow. of course there had been others, two slash and one claw, stonebite, sun lizard, he-who-sings. war fang. good warriors, all of them, who had drunk and danced with muskrat on the eve of battle walks. hard men with softer hearts that opened only beneath prising heat. no jealousy between warriors. they lay with one another as the moon rose.

these ones had not come back from their raids. muskrat had seen three of them die the morning after lying in her arms. it was a thing always jarring, feeling how limp their bodies, how war fang's eyes had been taken, how stonebite had been crushed between trees until nothing of him could be brought home.

a warrior fought and died as they lived. it had been muskrat's acceptance and intention to find glory in a raid, to find death there too one day. until cloud singer.

her body still hummed for him. muskrat felt her throat gather with pain.