Mount Apikuni rooting

if no response/not available, can be read only <3

the yearning had not left her.

somehow she had been weakened, in the dark of night she cried out sacsayhuamán until she found herself awake. she should be home, but she had stayed in the redsand canyon as if more learning might come to her.

she learned only of herself — and found she did not know if she existed when others did not surround her.

the redsand had been left behind to scale a nearby mountain. not the one they had danced upon. one that was lush, one that they had perhaps looked down upon when the rain fell over them. now the skies were clear and cool for a summer morning. she made a loud wailing, howling, screaming.

it was the cry of a hunter who meant to set out on their greatest one yet.

did the firestarter (@Muskrat) hear her?

she should return to the canyon, go down the other side to a palace awaiting. instead she began a quickfooted charge down the slopes of this mountain, down a side full of unknowns.

"i look for you in trees, in rain."

look and see me.

idk where this is set in her timeline but we will make it work <3

the ridge. blanketed in deep green and grooved with stone waves, it was like no place she had seen before. there was no promise of wet heat here, and though she missed it, muskrat found that she had enough to see.

she caught a mourning dove and prepared to place it in a first cache, but a cry caught her. a fluting, hopeful thing. she knew this voice, and so she left a trail of feathers for hex to find, throwing the plucked poor thing into the underbrush before she turned her eyes on the pale eagle, flying toward her.

flying; muskrat licked blood from her jaws and grinned a relieved, darkheart beam.

"sacsayhuamán." hex would give her what she wished. and for it, the swamp panther would add teeth to his claim. heart rushing, she reached for the lithe warrior who now parted the verdant trees.

sacsayhuamán.

but it was not her own voice that said it. she did not jerk awake from a dream with the sickly falling sensation. her limbs did not feel her own, her body did not feel like hers.

she wanted contact, she wanted collision. even if it meant she must tuck the woman into her and bear the beating of mountain floors.

she needed to be certain that this one was here, that she had not yearned and became a languished creature for nothing.

together they rolled through fallen leaves and the soft litter of a thousand dead ones; debris tried to snap at each of their pelts, and she found herself atop the eagle when they thumped down a gentle rise. her grin was bright as she plucked oak bits and pine needles from the other's fur. "i find a place to be warrior again. you come with me." not a question, despite the fact muskrat was aware she could not command this one.

and neither did she wish to be parted.

they did not need the fire to be close, to touch. makono found she still burned just as bright when pressed under that sunflower gaze.

the eagle held the lioness tight, had she talons they would have sunk in.

i am a commander, a conqueror. she familiarized herself with those scars again with a kiss, two. i was trained in these mountains.

she thought of the empty canyon where an outpost had once laid.

she thought of how it might cripple akashingo to take it once more before she breathed upon the palace. how a man now sat on a throne next to her sister. would her dear toula feel anger if makono had an army before she returned? so close, so near and in a place full of history.

i am doing it for you, for us.

who are you a warrior to?

ambition clouded the gentle air between them, but muskrat was too enamoured with the eagle's return to notice. a commander. a conqueror. and she knew these wild stone places. "i with creek. i come here. meet hex." she gently unfurled a misting of dirt from the gold-sprinkled shoulder. "when i go back to creek, he come for me. come find me."

muskrat resisted accusation.

"leader come then. i leave. come here, with hex. green place. high up. i teach him to raid, make war. take meat. skins. slaves." she shrugged, eyes glinting now with her own ambition.

would they come to a struggle of position of the eagle stayed, she wondered?

a man. a man. a man.

makono would have felt something far uglier if it was not her who held the warrior now. she was only further soothed by the fact that this one needed to teach the man.

perhaps he is yours to command if you must teach him.

she felt as if she had devoured handfuls of ripe fruits and honey.

it was only the effect of the warrior who cleansed her.

"i teach other things to him also," muskrat whispered, nipping for the hotblood vein of her lover's throat, where she could feel the hot press of life against her tongue. but moreover she was pressing down upon what she perceived as something. something unnameable.

she left behind those who wanted to own her, and tested sacsayhuamán with these allusions to hex. "so. you stay? or go?" the clutch of the other's territorial arms were remembered.

despite herself, muskrat thrilled.

maybe she had inherited some tendril of royal madness.

it was unbecoming how long she had yearned and mumbled the name this woman had given her. it unraveled her now that jealousy pulsed beneath her vein.

makono had long been filled with the greatness to make grand displays of her emotions. some things did not change.

i stay.

something divine writhed within her skull and beat against her bloodstream. rage and a dying light. but she was blind to it — made anew in the sunfire gaze of this woman.

her breath exhaled in something she did not realize was relief. muskrat's eyes danced upon those of the eagle.

high places. it was what suited the fierce one, with her fighter's form and knowing step.

a kiss, meant only to be that; delving perhaps into more. muskrat would not mind the delay on their return to shadow ridge.

the trees swallowed the lovers in wavering shadow.