Whitefish River Darkhan

Camp is made in a river valley between mountain and hot spring. In the east, black crags rise as a barrier into the sky, its slopes below dotted with poplar. To the north, a plateau nestles under a granite ridge, stretching well out of sight into the dark.  The night before, Jamukha had stowed the headless body of a pronghorn here beneath the hull of an oak tree. Now he reclaims it, unearthing the tawny pelt from its rooted tomb and swinging its bloodied carcass onto broad shoulders to stalk through the meadow.

He doesn’t expect to see @Ātoztli.

and he would not see her; at least she hoped not yet.

atoztli left the cut throat of a vixen by the riverstream, invoking tezcatlipoca's favor to remain unseen as she trailed the road-warrior at what she believed a healthy distance.

at some point his tracks swung between a simmering spring and the alluvial plains of the valley. atoztli watches his figure disappear between a stand of oak.

when he emerges, one of the beasts qvasir felled was strung across his strong back.

seeing him yoked by heavy prey, atoztli broke cover. do you intend to take this to your lord? her gaze flickered across the corpse's abruptly ending neck. whatever had he done with the head?

Shadows dance in the lowhanging trees. A voice cracks and tumbles towards the mongol. Jamukha smirks but doesn't turn— not until he reaches the little clearing. There he tosses the deer onto the ground, ripping a stiff haunch from its connecting ligaments and throws it out to Ātoztli.

“You're not dissuaded by much,” he observes, her dark silhouette posted like a sentry along the perimeter of his camp. “Dinner.”

He collapses into a lay then, teeth finding the pleasurable snag of tendons where head once joined neck.

she follows -- at a distance, of course!

a lesson still bitter in her mouth.

he throws the headless thing upon the ground and rips bone from ligament in a way that sends a ripple through atoztli.

she claims the limb, looking down upon it and then back to him with the ripple now a gleam in her blackened eyes.

you're not dissuaded by much. should she tell him?

a whisper of an old urging told her no.

instead of saying what was on the tip of her tongue, she smiled to herself and looked at the severed haunch. the ribbons of ligament and collagen. the layer where external skin met internal flesh. the red spiderweb of nerves and bloodwork.

thanks for dinner. whatever did you do with the head?

His eyes glitter, but he says nothing at first, only watches the shroud of Ātoztli’s silhouette, still expressive against the moonbright sky.

“Picked it clean,” comes the mongol’s reply. He tugs free a strip of gristle with a sickening snap and spits it out into the dirt. “Horns are a gift. It’s what you’ll be carrying tomorrow,” for Jamukha had already decided she would join him.

From the stag’s bladder-pouch he laps deep at koumiss— the acquired taste sour and warm on his tongue. He offers her the pouch, bridging the careful distance she maintains before stepping back some paces. The horselord is quiet.

“Are you lost, Ātoztli?

the pop of gristle being severed from bone causes the priestess' ears to flutter. before she can help herself she quips: bones make good ojas --powder to help men perform. a flush to her cheeks not all together wholesome, atoztli takes the gristle jamukha flung aside and inspected its mettle.

the gristle snapped with elastic energy. she stows it aside for later use, looking up to see jamukha has brought her something reeking; a dark membrane teeming with pale liquid.

she sniffs its contents warily, nose searching for the tell-tale hints of poison or tonic. the acridity burns the edges of her nose.

carefully, she laps twice - if only to know the taste of this thing. a question lingers on the tip of her tongue, routed by jamukha's next words.

lost? darkness flits across one eye to the other.

no. i am on -- a handwave as she cycled through the words so foreign to her. my adventure.

“Your men require such things?” His mouth curls. It grows upon the woman’s reticence, what he suspects is a truer character than the one of pulsing embers she’d presented before in the pool. He watches her drink, then turns the slick vertebra around in his jaws.

He’d have warned the strange woman from off the road had her answer not elicited his own want.

Adventure. Was this not also Jamukha’s aim, in a way? The man had never desired to settle as his brother had; to affix himself to one place or one kind of people. The very idea dulled him even now.

“Every woman wants children,” he counters, as if this should be her sole pursuit. A means to interrogate her more than anything.

for marathons, yes. atoztli rejoins, working the gristle between her paws as jamukha cradles vertebrae between his teeth. another useful bone, that -- too bad about the hole in the center of it, making it a poor choice for choking hazard.

every woman wants children. this atoztli finds too humorous to ignore; if this was bait, she fell right into it. do you know many women?

as far as what she wants... the knowing of it she keeps cradled close to her heart.