Firestone Hot Springs morning star

here was the first land reached by @Sulukinak and cen since they had left the trial and the fangs of the moon warriors behind.

the socket had begun to fester. he had not been offered help and would not have accepted it from those who harmed him. now yellow crusted the outside of the yawning gap, and fever had begun to lace its fingers along his throat.

the heat of the springs comforted cen as much as the wafting steam infuriated him. "bathe here," he grunted, gingerly inching into the nearest pool. "soak the wilderness from your pelt." they would become untraceable, he felt, watching eddies of dirt and blood swirl in the steaming water.

the water smelled rotten. it steamed as if breathing, and sulukinak was not keen to bathe in it. the man cen ordered her to do so, and she cut back in her monotone, don't command me. she was blood but she was not wife.

then she came to help him yield to the water, moving swiftly to be a help without thinking, without considering his demeanor.

and she rounded upon another pool after, investigating it.

cen lifted his lip but did not quarrel, and was even less inclined as she helped him into the hot surface as if he were an elder.

too sore, too exhausted to complain, the caribou man shut his single eye and let his head loll back upon the rocky edge of the pool, giving in to the draining heat of the water which lulled him into semi-consciousness.

had she been a more loyal creature perhaps she would have thought to drown him here, so he could not go back to the moon people or his once-wife; she certainly coveted him enough, and the blood they shared. she thought of dutch, and of the harvest that went ignored.

perhaps because of her loyalty, she did not entertain these things for long, if at all.

their blood had to have value. the powers of her mother had been a trial to endure and now sulukinak was desperate for whatever tie she had to her father's people - but this was unknown, except through cen.

he had to live so that she could understand.

half-sleeping, cen at last dragged himself from the pool and settled on the coolness of the grass, which tempered the burning in his jawline, his sinus, his very skeleton. he tried to gather his scattered thoughts; he could bribe the first one across which they came to carry a message.

suppose she did not come? 

the raving slate of his single eye found sulukinak. in her now must rest the expansion of the lanzadoii, this girl who spoke of the everdark and had no ties to the caribou people outside of a bloodline she had not known existed.

"it is summer. the caribou will be traveling back from the sea, to the places in the taiga which are green. we will hunt them there."

his legs ached for the long march. cen at last slept.

i will hunt, you will rest. for now that would be enough, as he had lost so much.

the look on sulukinak's face was something predatory but not on purpose; it was hard to separate the wounded animal aspect of cen from the hunter he had been.

seeing him frightened and running had stirred something inside of her she could not name, linking her again to her mother somehow. where before she had been the prey, now she was witness to someone else's experience of sacrifice, and felt powerful because of it.

what a trade! cen's eye, cen's wife, cen's son; what power could be derived from this? why did this feel like a reaping?

no more wife talk. sulukinak would not listen to it. she withdrew, to let him rest there, and tentatively entered her own pool. the heat was stifling immediately. her fur becoming diaphonous.

hungry now? maybe some nose work would deliver her to hidden treasures, and time apart would be good? but she did not move, waiting, watching.

he opened his eyes after some time. who was sulukinak to command him? cen eyed her for a long and silent moment, then nodded. "you will only hunt for me once. maybe twice. after that, we hunt together. it is lanzadoii." it was the way of the long march.

cen crouched between the steaming pools and waited for her to be gone. wisps of white eddied around his figure, transforming here and there into faces. eyes. mouth.

red leaf looked coldly back through the hot paleness. cen's lip curled even as his heart beat with pain and longing.

when sulukinak came back, it was to see him dip his head below the surface of another pool, teeth gritting bubbles as the hot water ate at the infection.