Qeya River you don't want to breathe the light of the others

it was stupidity that kept her here. her captor had his sights on bigger things now, and the one she'd been tending to was up and walking, taking care of himself. she found herself intrigued by the situation, though, and with no ties to anywhere else and her life (seemingly) no longer in danger, she couldn't bring herself to leave.

maybe she could make herself important here. maybe she could use this place to find something better. she didn't know and really, so long as her belly was full, she didn't care.

she kept close to where she was familiar, gathering herbs now for no reason in particular.

had she reason to stay? he had beaten her, threatened her; she had bound his wounds and that of the stormgrey man. at many moments she could have run. he did not know all these wilds; the land opened its arms to those fleet runners, offering the succor of disappearance.

but she had followed. ash. shadows rippled across his face as he moved through the weald and stood in the autumn leaves falling slowly to a carpeted earth. "man you help, he has son here. gid-ee-yon," sun eater pronounced with difficulty. 

he stared at the girl whose hue was taken from the underbelly of rainclouds. "maybe he make you think of another too."

I know this is marked limit two but depending on how this develops both anselm and gideon are welcome

she was careful to raise her eyes from the herbs to acknowledge his presence. she still did not know what he wanted with her, or why he had bashed her so fiercely. now, surrounded by these defeated others, she thought she understood just a sliver.

the name gideon brought forth nothing. she did not know that her brother had children. she still did not know that this man was her brother. i don’t know a gideon, she concedes. but — i could see them, if you’d like.

sounds good! <3

tilting his head to one side, sun eater studied her in a long silence that spread between them as if it were the greyed waves of a wintertide sea. "ash," sun eater said at last, his single eye flickering. "kon’ laedze’." not the tree then, but the remnants of what fire had eaten.

"soon we go from here," he told her, stepping past to stretch the lingering tension of healing wounds from his long limbs. gaze falling to the herbs, he watched her again. "healers have honor among caribou clans." respect and protection followed.

he says her name, then something she does not recognize. she wanted to know what it was he said. i have many questions, she ventures easy ones, though.

there is some tenderness within him after all. a thought crosses her mind, that there must have been some other motive behind his fists. he was violent and unpredictable, but he was also measured and respectable. questions. she started with: what should i call you?

he stated their intent to leave and she found no issue with it. the river held no sacred place in her heart. i come with, she asserted, as though it had never been up for debate in her mind.

many questions? he chuckled then, unable to stop himself from reacting in surprise to her daring. not quite daring; she remained polite, aware of his power over both her and the great land he had taken.

"i am sun eater." and he could not remember that he had ever spoken the name of yikaas to her. and cen was long gone. "ḵusax̱asaa." the name was a piece of lanzadoii dropped into her hands, swift reward for what he perceived as swift loyalty. "and i give answers. but first i ask: you know caribou, ashes?"

his laughter strikes fear that dissipates slowly as he reveals himself to her. sun eater, in the common tongue. something else in another. this was another question — what language did he speak? could he teach her? the interrogation would wait.

i have seen them before. but i have not hunted them. it’s an assumption, but she thinks it is a reasonable one. as a woman, she hunted small things.

"caribou is sacred. in sun, in rain, give meat. we walk far. follow forever." the sweetness of that flesh was something he could not describe in any words, and so he did not try to do this.

instead, sun eater settled himself to watch killdeer play with one another, calling out and sailing high into the blue air. "now. ask." he felt rather magnanimous, willing to share that as he breathed the good clean fragrances of the riverland.

if she had reservations about this proposition, she did not put them forth. following the food where it went made sense, so long as there were enough skilled hunters to secure their future. okay, she said. she had been traveling on her own for some time. it made no difference to her to continue that journey — alone or with others.

the ungulate sounds punctuated the air as he allowed her to speak. she expects her questions to be limited, so she chooses wisely.

ilse wanted for little. but one of the few desires she held in secret was to have another german to speak freely with. in a rare show of empathy, she asks, the language you speak. what is it? 

absently, she picks at the herbs beneath.

"lanzadoii." he did not hide its accent, nor the heavy sound of its bite. "in your words, i slow. not make — good thinking. is hard."

"but in lanzadoii i can tell you what it is to travel many days between the great mountains and the sea ice. i can tell you of our factions, of our bands. i could tell you of ghelan." he did not know why he gave an outpouring, and bit it back, cutting the deluge.

the slate eye lessened now in the pressure of its stare. "you want teach?"

she understood; her hold on her father’s tongue was poor and it was only thanks to his his tutelage that she knew anything at all.

words pour from him and she cuts herself on the danger of him. he would keep her safe, yes, from everything but himself. he was not stupid, he had stolen her for a reason she dared not ask — not yet, when their trust was so tenuous. she was left wondering when his blows would wail down upon her again, and her time was spent thinking about what she would do when that time came. i want to learn.

is there a price, sun eater? she had offered up her mending and her loyalty, but she already understood an inkling of his transactional nature and she knew she had little else to give.

yes, said the stone-blue of the hard eye.

"not yet," sun eater murmured, watching again the swooping of the killdeer birds and their squalling to one another. "need my trust. then i tell you." it warmed him to see her intelligence, to see her grasp what he meant to make of the saatsine. 

to become traders, first you traded among one another.

now he stretched languidly. "i not teach till i trust. want learn? listen. dziidghesdaa."

and to listen, she must be close enough to hear. he stalked off, wondering if she would come after him.

already he had set sulukinak to finding out about the grey man and the woman. he did not need to ask. he needed only to wait. the choice of when her lessons began belonged to ash.

ilse was often tempestuous, incredulous, full of spit and fire and fury. she had not been checked too harshly and had no siblings to force the matter. sun eater had been the only one to truly punish her, make her flesh pay the price of her tongue. she found herself quaking, unwilling to press her luck. he had allowed her questions but for now, she would let him dictate the tolerance of her presence.

as he departed, the killdeer sang.

she butchered the words of his homeland, so as not to lose them. dziidghesdaa. lanzadoii.

the only thing she did not repeat was his name.