Ocean's Breath Plateau When our hearts are heavy burdens we shouldn't have to bear alone

Hi I need more of these two in my life <3 whenever you have time! Tullik tag for ref. Slightly forward dated!

A week, she'd promised.

She'd found no sign of Dutch in that horrible place, the forest where she'd nearly lost herself, nor anywhere she'd searched beyond — and though her time away from Moontide granted a new sheen to her coat and a brightness to her eyes, Marina was tired. She missed her family. She missed @Chakliux.

Just over a week when she returned bearing gifts for each of their many children, for her sister-wife — and most of all for her husband. For the home she would always return to, in the end. The love she held for Dutch still ached somewhere in her breastbone, but the heart's desires were a whimsical thing. Marina had always known this — and knew, too, that the sense of loss she'd felt when he had chosen a wife beyond the seal hunter lodge was rooted entirely in something deeper.

It could have been his home, too. It could have been his. All of it.

And then perhaps he might have understood why Marina could never have chosen another path. A kiss for each of her children, a soft embrace for @Tullik; for her sister-wife she'd brought the silken pelt of a skunk, and for each of the children an assortment of fangs and claws and feathers from beasts she'd hunted. After every greeting and gift was given, she sought a moment with her husband.

There was... nothing, She murmured to him when she was certain no other would hear. As if he disappeared. But after a moment the last of her somberness faded, her attention devoted entirely to her husband now. Her gift for Chakliux, given with a sibylline smile, was the pale pelt of a cat.

the men of moontide patrolled, but dutch was not found. his children settled among the lodges; he watched simbelmyne grieve in the warm evenings, and his heart was heavy with a sickened worry that the panther — that something had happened to him.
marina returned in a weeks' time, beautifully gilded in good health and carrying many gifts. he welcomed his wife with jubilation, not knowing that her thoughts ran along the path where his once had.
where his did.
a white cat's pelt; his eyes widened, and he passed his paw over the rich pile of fur, glancing up at marina. "we too have looked," chakliux sighed. "he has not been seen. yes. it is like he — was not there."
his heart ached; he sought marina's kiss.
"but we will keep on our search. tell me; tell me of your hunt, my wife."

Like he was not there.

Marina wondered, sometimes. Her mother had told tales of spirits from rivers, from woodlands, from mountain peaks who wandered in search of mortal companionship — and sometimes they found it. But they could never stay long.

She wondered, but these were words for another time.

First she would tell her husband of her hunt. Well — less a hunt than a mix of luck and long experience. Her childhood, a time she rarely spoke of now, had taught her much in the way of survival, of using the land and its many gifts to her own advantage.

The cat had been injured — not mortally, but she'd smelled the blood and followed its source. From a distance she'd seen it limping along with a hungry look, blood long-dried on its hind leg; searching for an easy meal, she saw. A wolf alone was no match for the beast, even injured, but far too much trouble to be worth pursuit. Marina had traveled downwind, not wanting to make the cat wary.

But she'd wanted that pelt.

Rather than risk herself, she'd killed a squirrel. Its head done away with, its innards smeared with the grume of a toxic amphibian crushed to a near-paste, she'd left it near the lake and chose a different path to stalk the cat. It'd only taken a few hours for the starving creature to find her offering; far less for the spasms to begin.

While it stumbled and frothed, Marina was quick; she'd shoved it into the water, and watched it drown with no small amount of smug satisfaction. Not a drop of her own blood shed — and the pelt would not be ruined as she'd feared her teeth would.

The whole story told now, Marina smiled again, a bit teasingly; Is that how a seal hunter would have done it?