Qeya River owlclover

single replies welcome! new information has added sun eater to the brave one pickup party; he will be leaving quickly & taking no joiners, tho sly followers are always welcome <3

palpable had the delight of the caribou man been when @Anselm had come bearing news of a great hunt far over the mountains. sun eater knew the sunshine wolves would be gathered; he knew his exile and his exploits would be wasted if he was captured again.

and yet he would not avoid this. 

but first, he said with a slow look; first they would go to moontide. when ghelan once more was with him, @Ksura's children would have no obstacle to their return.

he had waited for the return of those others; he had risen slowly from his stone perch to see sheep killer return, and a small rough smile had lingered secretly on sun eater, fading long before it was seen.

no one else. it was an order that they three only be the ones to go. 

in his absence, @Sulukinak was to be heeded. @Meleeys would help. "i ran a deer from the mist-cliffs. set @Ilse and the boy @Gideon to its butchering and caching," he asked of his sister. @Kekoa would be given little instruction; as healer and potential spirit-speaker, the chieftain did not wish to demand too much of the respected personage. overlooked again was the fact that ilse had her own herbal education. he wanted to see more of her work in other regards. @Senka was free to travel as she wished, or to work beside the others. in fact the other saatsine might see in her a strength he wished to be apparent for them all.

sun eater granted some minutes for the farewelling that grey man and sheep killer might want, but thereafter, he turned the two men implacably toward the sea. all too well he remembered the way.

had she been more like her mother, sulukinak may have blessed these men; had she been more like her mother, she would never have made it here at all.

sun eater was focused on his son. sulukinak would worry until his return, urged internally to follow and keep watch, as if she could change the outcome - but she knew to stay, because he had told her to.

to be put in charge of the saatsine was not expected; she had very little to say most days, and no want to be perceived either, and yet sun eater made it known that it was the girl that would stand in his place.

not for forever, she thought; he would come home again. he would not leave her here.

watching her uncle, sulukinak is as solemn as ever. her misgivings hold her tongue.

He did not want to go.

A son for a son, he reminded himself with a grimace as he rose from embracing @Gideon. Mind Auntie @Ilse vhile I am gone, Anselm instructed, ruffling the top of Gideon's head.

Truthfully, when Sun Eat first informed them of their pending excursion, Anselm had considered bringing Gideon along anyway -- to possibly slip off unnoticed somewhere between here and there. It was not that he was not grateful to Sun Eater; it was that he saw sometimes, just out of the corner of his eye, an ugliness in Sun Eater worse than any he'd ever brought into this world. The unknown made him nervous, and as he struggled with his newfound limitations in his body, he fretted for what would happen to Gideon without him.

Ilse will take care of him, Anselm told himself as he swung after the proud step of Saatsine's leader.

she refused to beg him to stay, for it would make the parting that much harder. yet she had given every possible indication that she would miss ksura terribly. she was not sure if she had parted from him, for even a moment, the night before. in this way she thought she might be able to hold his scent with her for however many nights he walked.

he would return.

she refused to believe otherwise because she refused to become a widower (or divorced) so soon after being a newlywed.

this mission would be successful. this mission would appease the chieftain and the mission would secure the children of ksura for return. then their life might continue with a brightness, instead of a looming cloud overhead.

she wanted to hold him once more before he walked — but she feared she might not be able to let go. she could only offer her forehead to her husband's own, if he might accept it, and the long inhale of his cologne.

Meleys remained stone among those gathering. One eye of near black and the other a ghostly pale, swept among the clan that was Saatsine. Her new clan, now. All faces which she did not know. A new herd of caribou she did not yet know. Over four years past had become very quickly just that. The phantom looked to her future with hard eyes. 

Come. She directs to the pair placed to her with task, even before the raiding party had fully left. To @Ilse. To @Gideon. I show way. There was work to be done. 

The chieftan would return and with an heir.