Dawnlark Plains Caught up in a dream

She moved through the deep winter as a snowbird. Frosted furtips and ears that were smoothed down to her head. The pink skin of both ears were cold and stiff, but from the girls mouth was smoky breath that warmed her throat. 

The elk moved as a herd of one, a mother-nest with strays hanging just outside their hive. Beasts with furry necks and calls that cut through ones body. Her legs disappeared into the blanket of white-fall covering the dead grasses.

A soft silhouette in the dusting of snow fogging the air, Nututikruk was bigger now.  Stronger. More than ever, resilient, and though her pads felt frozen and there was a fierceness in her green eyes to make slow travel in the cold, there was something giddy in her heart to be in wonderland.

caught in a furor of several things, sun eater went out to hunt yet another heart for his prized woman. no matter what words they had shared, her eyes shone with devotion, and she had been ready to share her body with him despite the danger.

each time he wished to mistrust, star eater gave him a reason not to turn his face away.

he did not know how to react; he had regained his sense of joy at returning to see her in their evenings, even if he maintained his determination in the matter of intimacy.

elk mingled today with the caribou. sun eater watched them walk tall among the drifts, though his single eye became ensnared by the movement of wolf beyond.

a hunting stalk for the chieftain then.

It did not matter that there were perhaps none to follow the dragging trail of Nutuyikruk. 

She had visited the mountains, seen its emptiness, seen that of what had once been her home rest as nothing but old ruins. They had moved on with their lives, or perhaps they had died. Maybe they had found too that falling down the slope of the spires was nothing less than rigid teeth stabbing down ones flank.

So, she was allowed to move on too. Tucking deep away their memories to store them someplace safe and warm where the cold of the dawnlark couldn't reach. 

A teenager now. One day to be a woman.

Nutuyikruk pressed onward, and took focus on the smaller statured elk-like creatures with the eyes of a hunter. Game too big for her, but she hungered and listened to the warcry of the elk bulls challenging the other herds presence.

Today would be another lesson.

An ear twitched once at the sound of crunching ground behind her.

as he drew closer, sun eater saw it was a woman. no. a girl, and for some reason her appearance sparked a violently sickening roil of familiarity. he could not see that she was after elk or caribou, and their vast numbers meant it would not have mattered had she hunted among them at all.

he sprang.

not in hunting billow, but the possessive snap of a warrior. he meant to scruff her, drive face down into the spraying snow; to hold in panting dominance.

if she did not move, she would be well.

why did she seem so familiar? this was why he leapt at all.

A single breath, the slightest turn of her face–

She had only a moment before that breath was taken. Words that tried to leave her mouth were quieted by the sound of the snow covering over her head as it was pushed down into the white of it. The stalking man held the girl down well. 

The eyes of the moonwoman met the face of someone crooked. Nutuyikruk did not fight, and did not know this time if it was the same fear she'd experienced as a younger child. Submissive, but controlled distress.
 
Staring upon the face of the wolf-catcher, she finished her sentence, breathless, fierce: 

"I see you, hunter."

she feared but did not; bowed her head but did not.

sun eater knew that gaze.

cen knew that gaze.

he was rendered silent, hunting-man and girl staring at one another from where he had shoved her into the snow. such a rage rose in sun eater then, an anger mollified by his wife and staved off by how he must prepare for children.

but now.

but now.

"you not fight. i not hurt." breath billowed; he grabbed her hackles and began to drag the stranger in white furrows through the snowdrifts.

To not feel the wrath of yanking teeth, she leaned towards the pull and was up quickly on all four legs. Lifting her neck, shouldering the disfigured man once in protest, "Puqiitchin!" He was strong, and more notably dense! Thick-skulled to have picked a lone wintergirl. It took a moment for her to walk steady against his hold to try and dispell as much struggle as needed. Make it easy for him– 

Everything was new. So was he. She knew nothing of where she was now and certainly not the direction they headed. "Where?" Her voice tried to offer something of a civil tone, but it was panicked. "To where do you take me?" 

yes — she spoke and sun eater dropped the girl down into the snow and loomed over her. "tell me who you are." the single eye brooked no mirth nor sass; "tell me the name of your mother."

he remembered!

he would not forget the pain and the fear, the tearing agonies of eye ripped from flesh and bone moorings.

and now he threatened almost to turn that great wrath on this captive.

Manipulated back down to the ground, she stayed very, very still. Felt the chill of being under him.

Her own name did not move on her tongue. Her mother? Her mother?! There was clear recognition in the red empty socket on the night pelted man, but he would be met with a sorry reality that was her own. "I have no mother." Oh, Muskrat! No mother, she said, sickened then with memory of every chase in the forest they'd had with one another, and the greatest mountains they'd scaled. She was her mother. 

And it was frightening to know now that there were those out there who had made enemies with the raider, with no raider beside her to protect the ridge's child

Nututikruk knew no other mother. Her heart ached, and she knew not what other answer to give. "That is the truth! I have never known my family." Could he have known the lake queen?

his lip curled, for he did not trust her. those eyes! and yet it must be enough for now. seeing that the girl did not fight, he relented. there would be no pinch of teeth or shove of paw if her cooperation continued.

but if sun eater found that she had lied, his hospitalities might abruptly end there.

"i am chieftain of the lanzadoii, and you will be slave to my wife. now. walk."

and he would follow near at her heels, herding the young wolf inexorably toward the river on instinct alone. if she was who he believed, then the time had come for a long-awaited revenge.

<33@

The cold brought breathlessness. White clouds of air from her mouth hazed his face, and it was the red of the lost eye and torn fur that cried for attention. 

Deep in the chest, a thundering heart that could be felt up in her throat. It was not any idea of pain that brought it then, for there were things in life far worse than an open wound. A lanzadoii man highlighted it in red.

"I will walk," she said! "I will walk!" Turning quickly upright, the girl's heels obeyed and they were moving!

<3 can fade or keep going!

they moved, sun eater nipping at her as he might a caribou. but she was not that. they were precious, and could not be utilized in the way he wished to wield her.

caribou could not be prevailed against the moon.

soon the riverlands faded to view, and he forced their gait into a faster run.