Snowforest Taiga black blood

@Sun Eater had been moved with extreme care, what haste could be spared for his wounds, and of course a level of secrecy; but Sulukinak refused to leave him throughout the ordeal. She was not underheel of Kekoa or whoever tended those wounds; but she did not let him out of sight, either, and circled, or shadowed as her uncle was carried.

When he was situated Sulukinak surfaced once, and only to see that he was still breathing. As she lingered near him the tension in the air made a pressure build up within her head. She did not know what to do—but there wer people grandstanding on the notion of war, which Sulukinak had little understanding of; there was a fervor to Saatsine that Sulukinak had only ever seen during the shared hunts among the villages, except that this time she feared the eye of aggression had been focused inward.

She watched as he took each breath, her face veiled by a mournful shadow.

sun eater groaned himself awake. to move at all remained a torment, and the throbbing heat of the wounds torn to his shoulder seemed to sear with volcanic rage.

he lay very still, eye refocusing in blurred slowness on the canopy far above his head. distance — no. silence.

slowly glimpses returned, the acrid pinch of herbs, the murmurings of another voice. voices. there was still great danger to him, he knew; sun eater felt the weakness in all his bones, his muscles. he felt flayed, fur tacky with half-dried blood.

sulukinak had not left his side. meleys either. dark fang; where was his brother. but it was his niece he saw first, and together they only breathed.

his voice was cracked when he spoke. "star eater. she is protected? and my children?" but how would the nightfall girl know? still. he needed some word. some word.

He roused.

In any other moment Sulukinak would be glad for it. She was glad, but it was a bittersweet kind of joy that settled across her as she beheld the tattered chieftain. Accustomed to being aware because of her eavesdropping, to be stagnant here invited surprises—and she was not sure exactly what was being said around the camp, or by who, or how truthful it might be; so while Sulukinak was indeed pleased that her uncle had not yet succumbed to his injuries, she could not trust herself to speak, and could not answer his questions.

There had been a brief visit by his wife, before he was moved. There had been the appointment of Nagruk to War Chief; this he knew, as it was Sun Eater who had decreed such. The stoking of someone's greater rage now threatened the cache, with no voice louder than that of his woman. Should she tell him? She could not confirm it to be true; Sulukinak would not venture out of hiding from this place, not for anything.

In the language he had shared, of himself and of her father's people that she had so wholly become, Sulukinak answered: They call for your head. War Woman, she says to me, 'take me to the glacier,' because I know it. But if she goes there, she is not here. And then what? The hunters of Saatsine go charging in to war, leaving their chieftain and his children behind? It made no sense.

Your woman calls for war, that is what she had said when his body had been found—but he perhaps did not remember on account of being mostly dead. The corners of Sulukinak's lips twitch as if to smile, and with a tremble she holds herself firmly blank-faced. Why would she do that?

war woman. his woman. sun eater grew irritated because he could not make sense of it. nausea swept him in a hot, clutching wave, and vomit burnt the base of his throat. shutting the fire of that single eye, he lay still and clung to what life remained still existent.

"nagruk call for war?" came the curious croak of his voice. he did not understand why; he remembered only wishing them cursed, and he had not registered the avoidance of his mate when he had made the tartok warrior head beside him.

he did not move. he did not shift again; he only breathed.

"tell me everything you saw." he swallowed; "all you heard."

that she had been with darukaal escaped him, focused entire on keeping breath in his lungs. "gjalla very hurt. throat. neck," he whispered, though some satisfaction found its tinge to his voice, replaced swiftly with a lancing stab of pain from shoulder to gut.

She had not been clear and his confusion burned at her further. She grimaced while he twitched and groaned, and when he settled a look of wide-eyed petrification had settled in to Sulukinak. What had she seen?

I smelled blood when I came to Saatsine, and saw you there. Her voice was hollow and it felt like it came from somebody else. In the confines of this private moment Sulukinak felt so small. Blood everywhere; a pale wolf was running. Kekoa came... the further she went the less she could speak, it was as if saying these things aloud made them happen again. As her voice died Sulukinak looked ashamedly to the dirt, at least until she'd drummed up enough focus to speak again.

Cousins came, and the warrior woman, and you called her War Chief; and then the healer came, but... she could not in the moment recall the name of Meleeys, and had not yet met the man with the scarred face, besides which they were more like willow ash in the recreation of this memory; smudged and dark and formless. And... and some time later, your woman. She was... She was bloody too, but not like you. Barely there, this Sulukinak could not blame upon Star Eater because it had been such a sight to her own eyes! Of course his wife could not — but — I thought she was there to help you. She had nothing for you; no medicine, no... no panic, even. She did not stay. I don't know. I don't... I don't know.

She was trembling, not that Sun Eater would see it.

I can't go. I won't go. In this moment it is like Sulukinak is reacting again to Nagruk, snapping teeth at the air, but after that initial jarring clip of her jaws shut she comes to herself again, frowning, shaking. Her voice is smaller, somehow. Please don't tell me to go.

it did not fit.

sun eater had not immediately found recollection of how he had asked that his wife not be told. in the waking and the fading, he had believed that was why she had not come. she had not known. sulukinak's story challenged the belief to which he had clung. he knew his niece had no reason to lie, but was made angry by the fact he had no way to know.

pensive breaths swung through his chest, each bringing with it a bite of pain. 

"someone — brought medicine." he did not think he would be alive without it. sun eater searched through memory for the scent of the young woman, finding only that star eater and the milky scent of newborns had clung to her fur.

sulukinak jerked and snapped beside him, and with effort he turned his head against the earth, narrowing single eye in something like worry. "you are here. i will not send you away. you are — needed." 

bloody. "what blood?"

no panic? but that could be for many reasons. did not he himself know shock?

why did sulukinak tell this story?

why had star eater been away from their children? why had she returned as if she had been gone? a headache added its vibrant radiation and sun eater hissed in frustrated pain.

Whatever frenzy had possessed Sulukinak had ebbed as she'd come to this pleading conclusion, and was further relaxed from her—or maybe just tampered down—when the chieftain made his declaration. It was good; she would stay, he would recover, there would be no losses and she would never be alone again. It would all be fine.

What blood?

What? Oh.

Her gaze fluttered as she recalled again. I don't know. Lots of it. Not like your wounds, I don't... I don't think. I didn't see, but I smelled it. Hyperfocus had shifted in that moment from Sun Eater dying beside her to the brief but pungent taste that had dominated the air; but it had come and gone like a strong breeze.

And then her eyes were wide again, except they were bright as if something had illuminated them; a thought, a memory sparking to recognition. Darukaal. It was the smell of the glacier. Had she been nose-blind to it? There had been so much blood, and Sulukinak herself carried the scents of Faust (as well as...)— Why would she go there? Did you fight—did she do this...?

Sulukinak grew agitated again, quaking where she lay, urged to lift herself up but only to sit and to bristle there. A look of deep confusion fought the anger she now felt, and she did not know what to do with that either.

he smelled it now.

darukaal, and the man from the meeting of clans. 

darukaal. darukaal.

his jaw ground hard; eyelid fluttered with a sudden scorching rage he dared not put to himself. he rejected it. he rejected the image his thoughts created, and staved away with hard arm the idea of — of such happening a second time.

an intake of breath scoured his throat. "not her. gjalla. sister."

resisting even now the tiniest possibility.

"blackfell chose not to fight. he left the night star eater's pains began. i went to black hawk. she chose to submit, and i sent her away with the new tartok, kukuvrak, to follow one who invaded the cache."

an effort to speak; sun eater rested in his malaise and new sickness, his confusion. "i need a report." but he would not ask her to leave, and did not wish her to leave.

"gjalla was still a part of the sun clan when we fought. why —" would any warrior have gone to darukaal? why would his wife?

Her throat tightened. I went to Darukaal. I did not know it was there—the glacier, yes, the people... no. Only a few days there, and Blackfell climbed the glacier.

She thought, and squinted, and tried to add what she knew to the puzzle as if that might help. I do not know what he said to their chieftain, it was not in words I understood—except he was angry. Their chieftain, Faust, called him cousin, and gave him a sleeping place. She would not elucidate upon the facts there; it was not important that the bed was a shared one.

Sun Eater spoke a name that Sulukinak did not recognize, and she did not think either man of Darukaal had spoken in her presence — Gjalla? She did not know who this was. I did not hear the name Gjalla. There was a... Svalla, a pale woman with a similar rage to her. The people of Darukaal are... emotional. Unstable.

A small shake of her head, and she is still again.

sun eater did not know svalla, but he saw now the connection, and tensed there upon the ground. he saw more and more what this must be, for was there also not a bond between she and blackfell?

anger and hurt and disbelief strained him again, and sun eater was silent in the face of it. she had not come to him, but she had gone to the glacier. how else was he to understand?

at last he forced himself up on unaffected elbow; it was a harsh anguish and the cords of his neck stood out. success came to minutes.

"she did not tell me of her bond to the glacier." she had not told him at all.

some formless rage began to mold itself into a knowing of what must be done, and he looked in concentration at sulukinak.

The tale sank in to Sun Eater and pained him, or so Sulukinak thought, although it could have been the physical ruin across the whole of his body that weakened him rather than a perceived betrayal. She could not fathom what it meant to trust someone enough to wed them, sire their children, and then to find out such a life was a lie. The behaviors of these southern wolves repeatedly confused Sulukinak despite her witnessing of their lives, studying of their ways, and shadowing those around her.

Opening her mouth slightly, as if to say more, Sulukinak considers what it might mean to her uncle if she should explain her own time within Darukaal. The sex aside — she remained in heat, a fact that was dwindling but not vanished despite all of the chaos of everything else. She still carried the mark of Faust and the cousin Blackfell; perhaps she carried more than that.

Watching him — witnessing now the moulded furs still gummed with blood, the pastes across his bare flesh, the concoctions left with his food where he could reach, there was much that read as weakness and infirmary; would words of her roaming and her bedding of these men only serve to wound her uncle further?

Her mouth softly closing, her eyes averting; all of this swiftly as her uncle's ire flashed white-hot across his face. When his eye turned upon her with great focus, she almost winced. Perhaps she thinks you will not last long enough to ask her.