Ocean's Breath Plateau song of storms

The scar was shiny, pink, and soon to disappear beneath her fur.

And yet the mountain did not call.

Moontide sat in mourning, her husband lent his hand to Saltshore, and Tullik healed. But the mountain did not call to her. Her eyes traveled the shoreline.

It was soon to begin planning a family, but she was wed. It was a matron’s duty to decide where her children would whelp and be raised. But that was not a discussion to have herself.

She ducked into the den with a sleeve of fishskin pressed over her scar, the fur surrounding it wet, in the hopes it would reduce the scar and encourage the fur to grow back sooner. It was an ugly thing, her scar. But she matched her husband, she supposed.

@Chakliux ? She called. Was he here?

chakliux entered the lodge soon after. he stamped sand from his paws and had brought a pair of bream home. laying the two fish upon a leather mat made to hold such pungent offerings, he turned toward tullik.
"wife."
he had not heard her call, but now looked at the seeking lines of her figure and wondered what she wished. "do you wish to make your return to moonspear now?"

She smiled to see him, as she always did.

It is strange. Tullik mused, stepping close to brush her unharmed shoulder to her husband’s much larger counterpart, her eyes falling to the bream in front of them.

The mountain does not call me as it once did. It is there, I think of it, but it does not call to me to walk its face always.

because he had brought the fish, chakliux would leave them for tullik to carve. but he would not tell her to do this, wanting her only to comprehend why he waited. 
"does this mean you will stay in moontide?" he asked. "we should say this thing to sialuk first, maybe." again, deferring; this was her lodge; she was his wife; lodge-matters belonged to the wife.

Tullik peered up at her husband, before she assembled herself in front of the matt, raising a paw to touch her chin as she considered the fish.

I do not know what my heart wishes yet. Moontide is welcoming, the sea is very calming, but I know I will always miss my mountain. The mountain that Moonspear walked upon was not hers by any means, but it certainly felt as so.

In the tradition of your people, where do you whelp? Keen eyes looked up from the fish to find Chakliux, a raised brow contributing to Tullik’s concentrated look.

the seal hunter settled, beginning to clean caked sand from his paws. "beside the sea, in the cold. it is best for children to be born in winter," he declared, "it gives them greater power."
his smile was all for tullik; chakliux enjoyed when she asked questions of the seal hunters. "and you? where do your women give birth?"
and what now did her heart wish? another mountain, perhaps, while he longed for the sea.

She hummed a little note, quick in her throat.

We had no birthing grounds. It was like we were always running, if not from the weather than from the rockslides. A rueful chuckle left the young woman, as she turned to look at her husband.

I think I like yours better. It was an idle comment, as she went and began to chew the head of the bream from its body.

I was born in winter, right after the first moon. Her tail wagged, up and down.

It was hard, the mountain cruel, but we had each other. Until they no longer did.

chakliux crossed his forepaws, stretching the long muscles along his side. "winter for our children then," he said directly, softly. "but i do not think i want to live upon a mountain, tullik."
his words were ventured softly. he kept his brightberry eyes upon her work. this could be a moment of splitting for he and she. it was why the seal hunters lived together at once; you must know before winter if you could share a lodge in the deep snow with the wolf who you chose as mate.

He did not think he could live upon a mountain. Tullik closed her eyes. Her mountain, Moonspear’s mountain, everything tumbled about in her head.

The mountain… She swallowed, feeling it thickly in her throat. The bandage she had not ripped off since the snow, since the mountain.

Belongs to Moonspear. Not to me. Inhale, exhale.

I left one mountain and arrived to another even more broken then when I left the first. The new one bandaged my wounds, allowed me to forget the old. I would have vanished up there, had I not met you. Her pawpads were still rough from the rocky terrain, her heart still remembered the air there, but her heart also remembered the soft breath of the sea, her heart remembered seeing the ocean for the very first time. It was not a sense of home, but had anywhere ever been? Tullik had grown up nomadic.

Mountains just so happened to be her greatest triumph and her worst fear.

My people stayed in the mountains out of fear. The lowlands, they said, were full of darkness and evil, had been since our ancestors had climbed into them. In her eyes lived steel.

I think..I think I am done living in fear. i am not Tullik of the Mountains. I will always hold her in my heart, but she is a girl too scared to live. I am Tullik of the Seal Hunters, and I will be a woman who is scared of nothing.

the seal hunter was moved.
tullik created an image of cascading stone and endless snow, a place she had gone to disappear. to die, perhaps, if not for their meeting.
though all her recitation was chakliux rapt and attentive.
tullik, one who had lived in fear of the lands below the high peaks; tullik now, turning toward him with true face and truer heart.
chakliux found he could not speak; he only steadily gazed at her with great adoration and affection.
"tullik of the seal hunter people," he said softly. "you are seen."

His quiet affirmation made her chest warm over to burning, the salt-sting of her eyes making her squeeze them shut to fight off the tears. Her inhale was sharp, but quiet. She pulled the deep wool of the coat of a matriarch upon her shoulders, and she turned to look at her husband.

That is, perhaps, all I’ve ever wanted. Tullik Pitsâtailik was a scared little girl living in the fear of generations.

Tullik of the Seal Hunters sloughed the weight off her shoulders like snow leaving a cliffside. Her face broke into a teary smile, and she reached over to place her paw upon Chakliux’s own.

I will be grateful for you for all my time walking this world. For not letting me become snow and ice on a peak.

"and i am thankful you wish to follow me, tullik. i will teach you all these things. ice and snow are in my heart also. we will love them together."
a soft look for her, an embrace; he carefully smoothed the fish-skin from her wound and laved its edges quietly. "nulettukutik," chakliux said softly, a seal hunter word he had not yet heard. "annak."

He spoke to her in those softly accented words she knew so well, and her heart soared to hear it. She chuffed low for his ears to hear, reaching her head around to nose into his scruff.

I am yours. She murmured, her voice gentled into a low hum. Her heartbeat fluttered against her ribs, a caged bird flapping against the enclosed space.

I will be your wife until you no longer wish it. And when he no longer had wish of her, if he ever did, she would accept it with stoic grace, calm as a rock face.

Her life was changing, and Tullik was ever curious to see where her path led.

"and when could that be, tullik," chakliux murmured in return, and his kiss to her ruff was more fevered than before; the berrybright eyes asked, though he would find his rein all the same.
"it is good you are here."
and he was happy, in long held truth.
seal hunter man. seal hunter woman.

He kissed her mantle, and she leaned closer. One of her paws hooked around his front leg.

Perhaps if you grow tired of my prodding. She half joked. Tullik leaned her body against Chakliux’s own, feeling the pull of muscle with every movement.

It is good you brought me here. Perhaps she would have never left the mountain otherwise.

a laugh, steadying her; his eyes darkened at that, and slowly he wended his own paw toward her wrist.
she was injured! her body proclaimed it! and yet her eyes warmed him, and he was drawing toward her a moment later; "maybe you will tire of mine," chakliux suggested, deadpan; his teeth were a grin that closed now for a second kiss.

Her response was a laugh quickly silenced, her nose turning to muffle the sound in Chakliux’s shoulder.

I don’t believe I ever will. She said into the spaces between his fur, breath hot and breathing unsteady. Tullik felt flush beneath the pale sandiness of her pelt, and for the first time, she felt pleased with its color.

Good for the sand, she thought.

it was ended for him, in that moment; had he arms he might have placed her down in their sleeping place. hunger forgotten; a new one becoming known to him in all portions of desire. 
"i will make sure you rest after."
mouth to cheek, to throat, to shoulder; her pleasure was his to bring in utterance or movement.
time, taken; time, given; on the exchange of soft breaths the seal hunter realized he had softened for tullik in the same way love had shaped him for nasamik.
this revelation added impetus to his love of her, for her;
salt to stars, sky to mountain; seal hunters dancing.

When Tullik was young and her mother still breathed, Tusannituk had sat both girls down and told them a story.

”There will come a day” her gentle voice had spoken ”that a man will come for each of you. He will swoon you with words, will bring to you the pleasure of being loved. Some men will string you together, just to cut the strings. They will not understand you, will seek to mold you into something you are not, and will break you in the process.”

”How will we know which is which?” Her own much younger voice had said, a new fear in her heart. Tusannituk had smiled at their father in the doorway, his teeth wrapped around a fatty marmot, his eyes ever kind.

”You will know.”

Tullik had never learned who hurt her mother enough to pass on such a warning to her daughters. But here, in the warm lodge with her husband, their intermingled breaths, fire stoked warm in her stomach, she found the memory again. She recognized the look in her mother’s eyes. She couldn’t see herself in any mirrors, but she knew she wore it too.

Chakliux brought her to new heights, higher even than her mountain, and it was up among those stars that she learned for the first time that her mother had been right.

She did know.

In the interim, the ocean lapped the shore, the stars tipped the mountains, and they were as one.