Ocean's Breath Plateau [m] Tell me, when the party ends, will you still love who I am?

Mature Content Warning

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Mentions of assault, murderous ideation, suicidal ideation, it's a whole party

Moontide. Home. She was —

she was home.

Numb, trembling limbs took her blindly to the water's edge. His scent on her, all around her, and her throat tightened and contracted with the urge to vomit. She stared out into the sea and thought, I should wash myself. I should eat something. I should sleep. I need to sleep.

She couldn't.

And she thought, I should call for — someone. @Heph. @Chakliux. @Rodyn.

But she didn't.

Her eyes traced the rolling waves, and her tears fell silently. Shattered; she was shattered.

he filled himself with tullik; he had not yet spoken to her of marina, wanting the women to speak among themselves before any choice was made. but he continued to hunt for marina, continued to visit her lodge.
she had been away, surely searching, and he had often been to the glacier. chakliux packed her cache with sides of trout fished inland and found that her scent was fresher; and interwoven with that of a stranger.
he found marina staring and broken and smeared entire with the reek of a strange man; the seal hunter came close at once with great concern in his eyes "what has happened?"

Chakliux found her then. She looked up, bleary-eyed and slow, and her lips parted for a moment as if she meant to speak. But then he was coming close, too close and her skin crawled with it, and she flinched from him with a soft cry.

The numbness broke at once into a thousand feelings. What has happened? The words would not come to her. I - Her voice cracked into a wrenching sob and she crumbled, half-falling into a sit as if the weight of it all had only just now struck her and she could not bear to stand beneath it. He - How could she tell him? How could she say the words?

She couldn't. She couldn't. Panic now; all pinprick pupils and hackles bristling and she couldn't breathe, and she felt his weight on her again, his breath at her neck. A deep shudder wracked her. She tried again to speak, but each time the words dissolved into another harrowed sob.

chakliux knew, and his eyes burned with sudden anger. for marina he controlled it, pulling back and not reaching to touch her, save for a brush of his paw to her ankle.
"come," the seal hunter said softly. "come into the water. tell me where you were."
chakliux would help her to bathe, if she allowed it. he would dry her, take her home to the lodge of tullik. 
and then he would gather warriors and find the man. 
thinking of these things allowed him to hold his control. he must, for her sake, even if his ire was now written into every inch of his body.
assault carried twofold punishment among his people. a man found to have violated a woman would not only have his lodge stripped from him, but his wife would be expected to divorce him as well. his name would be forgotten, his children robbed of their status unless their mother remarried. and he would be castrated before they threw him bleeding from the village.
but this was not a seal hunter place. a man had harmed his new wife. chakliux would kill him for it.
his rage burned, but his touch to marina was soft.

Later she would appreciate Chakliux for this moment, the gentle way he led her to the water. That was where she wanted to be. In the water. That would help. That would make her feel clean again.

Her cries quieted as she stood, but the tears continued to fall even as she followed Chakliux numbly into the water. A forest. All the trees looked the same, Scarcely more than a trembling whisper, and she could not recall more than that, not now. The water touched her and she shivered. A chill was settling over her. That numbness, returning.

He helped her, and she let him. The sea swept away the scent and with it some piece of herself. Her thoughts were fragmented, halting, scattering until she anchored herself to the steady presence of the man she had chosen for her husband. Marina felt adrift and filled with loathing but she trusted Chakliux; he was a part of her now, a cornerstone of her existence in the same way Moontide and her children were.

She did not want to leave the water. She pressed herself into his arms there, shivering, caught sharply between the want to never be touched again and the need to flee that encroaching feeling of bone-deep cold. There was warmth here; safety. And she needed it desperately, even as she was gripped again by a sick twisting sensation.

Mature Content Warning

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a forest.
as chakliux sluiced cleansing water over her trembling body, he thought of how the man's blood would arc over leaves and bark and ground, how the seal hunter would cut his joints so that the spirit could not leave. how he would not stop until the muscle of the body that had done this was raw and exposed to the winter sun. 
he did not ask for her to say more on what had occurred. in silent support he stood with marina in the water until even he began to feel its chill. "come with me," the man murmured with the same even command, not translating and taking respectful hold of the situation as he started to lead her from the sea.
chakliux was not eager to leave marina, but his bones sang with the hunt, and he wished to be swiftly gone before the scent dissipated from the foliage.
slowly, at her pace, the seal hunter would bring her to tullik.

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Suicidal ideation

Marina entertained no such thoughts of vengeance; had she heard Chakliux's thoughts she might have asked what is the point? No amount of blood could wash away these stains. Even the salt-laden lap of the waves scarcely helped.

Stained. Shattered.

Chakliux beckoned her, and numbly she gathered the broken pieces of herself, clutching them like a thin cloak to shield her from a snowstorm. While visions of murder danced behind his eyes, her own were filled with flashing images of drifting out to sea, of surrendering her sense of self to cold waters and desolation. What use did she have for a self anymore? It had failed her.

She followed in trembling silence and could not meet his eyes, nor Tullik's, nor anyone else's. They would name it sorrow, she assumed, but most of all what Marina felt now was shame. It would not have happened if she had not allowed it. If she hadn't lingered, if she could have done more than freeze in fear.

Every so often her eyes found the water again, and each time she wondered if the void of nonexistence might resemble relief.