Ocean's Breath Plateau dentalium

@Red Leaf :o

the first warrior paused at the lodges to bring meat. but he did not visit, knowing that his tense energy would only disturb the pups. instead, he looked for @Raiyuk, to tell him quietly that an enemy of the seal hunters now lived in the village, to guard against the man cen.
when chakliux moved toward the beach, he found that the man had not come back. the seal hunter scoffed at this; he brought a bird to the shell-path that led to the new den of the caribou people. he did not know her name and had not seen her, did not even know the number of the pups.
but chakliux had his own plan, and stopped well back from the den-mouth. "i am looking for the caribou woman who came here with cen," he called gently, in the the pidgin he and the hateful hunter had used.

brave one was a snuggler, red leaf had learned. when he was not nursing, she held him and spoke to him even though he could not hear, even sang for him the very same lullabies her mother had once sung for her.
he would know them, even in secret.
the past few days had been lonesome. cen rarely came to her unless it was to bring her meat, and she herself was much too weak to walk around. even if she could, it frightened her to do so alone. and so she clung to her son and the sounds of the sea, counted the colorful seashells she could see from inside the cramped walls. no one else had come for her. she suspected most of the moonwolves did not even know she was here.
until now.
an alabaster shade thunders closer and closer until he stops, peering into the den from a distance. he is tall and broad, and red leaf cannot help but stare at the three long scars that paint his muzzle. he speaks to her in a way that is oddly familiar, much closer than the tongue of sunshine, but not close enough to lanzadoii.
she stares at him, wide-eyed. her instinct still tells her not to speak to these foreigners, that cen was right. but cen had been wrong about rodyn. what were the chances that he housed flesh-eaters in his village?
could she trust him? could she trust herself? could she trust anyone?
i am red leaf, she whispers, swallowing hard, before moving her arm ever so slightly to expose the boy cloaked in nightfall at her chest. and th-this is brave one.

she had striking scarlet eyes which almost startled chakliux as she spoke from the gloom of the sea-den. but at last she spoke; he dropped to his belly in the time-old submission of wolf fathers, and crept close to see the boy.
but for his darkness, he looked very little like cen. chakliux was surprised that the woman had allowed him to see the boy at all, which reinforced his suspicion around what he knew of the isolated caribou tribes. "akiak is strong, and he will find himself lucky when he is older and has his mother to himself," he said, wanting to push the last of the waning tension away.
now he looked to red leaf. "i am chakliux. first warrior of moontide, a man of the seal hunters." did she know them? "is there anything you need?" he asked first, pushing back upon his belly against the sand, easing from the den. she was brave. was it more than bravery? his eyes asked if she was desperate.

his name is chakliux. he is a warrior of moontide. he crawls closer to come into the den and red leaf feels her belly tighten with nervousness, heart fluttering in her chest. she wanted to growl at him but could not bring herself to do so. his comments of akiak — the use of his sharadoii name, the implication that one day he will not have his father — what the hell was he talking about?
she is frightened and somewhat annoyed, as one would expect of an exhausted first-time mom, until he says the word seal hunters. she relaxes noticeably at this, looking at him now with a hint of curiosity. my mother used to tell me stories of the seal hunters, she tries to mirror his smile, but it seems as if it is unable to reach her eyes.
and then he asks if there is anything that she needs.
when was the last time someone had asked her that? it was such a simple thing, such a novel sentiment, and yet —
it broke her.
silently, red leaf begins to cry.

he smiled into her pretty eyes, unknowing that red leaf thought he spoke of cen and not the fact akiak was an only son. but before chakliux could respond, she was weeping. for a moment he was only still, watching her in trepidation as he tried to think how he might comfort tullik or marina.
but he could not put his arms around another man's wife, let alone the woman of an enemy; he was flustered, but at last descended to his belly again. chakliux did not crowd her threshold, but lay near it, glancing between her tearstained face and the path that cen would use to return.
"my own mother told me stories of the caribou people," he at last said in a gently kind tone. "my great-great grandmother kiin was one of you."
for a time the seal hunter was silent, wanting to comfort red leaf but unsure how he might, and knowing it was not the right moment to speak of cen.

something inside of red leaf wanted to tell him everything.
about the way she had taken ghaden under her wing and held him as if she had grown him in her own body, the love that had blossomed between she and cen and how it had gone so terribly wrong. the last time she saw the boy she had loved as her son, her fear of losing akiak in the same way. how none of this was what she had wanted, and yet she could never bring herself to just simply say no.
but it was her own fault, was it not? how was chakliux meant to help her if this was what she deserved? if this was simply what men did with their wives?
why was she crying?
and so she says nothing, not yet, still much too shell-shocked and weary to even look at him again. she flinches as he comes near, protects her face with a flimsy, delicate paw; only to realize that he is simply speaking to her.
maybe you are my cousin, she jokes, pulling her fist away from her face with a sniffle and a small, fluttering laugh. sorry, i-- it has been rough, these past few days. you are the first person to come visit me besides my husband.

cameo!

akiak, or ghelan as someone once refuted, whines for his aaka. until now, she's been still unless occasionally shifting into a more comfortable position. akiak always pressed up against her, saving him the effort of having to wriggle towards her. 
but now, she moves, speaks, and cries — all of which ripples through her body and thus pushes against the once sleeping akiak. all he could really do now is push himself to a teat and hold on for dear life. 
completely unaware of the visitor and her turmoil.

"maybe i am!" chakliux exclaimed lowly, trying to hide how surprised he was that red leaf should flinch back from him. no woman did that with him. it made him consider dark things. "i do not think many know where you are," chakliux admitted. "i asked my wives to come, but —"
perhaps they had feared cen.
the scarred face adopted a more somber expression. "i have met your husband, red leaf. i am sorry to say that already he has tried to make trouble between — between others," chakliux grunted. "he has placed a cousin-claim to a woman here. they are off hunting. it is why i have brought a gull to you, and to akiak."'
did she know she was safe? did she know she could speak? cen was away. the seal hunter could keep him away if there was more to know. "you are provided for here, red leaf."
his eyes fell to the boy, almost unseen in the darkness of the den. "you and akiak."

red leaf was horrified. her jaw falls in defeated surprise, apologetic and humiliated; she whimpers and hangs her head between her shoulders. oh, i am so sorry, a cousin claim? he was off hunting with another woman? cousin or not, a silent magma-burst of anger now roiled beneath her skin. he is-- he can be difficult. spirits, i never get a break, do i?
she would have offered to speak with him, but in what world would he listen to her?
perhaps it was the softness of chakliux's tone, or the way he looked at her son, but red leaf felt as if she was crumbling. the tears begin again, and this time she chokes on them, the dagger in her chest twisting and twisting until she wishes she could scream.
i am a bad wife, she is quiet, hesitant to even speak it aloud; she cannot help but peer over chakliux's shoulder just in case cen should make an appearance. she tries to pay attention to the sound of the crashing waves just outside the door. sometimes he gets so angry with me, and i don't know why, and now i am talking to another man-- but he, he is with another woman! i-i do not know what i did. i have given him a son. i have-- i have travelled with the herds, i have learned some lanzadoii, i-i even hunted with him for the first time. and it is still not enough! i am still doing something wrong. h-he says that i anger him. what am i supposed to do? i--
why was she speaking of him in this way? she did not want to, and yet she cannot stop, even as disgust curls its ugly tendrils in her stomach. she glances down at her son, her beautiful boy, and yet; i wasn't ready for this.

it came out in lurching words, and chakliux saw it then, the way that the woman's soul had been shredded by the same tongue cen had borne to the deepwood. "you are not a bad wife," the seal hunter denied at once with a hard shake of his scarred muzzle. it did not matter if he was still a stranger; he meant it. "he does not appear to be a man who will be satisfied by anything."
red leaf pointed out that cen was with another woman. sulukinak was claimed as cousin to the man, but chakliux had no reason to believe the stranger. and so he did not correct the caribou wife. "you have given him all the things a wife could give, red leaf. there is no more to give. do not torment yourself."
he watched the sea, his white ears tipping forward to listen for the footsteps of the man who had taken a crueler and more ugly form than he had thought before.
the berrybright eyes alighted to her achingly beautiful face, this perhaps-cousin of his who had been strained and wrung like sinew by the wants of an angry man. he felt responsible for her, for some part of this; he felt as if he should intervene.
"if you want to leave him, then moontide will not make you stay. i will not make you stay. you are free here, both of you."
but he did not know what to say at the caribou woman's implication she was not ready to be mother. there were others in moontide who might take the boy, but yet there was no belief in him that red leaf wanted this either, not with the way she gazed down at akiak as if he were the entire center of her very existence.

red leaf had never before heard such words, least of all from a man. sobering, sundering, and all things in between; there is a chill that roams the length of her spine as she adjusts her gaze to find his, lips terse as she wets them with a nervous pass of her tongue.
how is she to believe him?
she looks again at her boy only to find there are more tears that roll down her cheeks. i love him, she whispers, a frail kiss given to the nightbound head which resembled that of her husband. h-he's not always like this. there is good in him, i just have to find it again.
she suddenly feels a lurch in her stomach revealing the emptiness of it. when was the last time she had eaten? and oh, to taste something that was not caribou; the gull sitting at her feet calls to her, but she thinks of what cen might say if he saw the feathers in her den.
did it matter? did anything?
she inhales shakily, gathering herself just enough to hesitate before she speaks again, and yet she is not strong enough to stop herself. sometimes i think he might kill me.

whatever else chakliux might have said died an abrupt death on his tongue. the berrybright eyes shone in shades of shock and confusion and anger. 
there were very few ways to make such a conclusion. the seal hunter looked with new gaze at the small shelter, the absence of cen, the salt on her face, and the boy in her arms.
a horrid and great sense of doom collected in the man as if it were storm-water. he looked up along the path, a warrior protecting a path, and then his scarred shoulders flexed as he tried to dispel the rage.
"red leaf, what has he done?" his stare traveled over her limbs, her shoulders, trying to see.
plans formed in his mind but he shoved away their coalescing shapes; he needed now only to know from her voice what he had already assumed about cen.

she did not want to answer.
nothing that i did not bring upon myself.
she sniffles again, tucking her limbs up close to her chest. she did not want to answer.
i-i make it sound worse than it is, really. he's not that bad. it's just that-- he hurts me. but i don't think he realizes just how much it hurts, sometimes.
why is she still talking? her ears are ringing and the anxiety is so overwhelming that she no longer knows what exactly it is that she fears. it's not that bad, and yet something inside of her still tugs at her and tells her to sound the alarm. she did not want to answer.
and yet, she does.
it's my own fault. i'm bad at telling him no when i don't want to make love, or-- staying quiet when he tells me to, or making camp the right way, or not preparing meat fast enough. i am not innocent. so he is within his right as a husband to strike me, is he not? a-and you wouldn't understand, chakliux, he-- it is the spirits. i'm bound to him, or at least i was, until brave one was born. he is lanzadoii. this is just the way that they are, the lanzadoii men, and the spirits have placed us together. i only have to-- to learn to live with it. to find the good in him and hold onto it.
what frightens her even more than the threat of her husband's iron tooth is that she is not sure that she believes herself.

as difficult as he found it, chakliux listened until red leaf had finished. she spoke of bringing cen's wrath on herself, detailing the difference of caribou hunters as if it mattered. all he could think of was blood on that smug, shouting face, twisting the man as he had hurt his wife.
"what spirits would let you suffer, red leaf?" he asked, gently challenging this part of a culture he did not understand. "i would never raise a hand to either of my wives, nor would they ever expect it from me. in fact, they would flay me outside the lodge themselves," he grunted, eyes flashing. "and i would deserve it. husbands do not have those rights. the caribou men are wrong to say they do."
red leaf was focused upon taking the pain and the rage of that man into herself, while the seal hunter was rising slowly to his feet as not to startle her, filled with a rageful and pointed anger that slowly honed itself to a point.
he saw now that cen must be removed, both as a thorn to moontide and to dutch. but more than that: as a man who harmed those he should most love. "thank you for telling me these things, red leaf. you do not need to live with this, and in fact, you will not."
the muscles of his strong jaw leapt. "these are not things that can be kept from my leaders. if he struck you outside moontide, he will strike you here. i will not tolerate it. rodyn will not. heph will not." he cleared his throat. "your home here is beautiful and quiet. i do not want you or akiak to be left alone when he comes back. i must ask you to come to the lodges of my family while i go to speak with those who lead us."
and dutch, he thought fiercely within himself.

silence fell upon red leaf yet again as he spoke. for a moment, she could hear cen's voice in her ear telling her that it was a weakness of the seal hunter people; that their men were simply not strong enough to assert themselves. but despite this, something in her knew that that was false, and the two sides of this brutal war raged inside her head until the tears began again.
she did not speak until a resounding no! leapt from her lips.
no, no, you cannot tell them anything, it was panic which met chakliux now, the scarlet eyes pinpricked despite the dim lighting of the den. please. i-i shouldn't have said what i said. you don't know what he will do to me or my son if he-- if he finds out i told you this. i beg you, if this was normal and cen was right, why was she so frightened? the weeping dissolves into sobs as she reaches a trembling arm out toward the seal hunter man. please, please don't, chakliux. i-if i am to believe you when you tell me he's dangerous, then-- if you have any heart within you at all, you will let me make the decision to stay or leave. you won't tear my family apart.
she wanted to vomit. she wanted to take little akiak and run, she wanted cen, and she also, somewhere within her, wanted chakliux to follow up on his promise. but each and every path red leaf saw before her as of now left her alone in a world she did not understand.
her decision, as a result, would be whichever path caused her and her son the least amount of pain; the problem she now faces is that she does not know which one that is.

red leaf panicked. for a moment chakliux did not understand and was annoyed; did she not want to get away from him? then he thought of how she had flinched; ashamed, he was forced to admit to himself that he did not comprehend her fear, for he had not suffered as a woman might.
trying to think of what his wives might do, he kept his ears turned to signal that he heard.
he was silent for a long time, at last fumbling and awkward as he touched her paw with his own, and glanced toward her in reassurance. "red leaf. he does not like me. he will know i have come here." there was no time for her to plan an escape from a man who beat her for meat arrangement! "i do not want you to be torn from your family. but i do not want anything to happen to you while we wait."
a thought; he pressed tongue to teeth and considered. "i have a close companion. his name is dutch; he is — more than brother to me. his people now border moontide to the east. beyond that is moonglow, and to the south is moonspear. there are many villages with many warriors and many people, none of whom strike their wives." he searched her face, glanced at the boy. "cen has made a cousin-claim to a girl who is like a sister to dutch, i think. he has taken her away. he says you all must leave in seven weeks."
berryweave met redglow. "will you let me make a cousin-claim for you, red leaf? i know you are caribou, but if i say you are seal also, what can cen do? to strike you then would be to enrage another lineage. it would give you time."
there was very little which bound chakliux now from gathering his eldest son and the other men of his village, and going to break the man against the sharp stones of the sea. he showed to red leaf now though that he would wait, that he would hear, and tried to reassure her with a small smile.

chakliux was — trying. red leaf found this to be endearing, in some way, and her heart leaps up in unspoken grace and affection. but, in her mind, none of it was of use. he does not care. he aims to make me lanzadoii, strip me of my blood. a cousin-claim on my end would not stop him. he paid his bride price to my family, and now he does what he wishes with me.
she thinks of what he had said about her finding another man. her throat tightens at the mere thought; cen was the one and only man she had ever even looked at in such a way! it was a solution, to some degree, but no matter how much part of her ached for that freedom, the rest of her longed to be at his side.
and there is more to the story, more that i didn't say, she swallows as she traces his smile with her gaze, feels around for his palm in the dark. there is a reason we left our glacier home.
when i met cen, he-- his wife, gheli, had just passed away. he was alone with their son. his name was ghaden. she chokes over his name. i was visiting the lanzadoii for a friend's wedding when i-- i thought i would offer to babysit. and so i did. i did not have much else better to do, and it was the off-season for the long march, so i would come across the path and watch ghaden. he was-- the sweetest thing, that boy. i grew to love him as if he were my own. and cen and i had just... clicked. he was perfect.
and then, a few months ago, i was taking ghaden for a little patrol along the cousin river. it had snowed pretty bad the night before, and he was so excited! and-- while we were playing, he tried to run across the river. he thought-- we both thought the ice was solid, and;
an indescribable expression crosses her haggard features.
i-i tried so hard to pull him out, but he was trapped, and when i tried to tell the chieftains what happened, no one believed me. cen, cen took me away to save me. but even he doesn't fully trust me, and how could he? i was the last person ghaden ever saw. cen had trusted me with him! i was supposed to keep him safe.
by the end of it, she can no longer look chakliux in the eye. i deserve it. the pain. i am responsible for what happened to ghaden. cen and the spirits are punishing me, and i deserve it.

it felt as though she had been jailed a long while, captured behind lashings of wood and sinew, her thin fingers fluttering through the bars as she talked and talked, a quick cascade of terrified words in accented pidgin.
lanzadoii, she had called cen. chakliux had never bothered to learn the factions of those caribou tribes, but now wished that he had.
the root of her husband's wrath was bleak. a dead son, a home abandoned to protect a wife. red leaf's paw was warm against his own, but the seal hunter felt his mind straying again and against to the possibility that this brief contact might well be a death sentence for the wife of such a creature.
the woman's voice had grown tiny, the whisper of a frightened spirit. his jaw tensed at the notion that she deserved beatings for what sounded like an accident; chakliux was able to clearly see that red leaf still carried the agony of that loss in her own chest. 
he wanted to disagree. his eyes showed firmly that he did. but his mouth did not argue. it resolved him more, that the caribou spirits were cruel and that she should leave them. but this was the seal hunter heart speaking; all he knew now was that somehow he must disconnect her from cen. 
"if your spirits demand a payment, then i believe you have already given it, red leaf."
the knowledge of her plight sat rank within him, and he no longer knew if she would work to avoid her marriage, or stand against those who wanted to free her. "but that time upon the river, with the boy — it was not your fault. oil father does not share his ways. nor do your caribou spirits. cen striking you will not bring back the son you shared."

not her fault—?
how could he say such a thing when — ice mother sees us all, everything we do, and while she is loving she is not merciful. she will bring justice to those who displease her. and i have, red leaf swallows, suddenly yanking away her paw and tucking it to her chest. i have done a horrible thing. it doesn't matter if i did not harm him directly. i let a boy die, chakliux, i--
a steadying breath; a glance. to the sharadoii, a boy's death after the first moon phase but before he reaches manhood is-- it is one of the worst crimes. ice mother would not take a boy like that. he is sent back to her for a reason. and she will get revenge.
now chakliux was beginning to frustrate her. it was patronizing, the haunted magenta gaze. her stare grows hard. why was he so insistent? i will be done with my repayment when ice mother decides i am done. all i can do is hope she does not bring her wrath to akiak.
and now she begins to fully realize the danger of this situation, this strange man laid in her den with her son. her hackles flare as she flicks her tail up over her newborn's back, acting as a blanket. she says nothing else as an ugly dread creeps up from her stomach and into her chest.

chakliux wanted to ask red leaf if it was the fault of a father if a boy died upon a seal hunt. would she stand before him and blame him for leading a son to follow in the ways of oil father? but he bit back the words, to hear how very sorrowful her voice was in the face of this young one whom she had loved and lost.
the plume coming down over the boy ended the words, and chakliux pulled away from the denmouth. "all right, red leaf."
his voice was solemn, and then the tall shadow of the seal hunter passed over the shell-path and was gone, over the rise and back into the mainland of moontide.
she would stay! she would not leave! the pain upon her lovely face rent him, and he paced in anger to find the leaders of the plateau village.
for what would happen to cen, red leaf might come to hate chakliux. and yet he must accept this now, for he could keep no secret of the caribou hunter's great wrongs.