Big Salmon Lake cutback

She was nauseated and could not say why.

She should be in a place of the moons, a place of healing, somewhere familiar to lay her head when the world seemed to spin. She could have even been alongside White @Elk and it would have been safer!

By the light of the moon she came across the edge of the lake's waters.

Sickened and feeling as if each nerve in her body had suddenly become stardust. Frazzled and meant to spread across the sky that was her.

Before she knew it, she had waded mid-leg deep into the cold waters.

He missed her. His work suffered for missing her, and still, he had three feathers left. He should find more men to bestow them on, but instead, he sought her out.

He was not used to missing people. Not like this. He didn't like it.

Her scent came to a lake, and he watched her for a moment as he had back at the glacier. She was so beautiful, and as much as he wanted to speak to her, to be near to her, there was a part of him that loathed the idea of breaking the picture with his own image.

But something seemed different, today.

"Callyope?" he called out, his voice made sharper by some unnamed unease.

She wanted to go further into the lake. When her eyes closed, she imagined herself being pulled below and feeling the cold sweep over her. Some part of her yearned for it in a way that was beyond any thought. It was an instinct.

"Callyope?"

She found his voice was sharper than any kiss of cold water.

The Nuiruk did not remove herself from the waters. Only blindly stared over her shoulder at him with a nearly blank look. Nearly. There was a curious glimmer in her gaze and the silent wondering of how he was here.

Maybe why, more than how.

The herald was not sure what to think when no answer came. He only gazed back at her, nonplussed, waiting for her to speak. But she didn't.

He came forward at a slow, almost wary pace, the wind whipping at his back. Something seemed — off. Not quite right. But he was not sure what had given him this impression, nor what ought to be done about it.

"Callyope?" he asked again, uncertain. "Do you want me to go?"

No.

It broke free before the thought even came to her.

The pull to the water, the pull to him, the pull to her very being. Somewhere she was the center of the universe in that moment.

Come stand with me.

Would he? Despite the chill in the water and the uncertainty in this moment.

Concern washed over him anew. Commanded, he stepped forward, lessening the distance between them. The cold of the waters didn't bother him, but something about her seemed changed, and he feared the worst.

"You seem troubled," he said as he came up beside her, leaving a proprietary distance between them. He wanted to ease whatever strange mood had come over her, but he was not sure that it was his place.

She admired him, bathed in cold waters and moonlight. Her eyes looked for something that was not visible to everyone. Something beyond the physical, imagined or not.

Something troubles me, yes.

Let him see that she is not all strength and magic, that she was as mortal as the next. Flesh and bone only guarded by spirit.

You have grounded me.

Her face neared his.

His own eyes were troubled, then. His desire to fix whatever was wrong increased tenfold, but for a moment, he was very quiet beside her, waiting to see if she would say more. He almost forgot to be wary of her nearness, and when he remembered, he stiffened for all of a moment before all propriety was swept away. There were things more important than the impression of virtue.

"I am here," he said, sidling closer so that their fur might mingle; so that he might be a ballast or a blanket as called for. "Will you tell me about it?" he asked her, unsure if this was the right thing to say.

Fur mingled and she found she wished she could wear it like a shawl. Perhaps the feather still lodged in her fur was a show of that.

I felt — What was it? Where had the nauseated feeling come from? Unwell.

I should be in a moon village, but I stand here. With you.

That was not what troubled her, was it? Yet it felt just as important to declare.

White Elk tucked his chin over Callyope's head, and for the first time in his adult life, he held a woman close to his chest. His heart threatened to burst at the warmth of her, and at the odd comfort of a living wolf existing so close. He enjoyed it — guiltily, almost, except he thought that perhaps Callyope liked it, too.

"I do not know what to do for you," he admitted to her, "But if you need to be with your village — we should go there."

Perhaps they would know how to uplift her. But he made no move to go, awaiting some sign from Callyope before making any decisions. For now, he was only a steady presence beside her.

She was held.

The crevice of him was a home for a moment. She could not imagine leaving it, just like a home too. Only she knew she had once left behind that place and that she had a wanderer's heart. Even if she felt ready to settle, to establish herself.

She knew she would want to roam to hunt, to establish connections.

A village did not always have to know one place, did it? A home did not.

Not yet, She found herself deeply pressed against him and entirely unable to move.

Mature Content Warning

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Impure Thoughts Ahoy

He tried his best not to react to her nearness, but even with the water so cold against him, he could not help but be aroused. He'd never experienced this sort of nearness before; it was not done in the place where he'd been born. He had not even seen his parents embrace this way, as it was believed in those lands that public displays of affection might affect the chastity of their youth.

Everything about Callyope was soft and warm and heady. He breathed in her scent like a drowning man and found himself yet unquenched. He wanted more —

But her wants were important, too. Her peace of mind. So he only held her, guiltily filling his spirit with the weight of the encounter. Was this was love felt like?

"Then we will wait a moment," he murmured, hoping to distract himself. Distract them both, lest she notice the effect she had on him! "Would you tell me of what troubles you?"

This near, this warm.

Her eyes closed and she existed in only his space. She thought of the feather he had placed in her fur. Once she had imagined it as a part of him with her and then realized it was hardly like this.

It was good he spoke before her thoughts ran any further!

Things change, so much so fast. I fear of not keeping up and of — Why did she spill these things to him? Of making the wrong choices in these changes.

Have you ever feared such?

He shook his head;

"My path was laid before me," he told her, his voice very quiet. Grave, almost. "I was to act as herald for my sister. I was to return, lauded. I know the girl I would have married. Neither of us would have had to do a thing; our parents would have made it so. But..."

She smelled like moonlight and the dust of fine crystals.

"Now I am in a strange land," he murmured, "And there is a strange girl I can't get out of my head. And I don't know anything anymore. Not about the future, at least."

Perhaps it was meant to be seductive. The words, when they came out, however, were lonesome. Commiseration. Melancholy, almost. But what he said next was, "What choices plague you?" and his tone was only one of sympathy and quiet curiosity.

He knew the girl he would have married.

Her eyes stayed closed and she did not notice it but she pressed closer. She tried to imagine what kind of woman it was that waited on him. What kind of woman would be left behind if she...stole White Elk. Would someone come to find him? Would he return to the lands and admit of any intent here?

She placed too much importance upon whatever had started here.

He sounded nearly distant in those words and she wondered if she had somehow destroyed whatever plans had been for him.

Guilty and selfish feelings gnawed away at her stomach lining.

Somehow she felt her own things nearly sizzled out at the knowledge of White Elk, prepared to be married off but he was here. With her. Pressed so close.

Maybe this one.

There was a smile on her face that did not reach her voice and so it would likely go entirely missed.

A woman waits for you to marry her and — and it is me that is held by you.

Despite any feelings she held, there was no regret in her voice.

He looked down at her, then, wondering what decision she spoke of even now. To be here at all? To consider him? He didn't know, ad the question of it gnawed at his belly in a way that was only slightly less difficult to ignore than his want for her.

"Our parents wait for us to marry," he corrected, gently, "But I cannot marry her. Now that I know what it is to want something — I know that it is not her. Perhaps it could be if I tried, but a woman deserves better that this, don't you think?"

Anyone did.

"The choice is not whether I stay here with you or go home to her," he went on. "It is what I do now that I know it's not that. But I do not know what those choices are. And it is frightening to act without knowing what my actions might cost me."

He wanted. He wanted after something that was not her, so was it her? And he was nice enough to know that if this waiting woman was not wanted, then she should not be wedded to him.

Actions always costed something.

That was part of her fear within them now. That in these changes among her, among her family, that she might make choices that would cost something she had not realized.

We share a mind, I think... She lifted her head and pressed her face into the underside of his neck. As if she might bury herself into the heartbeat of him and make it her own.

It was easier, and indulgent, to submerge herself in him instead of focusing on these...changes.

He was here and he did not change like the water around him. He was a steady force that she could stabilize herself against.

His breath caught almost painfully when she pressed her face into his fur. It was an action he felt all over, like a strange pulse in his body. The water felt freezing against the flush of desire.

"You test me," he said, his tone uncertain but full of wonder — "In ways I have not been tested before."

She knew this, right? What she was doing to him? Not that temptation was difficult to overcome. He'd meant what he said to her mother — that he would respect her no matter who was watching. But it felt illicit just to be standing her, just to be aware of her in this way, as he had never been aware of any woman before her.

"It is not proper, where I am from," he told her, because he did not think she understood this. But his tone suggested he didn't mind; he was not where he was from any longer, after all. He was in her world, and he was learning to walk by the laws of her world. "I don't know what is proper anymore."

What a frightening thought.

She knew — only because it tested her too. After this she would carry his scent where she carried his gifted feather. How she almost wished she could take him everywhere! Like a fur across her shoulders, always there for this bit of comfort.

She laughed against the warm vibrations of his voice through his throat.

I feel as if it changes all the time. Perhaps it is...it is only proper for those who decide it so.

Would it scare him? She was not positive if it scared her.

For White Elk, it did not feel this way; it felt as though propriety and everything else had been one way his entire life, and now everything he'd known before was wrong. Or not wrong, perhaps, but useless to him. Irrelevant.

So why was he thinking about it?

"Perhaps," he agreed, a laugh in his voice. He didn't think he would find this proper at least until it began as something other than comfort in a time of distress. But they weren't doing anything wrong yet, were they? So he resigned himself to enjoying the moment, feeling carefree and melancholy both at once.

His nose mingled with the fur at the back of her neck.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked, remembering how her demeanor had worried him when he'd first arrived.

300 for youuu

She felt far away from the things that had brought her here.

Still the chill of the water was not so shocking. Not as long as he remained close and they remained here. He had gripped her focus, grounded her. His warmth was her own now.

She wanted to walk very far with him.

Yes. Her nose turned down now to bury in the fine furs of his chest. Walk me back towards the villages? Stay a night?

Maybe that wasn't proper!

50 for you!

White Elk dipped his head to hide a shudder.

"As you wish," he replied, pleased to be able to deliver on a concrete request. He would stay as many nights as she asked him — proper or not. He had no notion that they might stay together — not right then. But he would stay close. Perhaps this would be a comfort to her.

The idea filled him with heat.

"Come," he requested, his voice warm, and rueful at his own expense. "Show me the way again?"

!

He meant for her to lead them home.

Perhaps it was nothing more than simple truth. Maybe she read to much into it! Still her heart was loud within her.

Always.

And she meant it.