Qeya River kuugaamiut

the shadow girl spent the early morning at the edge of the river.

this water was as cold as the deep sea, she thought. it was sharp and then it numbed. it moved quickly down the center, and so she was mindful and wary. her goal was not to fish but to explore — and so her path cut along the qeya's belly.

there were some scents here she did not know, and so she would pull away from the water and study them. a few she gathered by rolling shoulder-first against the loam, or she would scratch at rocks to cleave them away and see what lingered underneath.

one such moment earned her a mouthful of earthworms, which she pulled free and quickly swallowed.

As summer progressed into a gradually chillier autumn, Anselm realized he was not yet well enough to leave. He’d lost condition since his fight with @Amadeo; the sleek musculature giving way to wastage. He’d never been fat to begin with, but now he bordered on weak. 

He noticed a malign loss of balance of late — an occasional neurological compromise that made him come to terms (in the most pragmatic way possible) with his limitations. Any hope of collecting Gideon and leaving were dashed by the occasional spells of weakness he felt upon the trail. When these moments came, his head swam as if he were held upside down underwater. The enormous loss of coordination was enough to force him to sit until the dizziness passed. 

He came to the river to drink. @Gideon was not so far off; Anselm had not once allowed the boy out of his sight since their reunion. As he drank, he saw a shape moving small stones and scratching the earth. Her scent indicated she belonged here; notes of the damp earth and Sun Eater clung to her pelt. 

He continued drinking, shoulders hunched as he watched her forage for meager worms.

on one occasion her teeth sank in to the crispy body of something larger than a worm and with many, many more legs. tugging this up from the dirt proved difficult, after thrashing a bit, and she managed to separate the centipede in half; but it did not taste good, and so she spat it out.

her tongue worked at the roof of her mouth, lips smacking as the sour flavor turns bitter, and she spits again, and moves to seek the water for herself.

as sulukinak goes to drink, she sees the gray man watching her. the water quickly cleanses the taste from her mouth, but her stomach feels as though it drops.

movement elsewhere earns a turn of the ear, and a glance, as she spies a boy nearby.

She ate something unpalatable. Anselm remembered his days as a boy, the world being his cuisinal oyster. He learned not many things from the ground tasted good.

As the woman bent to drink, she became aware of him. Something flickered in her gaze, but Anselm looked back to Gideon in silence. When he turned back to her, her chin dripped with water.

Vhat is your name? He knew she had some affiliation to Sun Eater - he wondered, was she just as uniquely pragmatic?

her interest in the child waned as soon as she heard the gray man's voice.

focusing on him, drinking a little more; watching. as she lifts her head again she answers, sulukinak.

lying would have been easy. telling him her other name - shadow girl - was an option as well, except that was what the dutch man called her, and even now she was sentimental and protective over it.

she did not ask for his name. there were only so many that her uncle had spoken of, and it was easy to assume.

the boy is yours?

Even if Anselm tried, her name was unintelligible to his limited lexicon. He thought about repeating it back, but reluctant to make a fool out of himself, stood silent. 

She asked after the boy, inspiring a blade-like gouge of protectiveness in him. Yes. He replied curtly, passing his gaze over the lithe lines of her body. It made him think of Heda, which made him want to not think at all. 

Are you Yikaas’ mate?

sulukinak could see no reason why cen might keep this man or his boy.

the man looked worse-off than the river people; thin, tired, the kind of man to drain resources. of course her bias might have been more focused on the child — in the back of her mind the harvest lurked.

the man spoke a name which had only briefly existed, and this further proved to sulukinak that the man was not riverborn.

he is uncle, not husband. resisting the urge to wrinkle her nose at the idea. she shakes out the tension in her shoulders.

where is wife? she asks of the man, motioning to where the boy was roaming; if the child was here, why not his mother too?

Just a cameo for my threadlog!

As social as he had always been, there was a familial thread of caution in Gideon that guided him ever since the incident with Isra. Sun Eater had effectively disarmed it by relating him to Ghelan, but it thrummed loudly in his heart when he was in the presence of those other than the Chieftain and his father. A younger Gideon might have approached the inky black wolf, but these days he was more inclined to keep his distance.

So he continued to forage some short distance away, appearing uninterested in their conversation as he sorted through weeds and herbs with no inherent comprehension of which was which. He kept his ears open and trained on the stranger, though, quietly listening and gathering what information he could.

A niece of the caribou hunter. Anselm hadn’t really ever envisioned this man was one to forge many lasting relations — but he supposed every wolf came from another. 

What Anselm liked about these wolves was their refreshing directness. They did not apologize as they asked the hard questions; they did not obfuscate — it was extract knowledge, move on. 

Even then he couldn’t help the way his back stiffened and his expression darkened when she asked after his wife. It was his turn to hide a wrinkled muzzle. He could answer in a few different ways. He could laugh abrasively and tell the truth. He could lie and say she was dead.  He could invent any sort of story that painted Heda as the bad guy, the bitch that had broken his heart —

But there was Gideon to think of, and as Anselm envisioned how the boy might react to hear his mother’s image assailed, he softened. Part of him knew Heda did not deserve to have her character assailed; it’d taken two wolves to fight, and Anselm’s part in the whole affair had been nothing short of ugly. He did not wish to drive a wedge between boy and mother. He had loved his own so very much, and it broke his spirit to learn he could not provide his sons with the same cherished, secure childhood he’d been given. 

No vife. He answered, hiding the sharp swallow of emotion that scraped his throat. Vhere’s your husband?

His voice had a strange affectation.

No husband. Her mirrored answer came with a subtle bristling to the short hairs down her spine. No want, no need. As if this needed explaining or defending.

She did not judge him for being a singular parent, and yet expected some gendered speculation about her own situation; it was unfair, but such a thing had been instilled to her by a fearful mother.

Had this once been a hungry man - the predators of the sea ice, who traded often with Nukilik? She wondered where the child had come from. Her eyes lingering on him a moment before breaking away again, feigning disinterest.

Why do you stay? Perhaps it was only the need of a pack, given the child; if there was no child to watch over would the gray man have gone?

No husband. No need. 

A rare smile broke Anselm’s scarred face. Then you vould make perfect vife. If only because in Anselm’s estimation, a desperate wife was worse than anything. 

He noticed the subtle bristle, the passive way her eyes lingered — and he wondered if she was not so different than him. He had never wanted a wife. And yet, he’d nearly had one — if only by his own stupid fumblings. 

Her question brought a sharp lift of his gaze. It was pointed, that inquiry — and yet so deliciously direct he could not fault her for it. For the boy. Vhy do you?

Shortly thereafter, Anselm retired into his routine silence. They headed for the border's edge to stamp out their claim, dwelling in a mutual silence that seemed to benefit them both