Snowforest Taiga ξ

vague timeline and placement! <3

---

skorpa's bearskin had never held a lovelier scent.

fourteen torn strips of caribou hide were curled between a pair of otter bellies, one holding teaberry and the other @Ayovi's requested moss. to this he had added fresh-killed pika and strawberries still tart with the sun's new taste.

all wrapped in his bearskin, he had at last descended their starlit peak in search of his heal-roam wife. by Odin's sight, he would tear the saatsine apart himself if any harm had befallen avoyi in his reluctant absence.

worry enlivened him. he let out his voice not quite in a carrying howl, but a call all the same, for her ears which hopefully were close as moon rose over caribou-studded taiga.

---

So much has been given for Ayovi to sit here, surrounded by spring’s undeniable beauty and find herself vexed. Call it Lorcan’s effect on women.
She’d needed a moment to mentally adjust to a revelation that she perhaps had always suspected. The huntress had gotten too close to Elowen to refute it, and now she must devise a way to talk with the new mother. And how? It was a bad idea, probably, for many reasons.
Her husband’s call is the only thing that can wrench Ayovi from tumult, spurring her heart into quickening beats. She turns with sudden haste, threading her way to him between lengths of tree. A bright heat speeds the pulse of blood, shorting all ability to think. She must speak with Skorpa—
But it’s the last thing on Ayovi’s mind as she finds the northman standing there, everything she’d asked and more gathered and organized neatly upon the breadth of his back. A slow grin climbs her maw as she steps closer, into the span of two dark legs. Whatever else, it can wait. His fur is thick with cedar smoke and blood and she drifts up her arms to frame his neck, lips brushing the sharpness of his lower jaw softly. Gently, at first— then she is nipping, a frustration taking root until the huntress recants her kiss.
Salt-stung eyes trail the norseman's face.
What can she say?
Nothing.
Skorpa will kill him.

---

in shades of soft and then tracing blade she became. ayovi's hungers were nuanced and changing, and skorpa found some rousement in the way she kissed him, in the flaring fire of what felt like desire.

skorpa, with no idea of what had conspired on lorcan's tongue, growled low, pulling the wrapped furs from their bodies, nuzzling into the hollow of throat.

"jeg syntes, det var svært at være væk," came bearsword's husky tones, palms rapt and warm on the pleasant new spread of her hips.

---

Her caribou falls away, shoulders met with chill before mantled in Skorpa’s kiss. Ayovi takes hold of her husband’s wrist and dances her lips over flesh. “Er det så forkert at ønske, at det bare kunne være os igen?” She sinks into his explorations, barricaded once more by her fullness; a reminder of the life and purpose they wished for their children.
Ayovi’s throat tightens. She pulls from her husband just enough to see into the firestone eyes.
“Lorcan er et problem. Han vil kneppe alle kvinder på bjerget, jeg er ligeglad. Jeg holder af Elowen. Hun er stadig ved at komme sig frashe—” she could not say it. “Og han skjuler det for hende.”
There was more… but should she say so? Ayovi wasn’t certain, and so she remained quiet; lengthening that which she had decided must be concealed from her own husband.

---

sluggish blood retrained skorpa's mind so that he was better able to focus upon what had ayovi in such a torrid state. it was not wrong, not at all; he thought so often, and each day, that he would like to bundle wife and cubs off into the far-freeze of the northern coast, them alone.

yet winsook now was theirs, and he knew ayovi in her heart adored the rugged clime. he too had come to some grudging affection.

these things must not be now his focus. lorcan. "alle kvinder?" skorpa repeated, nonplussed, in a tone that questioned who? "jeg spurgte ham om darukaal-kvinden. han sagde, at han ikke ville kæmpe, og at han havde vildledt hende."

maybe it had been farfetched. "måske skulle jeg gå til faust og melde lorcan til hans frontlinje," he offered, bold and grinning, though his eyes remained in a search upon ayovi's face.

---

“Ha! Er vi for sent ude?”
The wild edginess from moments before is fading, shedding strain in each exhale. There is a certain lightness found only in Skorpa's arms. She thinks she must trap him here with her.
“Du ved, som jeg gør, hvad han vil have af en kvinde. Jeg beder ham om at tale til Elowen, det var ikke en anmodning. Det havde været et krav.  Hvis han ikke gør det, tror jeg ikke, jeg tilbageholder hende dette.” Ayovi’s face eases but her eyes are a pulsing deep blue petulance. Is she wrong? Afterall, she and Skorpa had loved for three months. Pride deemed them a paradigm of marriage, but they could not know what awaited in the years ahead.  And another's marital conflict should not involve her, the huntress admits, though she was witness to Lorcan’s attempts at adultery. The ekawotsa deserved more than to be made her husband’s fool. At the least she deserved to know the truth of the man she married. 
Ayovi reaches a kiss to Skorpa’s rough maw. The taste is carrion and endless hunts. Red-staining berries.
Minted with medicinal herbs. She will owe him a great deal after their work with Saatsine concludes... a gaze slips down over the stomach situated between them... Or perhaps now they are even.
Her expression softens.
“Har ikke jaloux, jeg ønsker mand. Desuden er jeg ikke en kvinde, han ser på. Han kalder mig - ja, ingen oversættelse til nordtunge.”

---

ayovi did not answer. not quite. skorpa existed in a place between understanding and confusion, his red ears still thrust forward. he still did not comprehend. first she spoke of women on the mountain, and then the one from darukaal.

she was full of consternation, and their kiss was spiced with it, quickening skorpa again. he felt slowly that there was something he had missed, and a flicker crossed his brow.

"jeg er ikke jaloux. jeg ser den måde, du ser på mig," the bearman rumbled, leaning forward for another touch of their mouths. "du er virkelig en kvinde, som mænd ser på, ayovi."

he tried now to fit together all she had said again, nodding slowly. "elowen burde vide det. bjerget kan forsørge hende og drengen uden ham." he would not have wanted to live as a fool, and rainwater's empathy touched him even now. elowen was part of winsook, mother to the first child born there at starpeak.

belated; "siger du, at lorcan kaldte dig noget?"

---

She looks up at the flames of confusion caught in his eyes and touches her pawtips to Skorpa’s broad shoulder.  Another man might have earned more consideration, but Ayovi in her indignance had none for Lorcan.
“Aside the invader from Darukaal, he has made no advances on the women of Winsook that I know of. But I think it is only time before he does,” lips raise just slight of a full peel, trading broken danish for words with more clarity. “Yes. He intimidated me, Skorpa. He said if I spoke of this again, he would kill me.”
Her eyes glance away, unsure how her husband will react. The huntress would not allow herself to truly fear him, not while under Skorpa's protection. It is the man's fragile wife she worries more for. “Lorcan knows he has done wrong by Elowen. He does not care.”

---

a storm grew upon skorpa's forehead, furrowing brow to muzzle to lip which now twitched into a slight wrinkling as ayovi spoke in directness. shame followed. it had been he who invited lorcan to the mount, though he had thought he should offer peace in the presence of a pregnant wife.

but this was untenable.

had he hands they already would have dragged the axe from his heavy shoulders and begun to palm its haft with oil.

skorpa was forced to settle for a cold stare and a low pace away from ayovi, turning his eyes upon their mountain where lorcan lurked.

he did not need to explain how he felt it should be handled. a swift death was the only way to restore lorcan's attack on ayovi's honor, upon the sense of safety for the mountain.

for a long while he was silent, staring in consideration. "jeg burde slæbe svinet af sted i nosserne og lade troldkvinden få hans kranie, når jeg er færdig."

at last he straightened and flicked his gaze back to ayovi. "winsook kan holde en moot. et møde, hvor vi beder alle om at samles og sige åbent, hvad lorcan har gjort. alle, også ham og hans kone." his eyes were the caress of roughened thumb over newly sharpened blade. "vi kan sige, at for elowens ære og for bjergets sikkerhed må han gå. på den måde ser alle, at retfærdigheden sker fyldest, og deltager i den."

short of that, skorpa truly would throw lorcan from the mountain, and poor elowen would suffer because the bearman would not allow that suffering for his own wife. he nodded to ayovi now. what did she think of a moot?

---

She listens in silence. Her band chief would have left a permanent mark of shame upon a refractory hunter; taken an ear, or a paw, or his tail. But this was not Ashēer, and the mountain’s laws must now be written anew.
"Moot. Ja, det synes jeg bedst. Vi er grundlægger, men ikke leder til bjerget. Alle burde vide, alle burde have stemme." Including Lorcan, though she loathed to listen to more of his inane excuses. Could there be a world in which he repented?
“Først skal jeg tale Elowen. Jeg vil ikke lave skue for hende og baby.”
If it is decided Lorcan must be exiled, a wife would lose her husband, and a child his father. But this had gone beyond the matter of family now. Lorcan had threatened death upon his own, and now he must answer for it.

---

so it was decided. a moot. but the set of his jaw, the burn in his eye; her former home and the man he once had been shared much in common. skorpa wanted to twist lorcan, to leave him broken and dead at the bottom of nova peak.

"vi gør det for elowen. for hendes fred. men jeg vil have ham død, ayovi."

he moved to cup her face then, to kiss her. it was decided. he would wait, and winsook would call its first meeting.

---

I want him dead, Ayovi.

“Jeg ved.”
She has asked him not to kill. Such a thing is not in the nature of the Wide Fang. Likely not for the danes either.  Ayovi has asked much of Skorpa. She’d been asking a great deal of him since they met. First to free her from Faust’s possession, then to find her a home of ice. To take care of a pregnant woman he did not know. To marry her; to make her a community upon the slopes of Stjernberg.
And now, once more: to ignore instinct in favor of the commonwealth.
“Jeg ved.” Ayovi repeats again, breathless.  He kisses her, flaying every insecurity where it threatens to root in her heart. Her eyes narrow, her lips soften. “Du er tålmodig, Skorpa of White Jaw.”  Patience, she thinks, is what a man needs to become a father.
“Bliv hos mig i aften?”

---

she knew, she understood.

it was enough.

her request brought a shimmer of flamelicked light to skorpa's face. "ville du være nødt til at beordre mig væk," he growled in pleasure against the bulb of one ear.

her husband was readied to resume what had begun, shoving lorcan to the back of his mind.

no one and nothing would cost him the pleasure of any time with ayovi. he had lived a lifetime of ferocity to settle with her now. "du bor i fæstningen af en nordmands hjerte, vidste du det?"

---

He tastes like fire. Smoke and earth. Ayovi comes up to her toes, eager and wanting to be closer. This isn’t consoling anymore, it isn’t sweet. They’d left sweet behind. Somehow she manages to gracefully heave herself atop him. She sinks into his fur, weight spreading out over his body, feeling the norseman big and heavy and everywhere beneath her. She leans in her lips, kissing slow and deep until her limbs are shuddering.
Skorpa’s sentiment is gorgeous. She cannot think of anything nearly as lovely to say back, only to sprawl herself over his ridges like a bank of clouds and stare into his firelight.
“Kys mig.”

In her world, there is Skorpa.
The rest is confetti.