Two Eyes Cenote esquina

he revisits the grave of the gold-tribe's undoing. 

life's full of small ironies, but the one that gets his craw the most is that at the height of their power, they believed themselves better.

and yet, it is he that still lives while their bones rot in unmarked filth. 

how many ghosts now, then? juarez' voice has been quiet. nino barely speaks. 

occasionally, he suspects he sees marciela - but as he turns into the shadows where her eyes blaze, the light disappears; just a trick of the eye and nothing more.

rounding a sandstone corner, soto comes across a tortoise on its back. its weathery skin long dried of moisture, the life long beaten out of it. 

serving, he supposes, as a gruesome totem: the last testament that even armor can't prepare you for death.

It was not because she followed him. It was because she was trying to work the leg that she didn't want ruined from the run in with the boar. The same thing that had gotten her through her puppyhood and the wounds his people had given her. Her sheer will, determination and the ever burn of sheer pride. She would not give up. She was not ready to die. Her heart could not be weighed, it was not ready.

So she limped this wound taking just as long as the other ones, but at least this one. The fever did not burn through her. She had rubbed dirt into it deeply the day of the accident. And then the days following she had cleaned. She had remembered a few of the lessons Tavina had saw fit to inpart and she used them. To keep her wound clean, and closed. She had tried. There would always be another stark reminder there on her shoulder and leg, but at least her partner in the hunt, had not gotten a single scratch. 

She blinked when her gaze fell on Soto, but she said nothing. Merely settled to her haunches and waited quietly. He looked lost in through, she would not burden him with her presence.

how hard would it be to pry the shell open? soto moves towards it when he hears the subtle clatter of dirt on sandpack; he whirls, coming eye to eye with safiya. 

she sits catlike in the halls of her ancestors. was there analogue for him? what did his hall look like, where had his ancestors lived and breathed and worshipped?

he grunts in acknowledgment, gaze roving to the mudpacked wound on her limb. injuries would do no good to soldiers; he wished he’d been there to silence the boar. just rack it up as another failing of his by her. 

safiya. he greets, inviting her to fall in step with him. que tal?

Safiya sat still. She watched. She listened. She kept his peace. She would not disturb him.

She shifted as he studied her leg. It wasnt as terrible as it had been. A small lift of her chin. She was not ashamed of the scars she wore.

Hola Soto.

She blinked singular eye made a soft noise in her throat and stepped beside him.

Estoy bien. ¿Cómo estás?::