Bearclaw Valley pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood flowers

she followed the upward quirk of his flews and it pleased her.  she wished she had more words to give him but as it stood she only knew two, and it was too late in their encounter to greet him now.

he stretched to lick her and she shifted underneath his onslaught of kisses — she liked it, but at the same time it pulled forth a plethora of emotion she wasn't sure she was ready to deal with.

she had worked hard while she was gone to detach herself for him; if he wanted other women, she had to accept that.  but she yearned for something she did not understand and the life that stirred in her womb only intensified it.

but what did she have to offer him?  she was intelligent, yes, but what was it worth if she could not share it with him?  what was she worth if she could not understand his desires?  the few words she had been taught she had caught on quickly, she held to them with gritted teeth and for now she considered it her only hope.

at one time she could have offered him her body (and for some time, until he grew tired of her and moved onto the other women in the valley, she had).  she was experienced in the pleasures of strangers and had been around the block more than xan would care to know, but now?  she couldn't let him close, or her brother, or the girls, or anyone.

her trust in him had wavered considerably for some time and although he had repaired it quickly in her rescue and protecting her from the redleaf girl... she did not know how to feel, and that kind of scared her, too.  because she had left and sought to quell her obsession with her alabaster friend, but it seemed since she had returned that her desire to be with him in more than the biblical sense (in everything but the biblical sense) had intensified tenfold.

and that scared her more, because she knew she could not have him.  and if she could, it would not last.  she couldn't satisfy him the way another woman could.

his happiness would have generally yielded a much more excited response from the raven; instead she nibbled at the cusp of his ear, absent in thought.