Shadewood Drunk Nights are more fun than Sober Ones

kukutux was unused to men who expressed such levels of emotion, especially in their words. but cry was not like her brother had been, nor her father, nor grandfather. nor her mate, and her heart thrummed with hurt still to think of him. yet she put the man from her mind, lest she disturb his spirit, and focused on what it was cry meant to impart to her.

gaze moving to the untouched plate — kukutux was unsure why she bothered with formalities the shaman did not seem to notice — the duck contemplated what it was he meant. an expression of weakness was usually confirmed by guilt, perhaps over attraction. slowly, her lushgreen eyes lifted to the ice of cry's own, and she gazed steadily at him for a long moment.

"i have spoken with gwen. i have told her why i asked you. she gave me her blessing to stay in the keep; she called me her sister." not at all the way things had been done upon the isle, but kukutux was unwilling to turn away gwen's expression of acceptance. "i ... wish to be her sister. even if i am not your wife." 

evasive the things she wished to convey! they slipped from the grasp of her tongue like little pogy fish, and frustration knit her pristine brow for a moment. "i do not think she will wish me to be her sister if i am in your ... mind." again, backwards; sharing a man was the only way the duck knew how to be a sister, but such was the love expressed in these lands that she could not be such.

gently, kukutux pulled her eyes away from cry, settling them again uponthe food he had not eaten. "what ... what is this weakness?" for surely she knew, but maybe she did not. or a third; she only wished to hear him say it, express what it was lurked behind his carefully controlled words.