Duskfire Glacier who whispered the beauty of snow and the fear of death

The world had shrunken to the son she kept her gaze averted to, still not quite able to meet Rye's sunlit gaze. Lane's eavesdropping went unnoticed as loud as her heart was beating in her ears and Tzila's soft welcome to Sikuliak received only an absent -- albeit grateful -- chirrup of a rumble from her throat. It felt the organ would falter and halt altogether when his hesitant words reached her tuliped auds, sinking as she was sure he was working his way up to letting her down easy.

When she registered what the woodlander meant, Imaq's wide aquamarines flew to search his features at last in shock. 

Within the next heartbeat, she was pressing close against him -- as close as she could while leaning over Siku that was. Whispering chuckles bubbled up and out of her as she nuzzled against him, rubbing her cheek along his ivory neck and chest. She planted a few relieved, adulated kisses around his ears before pulling back to reassure him.

"Imaq chooses," she promised, hoping that he could see that she meant it, hear it in the tremble of her earnest tones -- even if she didn't have all the words to tell him what he meant to her. "Rye is Imaq's happy. Rye is...when Imaq is with Rye," she stumbled verbally, struggling to phrase the words and having to draw back on what he had said moments before to correct them, "Imaq is not Imaq. Imaq...is free."