Redtail Rise XIX

Her tail waved when he joined her. He lent much of his strength, seeing what she could not exert in her current state. Again, gratitude gripped her as they toiled away together. She saw his strength-limned limbs break away the areas she had not, and the more that they worked the freer the object of her desire became. One of them, in any event. Her man was the other, perhaps the very first. He then marked her once again, the first time in the blood of the creature they had hunted side by side, and now in the earth that they two had dug together.

These things, these gestures, meant much to her. Gifts of blood, gifts of earth. To wear them, and share with him these things.

He went down into the small hollow. Sunday Morning shimmied backward, lowering on her belly and shifting the earth where she must to aid him. Her gaze turned to him in the earth, looking at the thing he had built in the process. Once again, Sunday Morning felt pride.

Mountain Boulder came out with the prize in tow, and she stood, tongue lolling as she circled him.

But Sunday Morning paused in her reach for the bone. First leaned against him, and pawed affectionately at his shoulder. Her own mark of earthen clay was left upon him, the shape of her own paw crude there, and the corners of her eye crinkled with amusement to see it. Mountain Boulder had left many marks upon on her, ones not immediately visible to the eye. But if one looked closely enough, the most significant of them was obvious in the way that she looked at him, and him alone. Her tail waved as she moved to nose his cheek and swipe her tongue against his muzzle.

And now, as he kept watch, Sunday Morning nosed the thing time had left them. It was in perfect condition to chew, and Sunday relayed as much with a pleased exhale. She took it into her mouth, looking 'round at their surroundings in search of the perfect chewing place. For now, she deemed it to be the little hollow they had built. Sunday Morning slunk into it, but emerged so that she was half-in, half-out. One paw splayed and weighed down the left end of it as Sunday began to work on the right.