Hoshor Plains laced up boots, wandering soul

The doe named different things for each child, which Valiant felt then he should have expected. He dwelled on their preferences, his thoughts branching out to other gifts, future gifts —

And as if reading his mind, his rose-gold eyes finally caught on jadestone. Kukutux looked at them for a moment before she turned herself away.

"I'll bring them those things," he said, shifting slightly so that they still stood close, but perhaps not quite so intimately. "Vairë, I — "

But not even Valiant knew how he would finish that sentence. It seemed terribly presumptuous to offer gifts in anything but friendship, and so that was what these gifts must be. And even if there might be something more between them, there was an order to these things — and he was worried he was breaking it.

"I was thinkin' I might come to your momma's village to stay," he said. "After Dutch gets back. If she'll have me."