Ocean's Breath Plateau When our hearts are heavy burdens we shouldn't have to bear alone

Hi I need more of these two in my life <3 whenever you have time! Tullik tag for ref. Slightly forward dated!

A week, she'd promised.

She'd found no sign of Dutch in that horrible place, the forest where she'd nearly lost herself, nor anywhere she'd searched beyond — and though her time away from Moontide granted a new sheen to her coat and a brightness to her eyes, Marina was tired. She missed her family. She missed @Chakliux.

Just over a week when she returned bearing gifts for each of their many children, for her sister-wife — and most of all for her husband. For the home she would always return to, in the end. The love she held for Dutch still ached somewhere in her breastbone, but the heart's desires were a whimsical thing. Marina had always known this — and knew, too, that the sense of loss she'd felt when he had chosen a wife beyond the seal hunter lodge was rooted entirely in something deeper.

It could have been his home, too. It could have been his. All of it.

And then perhaps he might have understood why Marina could never have chosen another path. A kiss for each of her children, a soft embrace for @Tullik; for her sister-wife she'd brought the silken pelt of a skunk, and for each of the children an assortment of fangs and claws and feathers from beasts she'd hunted. After every greeting and gift was given, she sought a moment with her husband.

There was... nothing, She murmured to him when she was certain no other would hear. As if he disappeared. But after a moment the last of her somberness faded, her attention devoted entirely to her husband now. Her gift for Chakliux, given with a sibylline smile, was the pale pelt of a cat.