Qeya River fear the others for eternity

it’d be a ten million page long dialogue if I typed up all that happened so feel free to assume he told her every hint <3

 

It’d been so long since he’d felt a softness in someone else’s touch, that when Ilse swept her paw across his brow it nearly undid him. 

Looking to Gideon, Anselm found himself stabilizing. The boy. The boy was his everything now. 

He told her everything. Well — not everything. He left out his true feelings for Etienne, referring to him often as his friend and huntbrother — but on all other reaccounting of his life leading up to this moment, he delivered with a German’s sense of factuality. 

He’d ruined things with Heda. He knew this. He’d burned his bridge with Etienne, and he knew that too. He’d failed in fending off Amadeo — and it was only the caribou hunter’s rudimentary caretaking, and finally Ilse’s much more advanced understanding of healing, that Anselm still walked among the living. 

He touched his forehead gingerly. I miss them. He admitted after a lengthy pause where both were left to digest everything he’d laid plainly upon the table. Vhen you return to them?

They talked so long Anselm scarcely noticed the time -- up until the shadows grew longer and his head began its soft aching. He collected Gideon and told Ilse his plan to put the boy to bed; all the while marveling his extraordinary fate to find his sibling here in the wilds.