Shimmering Sands sun conch

he was not surprised, and yet he was shocked. the discomfort stemmed from the undissolved marriage and the fact that he still very much thought of morwenna as his own. he suspected she had gone to her kith, and it meant he was able to see in mind's-eye where she must stand, sit, lay, weep, roam, hunt.

she belonged to him. it was a simple truth that no distance, no betrayal, no demand might shake.

sivaak was a curved ice-floe before the single eye of the lanzadoii chieftain, and he wondered if ever any of the long-march caribou hunters had been faced with this! with a blood-drinker commanding bond in blood for the mingling to salt.

kusax̱asaa was flattered; it flickered in the single eye.

their thoughts upon daa'ka and talvani had aligned as well.

but he was not yet ready to surrender his idea of many lives brought to life by his own, in the bodies of several. it was not a notion he had before entertained. a lanzadoii man was bound to his wife. he had been bonded to gheli, then to red leaf. he had sought no others. and to morwenna, the final — it had once been prideful to think of joining with her in new spirit, to beget more children with the starwoven, over and over through the years.

now sivaak required him, and kusax̱asaa, through lust, found himself wary of devotion to the teeth of yet another woman. "i am not against this. we will be able to make a new people, you and i. but sivaak. i will raid again. and i will take captives again."

she understood. she understood the implicit possessiveness implied, he felt. a capture carrying lanzadoii children was no threat to the chieftain's wife, and provided kusax̱asaa with some selfish masculine assurance that should she turn on him, he had another future.

a challenge then. she stood to gain hierarchy in the sun clan, if only she accepted why he now drew this clause.