Moonstone Quarry Upon it

Aneira stood a few paces away, the metallic tang of blood curling in her throat. The sight wasn’t new, she had seen kills before, had made them, but something about the way Solhárr worked made it feel different. It wasn’t violence, it was a ritual. A task carried out with grim patience, without pride, without complaint. She should have looked away. Instead, she watched him: watched the steady pull of sinew and hide, the way the steam rose, a breath from the earth. The way his shoulders moved with restrained force, with memory, with grief buried beneath muscle and fur.

And there it was again: that ache in her chest. Familiar now, unwelcome still.

The frostmaiden recalled the meeting with the sun girl, how his scent lingered on her ivory coat, shoulders drawn and words hesitant. Packmates often crossed Solhárr’s path; he carried weight, drew wolves to his silence. But the scent wasn’t casual: it had clung to Fleur’s fur like warmth after shelter. Like closeness. And now, here Aneira stood; the vivid memory of her shoulder brushing against his chest as she came to his side; and all she could think about was that lingering scent. How it had no right to sting!

Aneira did not meet his eye; she couldn’t. And when she approached him, turquoise gaze lingered on the caribou at his paws. One glance might unravel the iron she wrapped around her thoughts.

„…You’ve done this before,” a rather unnecessary remark, her voice steady despite the war inside her. She watched his claws work instead: clean, skilled, detached, even as blood slicked his forelegs and stained the ground beneath them. Her body did not flinch, not from the kill, but from how easy it was to feel at home beside him. „You don’t do it for yourself.” He never wavered, always placing the pack before himself. Every choice he made, every sacrifice, was for them. For the good of the many, never the comfort of one.

There was a long pause then, as if her own words pressed too close to something she did not want to name. Something curling behind her ribs and stirring with every glance he didn’t give her, and every one she didn’t dare return.

„Let me help.” And she did; without waiting, not because she expected to be welcomed, but because the silence felt too heavy to let him carry alone. Times had shifted, and the air clung heavier in her lungs than she remembered. Aneira kept her gaze down, distant from the flameborn beside her. Her claws moved in tandem with his, careful and precise, each motion made with quiet effort to avoid the slightest brush of contact.