Snowforest Taiga you were laid in verse, living on a promised word

a woman draped in midnight, carved strong, terrible, beautiful. kanuux’s gut twisted as if hunger had taken him, though it was no hunger for meat.

he slowed, but he did not hide. scars caught the starlight— temple raked, eye-ring torn, shoulder scored deep— each mark a story carved into flesh, each one speaking louder than tongue could. his bulk carried forward, frost and sunlight wrapped in hide, too large for the slope, too heavy for the trees, yet moving as though the earth opened itself for him.

her stare held him fast. sharp as spearpoint, unflinching. a gargoyle, a guardian. his chest rumbled low, a sound neither greeting nor threat but the raw truth of him, deep in the marrow.

he dipped his head once, not submission. not to her, not to any. but a recognition of what she was.

he said nothing. he spoke with the set of his shoulders, the weight of his gaze, the power bound in silence.

and in the marrow of him, twisted hard against bone, burned the want: this midnight woman was an aptitude of beauty. he desired her as he desired breath.