Bitterroot Valley you played your games

ravah hums.
the pale woman lowers herself beside the river, joints folding slow beneath her, her long limbs stretched catlike across the frozen earth. unbothered by the cold, in fact, softened by it some. this small stretch of river reminds her of home, back in big sky.
it was not for sega, then. that answers one question, at least.
she has never looked at sega the way others sometimes assumed. not once. but she knew him better than most, better than nearly all. and she had always believed, perhaps foolishly, that when the time came, he would choose a mate from among the people. not a girl of foreign soil, and so if there is some... reservation in ravah as she interacts with angel, perhaps that was why.
it wasn’t jealousy, nor was it love. it was fear. fear that if sega took this girl as his wife, that their children would speak her strange tongue and know nothing of their father's tongue. it was fear that their people would end with them.
and yet, here, watching the way angel cares for this pelt, and though it seems such a trivial thing, ravah feels something in her settle. it is not approval nor trust, but the beginning of it.
ravah looks to the river, to the stone-worn banks and the places where granite broke the flow in smooth, round humps. stone smooth, yes, ravah begins, but stone take too much. scrape too hard, you lose the skin’s breath. lose the spirit. it crack when cold. stiff like bark. to angel, her silver eyes settle and the older woman forces a smile.
women of big sky, we use brain. every beast carry what it need to treat itself.