Ocean's Breath Plateau taimma ➻

this time she did not think him petulant; revui curved around her in a sinuous movement that engendered danger in kukutux, and for the first time she looked at him as a stranger. the consternation was replaced with a flash of fear, followed by the ire from an earlier moment. "you cursed my children when i told you no the first time that you asked me, revui ostrega," kukutux snapped in a flurry of shock and terror for her butterfly lives.

what did he mean, the spirit whispered belatedly. in one way or another? she had not heard the arrangement of words before; she did not see the maze beneath the grit of his voice and the way he stared down at her, as if she were a skin and he a hunter with a skinning knife. 

but his voice did not hold the feral rasp of his stance. it lacked the barbaric spearpoint of his eyes. kukutux looked at him wonderingly a long moment, slowly straightening as her plume arced up with the confidence moonspear had bestowed these past months. pelt smoothed to hackles; she was mother now. "i will go home now," and her voice smoothed into a courteous plead, for she was so very tired and suffused again suddenly with the tangled sensations of the moment, how he always galloped over trails she would rather not take.