Little Goat Mountain So close, no matter how far.

They differed far more than she could ever have imagined, and the disappointment was clear in the furrowing of her brow. Ciri, who'd been greatly affected by the way her own mother had chose to live, could not see herself sharing the father of her children with anyone else. Chakliux seemed to stiffen, somewhat, in his single-worded response to her, and turned his berrybright gaze toward the mouth of the hollow in which they'd found one another.

Her own sunflower eyes followed his. She listened then to the howl of frozen wind through the trees beyond and felt a shiver course the length if her spine. Ciri was sorely disappointed in his choices, but felt unwilling to sway in her own. It was a topic best left, one she ought to move on from, but -

I came back because I'd decided to choose you, Chakliux.

The words were spilling from her maw before she could tell herself to stop. Their time working together in Moonglow had been brief, but the appreciation she'd felt for him then had never dissipated.