Ocean's Breath Plateau sistersun [m]

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chakliux had been away; he had not yet touched the threshold of @Marina's den. but she too had returned, and without her children.
the man, streaming with oceantears as he often was, paused at her doorstep. he admired silently the good lines of the lodge he had built, remembering that samani had helped him. with him, clams wrapped in a netted tangle of moss. he dropped them clatteringly just outside and said her name into the darkness.

She crept from her den as thin and unkempt as she'd been upon her return. Marina could not find it in herself to eat nor sleep while her children remained missing. Her gaze was grateful on Chakliux and what he had brought, but for a moment she could not speak. She only settled near him, gathering her scrambled wits and trying to appear something more than what she was: a mess.

I'm leaving again soon, Marina said after a moment, voice low and a little hoarse from crying. My kids - She faltered. I have to find them. She sought understanding in his eyes; he was a father, surely he knew. Again she thought of them alone, afraid, hurt, and her paws trembled a little.

they were gone. marina was threadbare and worn raw. chakliux grunted, "i will help you. we will ask heph to seek help from the other villages." he spoke with confidence, but it was not backed by authority.
"you must rest. eat. if you are to go out there again, you must not falter." chakliux plucked his bundle from the doorstep and let it thud down onto the lodgefloor, clams gently rolling.

His confidence was soothing to her; his offer of help unexpected, though perhaps it shouldn't have been. Chakliux was not her husband nor their father, but he was here. He cared. And more than anything Marina desperately needed some semblance of stability, something to hold to while her world felt flipped on its head.

Thank you, Marina managed, her words simple but full of emotion. She hesitated over the clams, and after a moment of indecision, reached to touch her nose to Chakliux's shoulder first. Then she picked one and started to eat slowly.

After a brief silence she began again. I'm afraid they've been taken, She admitted. Before I came to Moontide - before I got pregnant, I was running from someone. A group of wolves my mother crossed. She was a thief. She's dead now. But they still remember me. Enough to have followed her nearly all the way here. Marina had decided months ago that they must have given up, or perhaps lost her trail. Now she was not so sure.

marina ate and chakliux gathered the discarded shells into a pile. he listened to the morose sound of her voice describe a terrible thing.
"taken? tell me their faces, these wolves," he asked, attempting not to bristle inside her lodge. the concept repulsed and worried him. children were free to run between villages, that was the way of a good people, to move unharmed even if they strayed.
the seal hunter waited tensely.

Chakliux was immediately protective. She felt the agitation rolling off of him in waves, though he seemed to make an effort at calmness. There are three. They all look alike - dark fur, dark eyes. I think they're related, but I don't know much about them, Marina told him quietly. She paused.

I haven't seen or heard anything from them in months. Not even their scents. But they followed me for nearly a year before that, What her mother had stolen from them had been far more precious than a mere meal. But Marina was not ready to get into that. Perhaps she never would be. I want to check the river where Carlisle and Brockleigh's trails ended again, make sure the wolves who followed me weren't anywhere near Moontide. If there's no sign of them, then I'll know it's safe.

She took a breath, thoughtful for a moment. And if it's safe, maybe Tullik would join us in the search.

tullik, himself, marina. he considered ariadne, rodyn, and heph for this also. but he felt it might be best that leadership remained behind, as if to keep the land more firmly. yet none of this was his choice. he must only bring it in words to the others.
that these creatures had followed marina at all was something chakliux wished to know more about, but he noted how she turned their words onward. "when will you go to this river?" he asked, straightening beneath the lodge-roof.

Tomorrow, She answered at once, knowing that she would not truly rest until her children had been returned to her side. Marina saw him straightening and was gripped by a sudden urge to say something more, to keep him there. The thought of being alone felt unbearable.

Thank you. For being here - for everything, Marina paused, realizing she had nothing more to add. The recent tragedies had left her feeling hollow, raw, useless. She didn't feel like talking, really. Still, she dreaded being alone, and her throat tightened as she prepared to watch Chakliux go.

"it is good that i help you, marina. it pleases me." his eyes lingered on her, seeing the tension in the soft lines of her pretty face and feminine body.
did she wish him to leave? chakliux stepped back upon her threshold, but he did not yet leave.
"shall i stay here this night?" he asked of her, berrybright eyes direct. he asked for nothing more. she asked for nothing else. their companionship had its boundaryline, and he had not crossed it.

She felt his eyes on her more than saw them — and for the first time Marina found she could not hold the walls she'd kept so firmly around herself in Chakliux's presence. It was not a failing of his that kept her distant; it was that he was a man, that he was handsome, that he sought her out and hunted for her and so clearly cared. It was the easy charm she'd only caught glimpses of, the steadiness she'd come to rely upon, the utter lack of judgment even in the vast differences she felt between them. These things alone meant little, yet combined it felt dangerous.

And the sorrow was writ too deeply into the bones of her to do something stupid like invite him to her bed, but when he offered to stay for the night, she could not refuse. She stepped closer. Yes, Marina answered his directness with her own, reaching out to draw him in with a soft touch. Before she could stop herself, she embraced him; only that, nothing more, but in it she felt an intimacy beyond simple desire. She could not be certain that he felt the same. So she spoke nothing of it.

She only tucked her muzzle into his pale fur and let herself truly feel the comfort he had come to represent.

she drew him close, and chakliux returned her embrace, tracing muzzle along the side of her silken jawline. but he asked no more of her, and would not, content to share in the warmth of their interlaced limbs while she found something in him he could give.
"i will sleep on your threshold," he told her at last, gently pulling away before he sought her with a questing look, meaning to rise in the next moment.
for he he had always borne desire, but this moment was fraught with something that was more, and so he would allow marina to lead.

Ever the gentleman; but Marina was too frayed, too much reduced to raw shivering emotion, to echo the sense of propriety with which Chakliux spoke. There’s plenty of space in my bed, She murmured in gentle invitation. What did she mean by it?

Marina herself was uncertain. She knew only that she felt safe with Chakliux’s arms around her, that he had been steadfast in his support and warm in his affection, undemanding but not unavailable. And she was done with uncertainty. It was not in her nature to dance around her true wants, or to leave it to fate to bring her the future she desired.

What she wanted was stability. What she wanted was conviction, passion, dedication. All of these things, she saw in Chakliux.

What she wanted was him.

marina's answer surprised chakliux, who drew away somewhat to ensure their gazes met. for a space of time, a heart's moment, he looked for trepidation, a resigned nature. grief. unsurety. 
but he did not find those things in her eyes, and slowly his face grew delighted, and he sank back into the warmth of her fur and her own arms, caressing with a soft whisper; "i will stay as long as you have me."
stability. conviction. passion. dedication. 
pleasure.
interminable, until the common tongue fled chakliux and on the end of a long inhale, he murmured, "kunik," for her alone.
the waves became his body, their song her voice. salt and marrow and blood and a long savouring that reached into the faint hours of dawn over moontide.

As long as she would have him; and her answer came then not in words but in a warm embrace, in the soft press of her mouth to his. Forever, written in the slow tangle of limbs and the dissolution of time itself.

And morning would find the words written anew, the affection between them redefined irrevocably. For once there was no doubt in her; no worries for what the future might bring to the warmth blossoming between them. Marina found only steadiness in his arms, so like the eternal crashing of the sea.

Love, redefined.