Ocean's Breath Plateau everything stays (right where you left it)

When the lodge had grown quiet, and she was certain they would be alone, Tullik sought out @Dutch . Quietly, she gestured to the outside, loathe to take him from his sleeping space, but needing this conversation to occur.

Once they were out of the lodge, her voice came, quiet from her throat.

I wanted to thank you, properly, for bringing him back. She looked up to the distant stars.

I worried he never would. That his hunt would consume him.

The panther still could not sleep, even after his talk with Marina. It was the scent of the women, yet, but more than that, it was the knowledge that Moonsong still needed him. He laid near the entrance of the lodge, so that the fresh air might reach him, and so that he could look out into the night and imagine he could see the glacier even through the dark and distance. Consumed with such thoughts, he did not notice at first when another within the lodge awoke.

His ear twisted in her direction, and then he turned his head. Summoned, the panther hauled himself up with a little sigh and followed Tullik into the night.

To be thanked once more! Dutch shifted his weight, wishing they could lay this thing to rest.

"I do not need thanks for this thing," he said to her. "Chakliux knows where he is needed. He wanted to be back here the whole time that we were away."

And yet I do it anyway. A great, humorless quirk of a grin.

I am as my grandmother has said, stubborn as spring snow. You do not need the thanks, but I will offer them anyway. You have ensured Raiyuk has his father, and Marina and myself our husband. Tullik tugged her tail in close to her haunch, tucking the tip of it beneath her to escape the chill.

You will not accept my thanks in words. What else will you accept it in?

Dutch watched Tullik, amused in spite of his discomfort. She was a woman who belonged at Chakliux's hearth, he thought, and for a moment he felt overwhelmed by the strength of his fondness for the other man.

"If you will insist, then I will accept your thanks in the spirit it is given," he said with a small smile on his face. "But in my family, we do not thank each other for doing what is expected. What is necessary. In this, we show trust and faith in each others’ strength."

Dutch could not imagine what sort of terror he would've grown up to be if his mother had thanked him more. He was self-aware enough to see that his ego needed no boosting.

"Family does not repay each other," he said to the woman. "When we do things for each other, it creates no debt, but digs our mutual well deeper."

She listened to the explanation, the gentle lash of waves on the shoreline, anything around her as she mulled over her thoughts.

I suppose that is just a consequence of my raising. Tullik sent the man a sly side glance, a little smile touching her face, real this time as her tail began to wave beneath her.

You consider us family, demon-stalker? She hummed to him, ears cupping forward to face him.

My family, the one I was born to, died many moons ago in a terrible snowfall. My family now has been Chakliux, Raiyuk, Matteo, and Marina. Tullik smiled, just a bit wider than before.

But I would be honored to add your name to it. I walk with you, Dutch of village Moonsong.

Dutch inclined his head; he did not think it wrong of her to thank him — yet he still did not want to suffer her thanks. Perhaps they would come to some understanding in time, but it was not so uncomfortable a thing that he could not learn to stand it.

"I hope to be," he said in reply, and the gravity of his features deepened as her sad story was told. He had been jealous sometimes of the seal hunter's family — but this was a reminder of how fortunate the panther really was.

"Your welcome warms me, Tullik," he assured her, his voice rough with some emotion. "My heart is soft to your husband already — but I see his love for you, and my own blooms. Just to bear witness has been a great joy to me."

My husband loves as fiercely as he hates. It is his passion that brought me to him. Her eyes were knowing, even teasing, as she watched the hunter. Her expression turned coy after a moment.

He is a loving creature, with a great heart to share. Children, wives, anyone, I’m sure. I would like to be the same way. Already she thought of Marina as not his, but theirs. Maybe, she thought to herself, the handsome man from the mountain glacier would be their second addition to their unit.

He could not be surprised, could he? He knew the ways of the seal hunters — but it had been an intellectual knowledge until now, and Tullik and Marina were seal hunters by marriage and not by birth. As open-minded as he thought himself, could not help but feel taken aback. Part of this was sleep-deprived hysteria — I am not a young man anymore! Give me another hour —

But he did not need another hour. No matter how weary he was, he could rally himself for such a woman as this.

"He is," said the panther, his eyes tracing her features. "There are many things to be admired about such a man. In his lodge, I find four more," was his cheeky reply.

It was her bawdy laugh to answer him, instead of the polite titter she had gave earlier. This was the seal hunter, the sea treader blood her mother had given her that she had never known the name of. With a laugh like crashing waves, that was how Tullik remembered Tusannituk.

She knew she looked like her when she smiled.

He is something worthy of respect. An over exaggerated fluttering of her lashes, followed by the slow drawl of a wink.

And you are too.

Her laugh reminded him — painfully, just for a moment — of Tulugak, whose spirit he still felt called to even standing here. He wondered if she'd made it home yet, and took a quiet heartbeat to pray to his and her gods for her safety and well-being. Then there was only Tullik standing before him, and the lodge at their backs like a sleeping guardian.

"Let me show you my respect," he disagreed, a wolfish smile sparkling in the moonlight.

---

"Let's go to bed," he said later on, still tracing her ear with his muzzle. "The dawn comes soon. I am not ready to greet her."

The quiet of the shore was never exactly quiet. Even now, with her nose buried in the fur of the trader, she could hear the crash and burble of saltwater. 

His plea brought her out of his fur to give a rakish little grin, that quickly split around a yawn.

She can wait until midday. Came her cheerful, yet sleepy agreement.