The Bracken Woods blood thorns [m]

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the next day, cen did not go hunting. he was almost kind comparatively, helping @Red Leaf to cut the caribou meat into strips and lay it flat to dry then freeze. it could be carried in layers then, or ground into fine meal which one would rehydrate with water or fat.

at length he sat beside the picked-clean caribou skull, prising teeth one by one from the bottom jaw and collecting them in a small pile nearby.

"for you," cen grunted, gesturing to the teeth when he had finished. "there is cold water, that way. i bathe," the caribou hunter said in lanzadoii, not waiting for red leaf before he stalked off in the direction of the rock-studded pool floating with shards of ice.

cen was in a better mood today, it seemed. in the morning when red leaf roused, she buzzed with a comfortable numbness beside him; yesterday was little more than a blur, and it took her a good moment to remember where she was.
she spent her afternoon sitting beside him in silence, stripping meat from bone and tenderizing it so that it may be preserved. it was a slow, tedious process, but with only the two of them, the meat must last. there would not be much to hunt on their own until calving season came upon the wilds.
after a while, cen took up the task of removing teeth from the skull. they were for her. she hums at the sight of the pile and thanks him with a curl of her lip. she would make use of them; perhaps they could be stewed with other bones, or — she could —
when her husband removes himself to head for the frozen creek, red leaf tucks two of the caribou teeth underneath her bedfur while his eyes are turned. surely they would not be missed by him. surely the spirits know what she will do with them.
red leaf is behind him by a few minutes, waiting until he is already settled in the icebath before she disturbs him. i will bathe you, she titters in broken lanzadoii. you must be tired after yesterday's hunt.

the man's eyes opened, muscles forced to slowly relax beneath the touch of frigid water which lapped to his shoulders. a moment later, cen grunted in agreement and shifted to make room for red leaf.

he watched her closely with his stoneblue eyes, trying to ascertain if she would shiver a long while or adjust swiftly to the temperature. "it was not a hunt." but his voice was idle, not hard; cen relaxed under her ministrations, allowing red leaf to work each traveltight knot from his flesh.

the sharadoii were closer to the sea, but their land was warm, fed by freshwater. the storms of ice which blew across the fertile valley were terrifying in magnitude, and yet the sharadoii had no fear of the long blizzards driven by ocean-salt. perhaps she had bathed in such streams after winter, cen considered, enjoying the mental image of water sluicing its way along the strong muscles of her back the way it did now over her shoulders and arms.

but the lanzadoii made no shelters in the open. red leaf had tasted this way only for a short while, once they had traveled southeast along the cousin river for many, many days. cen felt that their time in the bracken woods might have made her forget that the honor of the caribou hunters was to be in every element that the Ice Raven saw fit to send Their children.

soon she would know, cen thought. soon she would understand. the terrain would become hers to read, to look out across a plain and know it was not so flat nor short a journey as it seemed. earth dipped, rolled, sank. the sun seemed to circle across the sky. a wolf wandering alone might never find their way out of that endless, endless plain.

GLACIER MAP

her body would harden on the long hunt, and cen would see if her sharadoii and sea hunter blood made her weak. a smile toyed at the edge of his mouth; did red leaf know of her fish-eater lineage? it was no matter to the man; she was sharadoii to him. but now she would be lanzadoii, and would forget the taste of other meat and other ways. her people tucked their women into homes shaped by tree and stone. 

but his children would be born among the caribou, and their first shouts of life would be to sky and plain and wind. 

"your words are improving," cen said, translating the more complicated word. "getting better." his eyes lingered on the droplets of water gathering at the hollow of her throat. "it was not a hunt," he said again. "you have not yet been part of a lanzadoii hunt."

it was hard not to miss home.
a sheltered girl, red leaf had never before been so far away from it. when any of the sharadoii's tribesmen went to track the caribou or bring back a haul, she had always been among the scattered clusters of women awaiting their husbands and children awaiting their fathers. only the strongest and fastest went beyond the glacier walls, and red leaf had never been such a thing.
and it was strange, to no longer have a home to bless with fragrant herbs, to no longer have paths to carve into the ice with aapa, to no longer sing with aaka while they wait for the leather to dry. the way red leaf missed them had not truly hit her until now, as her paws traverse the oily fur of her husband's shoulders, digging into the hardened muscle.
since she met him, she had thought that he could be her new home. now she was beginning to wonder if she would lose herself in him.
he praises her lanzadoii and she hides the sharp cut of his condescension by biting the inside of her cheek. i try, a laugh; a small one, a fake one, but still a laugh. she maneuvers herself so that she may now reach his chest, his forelimbs. if it was not a true hunt, i worry for what a real one may do to you. i am worried you may get yourself hurt. a horrible, cruel part of her spoke up inside her mind to suggest that maybe such an accident would not be so bad.

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"we speak the same language. we share the same mates. we even hunt together. but the sharadoii and the lanzadoii are very different," cen murmured, ignoring the worry of red leaf for a moment to consider what she had said.

why would a woman accused of murder speak so openly of her husband's mortality if she were not planning anything? cen resisted the urge to cuff her, knowing then that she would see his trepidation, this shadow-woman he had brought over the glacier.

instead, beneath the water, he pulled her hips against his and breathed out against her throat. in the next motion, cen had drawn himself from the pool and urged red leaf out as well.

rolling briskly in the snow, cen led his wife back to their skins and drew her down among them. 

this time he was not so goaled in his wants; this time red leaf would find her husband more fixed upon her own reaction to him, her own sensations. there was more than one way to subdue her after all.

when he had taken his fill, the caribou hunter rose energetically. "how long will it take you to dry the rest of the meat?" cen grunted, stretching the relaxed, sated strength of his hard body. he wanted to be on their way to another camp. but he had asked red leaf this in sharadoii, testing if she would think before she spoke in response.

their gazes meet, and for a split second red leaf thought she saw a blaze of blood orange somewhere deep in the silvery blue. i suppose we are, she backpedals, swallowing the ball of nerves in her throat that had built to the size of a fist, gingerly lifting a paw to smooth out the fur along his cheeks. but not so different that we can never get along, right?
she gasps at the pull of her hips, and against her better judgment, a distinct warmth pools deep in her belly. she almost wanted to stay there, in the water; to let him have her along the creek's edge, anything, anything to feel the electricity that once lived between them. it was still there, somewhere. it had to be.
but cen has a better idea. this time, she is eager; receptive, warm, all but a puddle beneath him, pliant and needy and liquefied. her breath shudders and for the first time in what felt like eons, she is alive. she is loved.

she all but collapses when they part, shivering and yet bursting with an insatiable fever. her eyes flutter to a close, and she frowns as a whirl of cold air takes cen's place beside her. another few hours, she responds in sleepy sharadoii, stretching out an arm in front of her in hopes that perhaps it would bring him back to their bedfurs. maybe things were changing; maybe things could be good again. maybe this move was all they needed. would you like to help me? or maybe i could teach you how we make our pelts.

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red leaf pleased cen. her youthful body and fantastic loveliness delighted his eyes, his desires. her submission to his word, to his want, to his will incited the man, driving him to possess her often. she was a dutiful woman, and he was not ignorant of how hard she tried to be a good wife to him.

but ghaden lived behind his eyes. ghaden, who he and his uncle tsaani had pulled from the rapids of the treacherous, swift brother river. he remembered his desperation, his grief, his horror. ghaden lived in his dreams.

for a moment cen stood and saw nothing before him, not the twisted icewound barbs upon the earth, not the gentle snowfall, not the split boulder which marked the icy pool.

belatedly cen heard red leaf's voice speaking sharadoii; it seemed to blur with the memory of that day, that night, her voice crying out in both dialects, in her valley words and the broken plains tongue she barely knew. inside his mind, he had shoved aside all earlier recollection of their glacier crossing; how ghaden had taught her lanzadoii, how red leaf had spoken back in sharadoii, how his new wife and young son had made a game of the exchange. how they had turned their faces to him when he returned from hunting, radiant with delight, and at last cen felt the coldness in his spirit loosen its hold. 

almost they had been a family.

almost, until the sharadoii woman he had brought over the glacier showed a tongue twisted with lies and half-truths.

sharadoii; cen turned on red leaf, his face a bleak mask of fury, and he had crossed back to their skins in two steps, and fallen upon the woman until she cried out. "lanzadoii. lanzadoii! do not fill my ears with your foolish forest babble! think! you anger me. you shame me."

cen shoved her away, their earlier pleasures forgotten. "start. now. i want to be gone." 

he did not look at her again. the caribou hunter returned in a hard stalk to the shadows of the forest, to watch the herds, to hear their voices.

to remember ghaden.

it was her own fault this time, red leaf thought.
she should have expected this. should have learned by now that cen's grief was not to fade so quickly or easily; she should be more understanding.
but she isn't. this time, she makes the horrible mistake of fighting back — not with her teeth, nor her claws, but with the saliva that dribbles down her cheek and lands upon cen's clenched knuckles. with the way her pupils constrict, eyes squeezed shut while she silently prays for the spirits to have mercy on her; to make the inevitable welts that will form easy to hide; and in the way she whisper-shouts to him in the throes of terror, voice stricken with her own grief and regret; you could have married one of your own!
she, too, had lost. and it was not only her son, but her husband. how is one meant to grieve two at once?
but there had to be something remaining; there had to be. she had just seen it. there had to be a reason he had not yet left her.
when her lungs finally fill with frigid air and she is certain cen has taken what he wanted from her, red leaf drags the chunks of caribou to her bedside and returns to her work with trembling limbs. she worries it will now take her twice as long as it would have before.
she wishes she could just go to bed.

but cen had married one of his own.

gheli.

radiant and cloaked in fur that carried the touch of the very sun, she had received cen's courtship with ardent response. he had not traveled so far for her, only across the plains to where another group of lanzadoii followed a certain herd of caribou. he had watched her dance, had courted her with blossoms of coneflower and primrose. she had been one of five daughters, all beautiful, but it was gheli with her sunflower skin and dark, dancing eyes who had captured cen entirely. he had seen her as they grew, their families mingling between camps for many years upon the hunt, but this was the first time they had come together at a marriageable age. love was quick, striking, fierce.

he had gladly paid the high price demanded by her hunting chief father. it was strange to think that they had been together so short a time. cen had helped those lanzadoii to bring down a red-furred caribou, sacred to their people. he had offered the first taste of its blood to gheli, and they had been married that evening.

she had conceived quickly, a fault of red leaf that counted against her. the hunter crouched in the slanting darkness and thought of gheli. though she had only given him one child, he had been a boy, and cen's pride was tenfold. ghaden was doted upon, praised, near spoiled. and it was just as well that he was so embraced by the lanzadoii kin, for gheli weakened. ghaden had been born the end of summer, and before fall truly embraced the land, she was dead.

cen's grief was fierce and vengeful. he did not allow it voice; he buried it far inside himself. quite soon after her death, he sought another wife. this time he took his young son across the glacier, as if to escape the pain that shown in every part of the plains now that gheli had died. he stayed with the sharadoii from the end of that fall almost into spring, and it was where he had met red leaf. cen had poured all of the broken love for gheli into the shardoii girl; it was as if he lived again, held by her scarlet eyes and laughing mouth. she had even come to love ghaden, a fact that had been endearing to cen.

but she was not gheli. no lanzadoii woman would have ever sufficed, and that was why cen had gone to the valley. but it came to pass that no sharadoii woman could ever compare either.

when cen returned, it was in silence. he did as red leaf indicated, helping wordlessly. and when they rolled into their skins for the night, cen lay awake a long while, listening to the never-ending trudge of caribou in the darkness.

gheli danced in his dreams.