Ocean's Breath Plateau [m] wind runner

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the day was rather lovely. lulled by the sound of surf upon sand, little ghelan had fallen asleep and cen was recounting to himself the ways in which @Red Leaf had defied him since they left the bracken forest. 

there she had been far more malleable. grateful. she had not sought to change him. to ask for more. now she demanded. now she dared to speak to him with scorn, to order him away as if she were the head of their clan.

no more.

the raven's smile was warm when he came back to the den. "the otters have come out to fish while the tide is in," he told red leaf, eyes flicking to ghelan. "come and see them. he will be all right for a short time; we will stay where we can still see the den."

his voice sought to be a soft touch, tinged with apology cen did not feel.

the caribou hunter pair were oblivious to the scheming of the moon village leaders, and as a result, perhaps they were a bit careless.
red leaf tirelessly cared for brave one. she did many things to try and heal his leg; in one such instance, she wrapped the tiny limb in a cast of sea-kelp, other times fed him medicine. he was not yet ready to wean, which made things ever difficult; her fear was that he would not live to taste meat.
tension between she and cen grew. he would have struck her by now if not for the eyes of the moonwolves, and she knew this. and so it was a shock to her when he invited her to the beach to watch the otters.
hesitantly, she tilts her head up to look at him with wary, but curious eyes. there are otters? she asks in lanzadoii, as to not upset him. how are their pelts looking? perhaps they will make a good blanket for b-- ghelan.

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red leaf was beside him, speaking, speaking, and his heart ached, and his jaw twisted.

her voice was so subdued! so small! and yet he remembered how she had forced rodyn to look upon her, had not remained at his side, silent! 

how she had spoken to him, dared to order him away; oh, oh, cen whirled on red leaf without another sound, and caught her nape, and flung her into the surf;

"do i need to remind you that you are not a seal hunter? not moontide, not sun people, nothing! nothing, red leaf!" cen snarled as he sought to force her deeper into the waves; "do you enjoy my humiliation, wife? you mock me, shame me, and you cannot even give me a child that is whole! why should i leave you alive? why should i keep you, hmm? tell me now!"

cen could sell her at the next village. this one was soft and filled with fish-eaters, but they would not all be like that. one camp or another would recognize the worth of a skilled woman, and pour gifts into his arms. but the insult red leaf had dared against him, that would not stand.

she was foolish.
red leaf tried to scream, but instead her throat and nostrils filled with saltwater, eyes burning. instinctively she forces her mouth to close, holds her breath even as the urge to hack and cough rumbles deep in her chest. behind her eyelids is a flash of white, and for a stretch of time she thinks she is going to die.
when the waves pull back, she fights for air, sputtering miserably as she finally looks up at cen, wincing beneath his rage. you are nothing, red leaf, he says, and right now especially it was true. her very soul torn asunder and splintering into tiny shreds; she had disappointed him again, failed him again;
again
again
again
tears spill hotly from the scarlet eyes, but they cannot be discerned from the rivulets of water. she whimpers, ekes out a humiliated, anguished sob, and it is followed by her only answer, garbled and meek and shrouded in the tones of the plainspeople: you cannot leave ghelan without a mother.

"do you think that matters?" cen hauled red leaf roughly from the water, dragging her back onto the sand and allowing her to gasp for breath at his ankles; "i can marry again! another mother for another son!" he snarled, lowering his voice near one sodden ear. "a son who will never be as good as ghaden."

everything he had done for her! "i turned my back on the lanzadoii! on my clan! i left the grave of my wife! i left the place my son died — for you! all for you, red leaf! and you did nothing for me. you do not even have the decency to allow my dignity a place to lie! go back to your our son!" he thundered, jerking her to unsteady paws by her scruff; "look at him every day until you are reminded of what you were brought from the valley to be."

she gasps, she coughs, she sobs. she lays still, avoiding the eyes of her husband and clenching her teeth, allowing his booming voice to ring loud in her ears and bury itself in her skull.
she had failed.
as a wife,
as a mother,
as a lanzadoii woman,
as a daughter.
she almost wanted it, wanted to let him kill her. it would have been more merciful a fate than having to live with the putrid, sickening knowledge that he did not love his son, their son, as he loved ghaden. he did not love him at all.
she had failed.
her lungs burn as she is forced to her feet, stumbling wildly like a helpless fawn in the sand before she pathetically collapses to her knees. she wonders what her parents would think of her now. she wonders if they, too, would have thought cen to be cruel if they saw this — she thinks of chakliux.
chakliux, chakliux, chakliux;
why couldn't she fight back?
why couldn't she fight back?
why couldn't she fight back?

in that thought of hurt was red leaf wrong —

cen loved his son so much that he avoided ghaden lest the boy see the misunderstanding and desperation in the eyes of his father.

the words spat today were ones that burnt his tongue to regret, for it was not ghaden he hated.

it was himself.

cen glared after red leaf, grabbing her upright once more and roughly shoving her on, but he did not follow, only lashed his eyes back to the surf and blinked back the angry salt that had had leapt to their hard sight.