Verdant Basin ingiullik

The heat came to the land, leaving her pawpads damp with sweat and her mucous membranes flushed with the season's blow of pollen and dust. The wind whipped warm at her face while she traveled. The heat came to the land, and the heat came to Inanna.

She burned with it, crossing mountains. Crossing territories. And when she found it, she fell gratefully into the lake and drank deeply of the ice-cold waters.

A familiar siren song floated to him on the breeze. Really, he ought to have known better by now. How many times had this same story played out only to end in heartbreak?

Yet Winterbourne followed the scent. On light paws he pursued the unknown woman, until he came to the edge of a lake — and there, just across the water, she stood pale and lovely and utterly alone. Oh, yes, he knew this story.

And still he stepped toward her, a single tentative step with a questioning look in his amber eyes. He wanted her — but only if she wanted him, too.

Want was such a tricky think for a young, unattached woman. One would never think to call Inanna fickle, and yet, nature made a fool of us all every now and again. Her head lifted and her gaze landed and her pupils blew wide, and she'd taken two steps forward before her mind even registered the word: man.

And what a man.

"This woman greets you," she said, falling back on her mountain tongue when everything else felt clumsy. There was a pool between them, and she splashed out of it so that she could come around the body of water, and hopefully meet him halfway.

She knew this story.

She thought she did.

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Everything about her was foreign. The thick warm ivory of her coat, the softness in her eyes, the delicate words spoken in a language he'd never heard. Captivated, he stepped ever closer. His only response was a wondering tilt of his head.

And for a time neither of them attempted speech again, though Winterbourne felt he knew the sound of her voice quite well by the time they parted. That was not the thought that struck him first, however.

The first thing he thought was please don't leave.

And his grip tightened possessively around her hips as he sought to draw her into the grass beside him. He wouldn't let go of her, nor the future they had surely created in a single thoughtless blink of an eye. Not this time.

She knew this story.

She could have written his claws into her hips. She could have written those soundless words he breathed into her fur. In her mind, it was romantic. Don't leave me. They'd found love. They'd stumbled into something written in the stars, and heavens, she could see the stars! He was the most incredible man alive, and she, a very lucky woman.

She didn't even know his name.

"Ingiullik," she told him. Perhaps it would sound like more senseless words to him. She clarified: "My name. Ingiullik."

She gave him the one her first parents had given her, speaking it for the first time in many, many moons. Easily. Thoughtlessly. As if she'd planned this all along.

His arm trailed along her flank as he drew her down beside him, coming to rest curled tightly round a slender shoulder. Winterbourne pulled her closer and buried his muzzle against her nape to breathe in the scent of her. Ingiullik; her name. This time her bell-chime voice formed words he knew.

Winterbourne, The Corten murmured, breath warm against her fur. His teeth combed possessively through her ruff for a few moments. You got anywhere to be?

Being held again was everything to her. She knew this story. It was the one she got her family back — and, oh, she would always love the one she'd found! They would always be father and mother and sisters and brothers to her. But this was different; this would be hers, and the welcome cling of claws in her fur told her that she would also be his.

"Nowhere," she confessed. And, "For a very long time."

Tears threatened painfully to overflow, but she swallowed down the emotional reaction so that she could turn and look at him instead. And she was shocked, for a moment, at how much older he suddenly seemed. She blushed, but still went on, asking, "And you, Winterbourne? Do you have somewhere else to be?"

Nope.

He nipped her ear, a touch playful, perhaps seeking to lighten her suddenly weighted mood. Guess it's you and me, then. His tone left no room for question.

For a long while after that, Winterbourne spoke no more. He wanted her again — as many times as she would have him before exhaustion caught them both. He wouldn't ask what she'd lost before. It didn't matter. She wouldn't lose him.