Silver Moraine deceiver says: you belong to me

She awakened with a gasp.

Oh, fuck, I'm alive.

Any relief was short-lived; what little light reached the interior of the cave reduced her eyes to slits as the throbbing of her skull caught up to her. Every breath drew fresh pain into her body, and every exhale made her feel as if all the air had been wrought from her lungs. Her ribcage ached deeply where @Yikaas weight had fell upon her, her neck was stiff from their fight. Even her teeth seemed to be in pain — what kind of shit was that? She had clenched onto him with all of her might, while teeth stayed bound even in her unconscious state.

She wondered where he was now, working her jaw to relieve the tension. She could smell what she assumed to be @Anselm somewhere close by, and though their captor's scent still permeated the halls, his presence evaded her.

She knew there was no world in which they were unguarded, and she did not know if it was safe to even stand. She simply focused on her breath for now, measuring the seconds to calm her mind.

In the days that followed, Anselm fell to infection.

His mind was a whirlwind of fevered, uncategorized thoughts. When he woke, he remembered none of what he dreamed -- and when he dreamed, he had no recollection of who he was.

It was late when he sprung the surface of the waking world. A new shadow lingered in the den. Through filmy lens of clouded pain Anselm looked at the creature, noticing she worked her jaw.

Something so familiar about her, but he could not yet place it.

yikaas limped back to the silver webbing where he had snared his quarries. the girl's teeth had savaged his wrist so badly it would keep him from the hunt for a time. 

being hurt enraged yikaas, but as he stepped between them, he found self-control. the girl was awake; he flicked his eyes between them, he saw the great familiarity.

the caribou man crouched beside the man, muzzle wrinkling to catch the grey-green scent of infection. 

hard slate eyes found the new one, the strange girlish creature who had lacerated his arm. "give name," yikaas commanded in his thick lanzadoii accent, lifting lip to flash a promise of more pain at her. 

he was putrid. everything about him made her want to hurl-run-fight. he paused near the pale man before rounding upon her, and her body cringed in anticipation of a blow that did not come.

give name, he demanded.

why should she reveal herself to him? why should she give him anything? despite the fact that her very life was on the line, she could not bring herself to take this seriously. his thick accent was not that of the common tongue and further still from german.

it was a stretch. if he knew, he'd surely wail upon her again — but he was already going to do that anyway, so she ventured a guess that he did not speak her father's tongue. arschloch, she said squarely. my name is ash.

this secret joy was hers and hers alone. now every time he called upon her he would be referring to himself, what she called him in her mind.

A thin-legged shadow passed over his consciousness. Anselm tried to focus on it, feeling his mind worked in the way of a reed sieve while the flood of a thousand unorganized thoughts slipped through.

Arschloch. His ears pricked as the word hung in the air, enough to pull him from the floodwaters of his feverish mind. He sat upright, eyes groggy as he sought the voice in the den -- realizing only faintly that Yikaas sat besides him.

Anselm's blurry eyes probed the darkness, making out an indistinct shape.

Was he dreaming?

ash. "like tree," yikaas mumbled in amusement to himself. ears flicked to hear; the other man was awake.

he glanced between them, eyes narrowing, then turned toward the male. "you speak yet? or —" and a low sound accompanied a paw's touch to his own head as he regarded the girl again.

"bad hurt. i fix," yikaas explained, but not why he had struck her down as well.

like tree, he said, and she imagined herself burning as the sensation took hold of her chest. she tucked her legs beneath herself and closed her eyes, but quickly found that this position was not conducive to staying upright. her sense of balance had been thrown off — likely thanks to the great whack that had knocked her unconscious.

she voiced her discomfort through a soft moan. maybe if that bastard knew she was still hurting, he wouldn't thump her again. or maybe he would. he didn't seem like the most stable guy that had ever lived.

when she re-opened her eyes, he was fussing over the festering wound that was the other man.

do you know how? she was careful to keep the insult out of her tone, not inclined to receive her beating yet. i can smell his infection from here.

Anselm was focused on the shape - it had spoken his language, and he had not known until that moment how much he truly missed his family. A whimper tore from his throat, stifled immediately as he remembered he was not alone.

The stranger and his healer were speaking. Anselm's passing lucidity reminded him this man was gruff, but he did not yet realize that Yikaas had entrapped this woman too. He leaned back as the man approached him, cold eyes clasping upon him. Did he speak yet?

What reason did Anselm have to speak? Seconds passed along with his lucidity. Anselm slumped back to the dirt, lost to another feverish spell of sleep.

last from me for this thread <3

she was not incorrect, but the way she said this thing to yikaas rankled the caribou hunter. 

the man faded again beneath the exile's glower. "have hole in head," he grunted. "i do this. he must find power to live."

it occured to him that a woman's plantknowledge might be of help here, and so shrewdly yikaas glanced between them again. "you know? then help."

the caribou hunter pulled back against the cave wall to observe.

she examined the failing bandage and the open wound beneath. there was medicine here, yes, but not enough. she did not dare ask for more, though — and there was no way she could leave to acquire more. 

she made do with what they had. fresh dressings wrapped tenderly around anselm’s head, she turned again to her captor in an effort to win his favor, to make up for the slight she had made earlier. your wrist, she says, motioning. want fix?

at first the caribou hunter's lip curled. suppose she only wanted to peel his flesh again? and so he hesitated until he saw a light which might be genuine.

stiffly he held out his wrist, eyeing with his lopsided gaze what she had done for the man. and again a sense of their similarities pressed. "you know him?"

his single stare vied with her own, demanding an honest response.

it was genuine — at least, as much as it could be. she wanted to keep her life. this seemed like the path to survival.

he extends the gnarled foreleg in a movement as gruff as the rest of him. she takes the meager remainders of the bandages she had prepped for anselm and begins to work.

no, she answers simply. there is some familiarity there, but she is not ready to claim it. he reminds me of someone, but ... i think it was so long ago, i can't tell.

"who?" if there was an advantage to be had here, yikaas wanted it. beyond his curiosity, genuine in root, there was his natural concept of transaction.

he flexed his arm in their bindings. "good." and it was a thing for a girl to know. yikaas was under no illusion that there was protection for a lone woman in a cold world. better she was with him now, tending the man with the cleaving in his skull.

he has the face of someone from when i was young. so young that she had forgotten all but his name, that which he was unable to provide. i could not tell you who. maybe just a useless packmate that her family had left behind. still, there was the color of him, the yellow of his fevered eyes. it was peculiar, but she had no energy to spare the thought.

i will keep your bandages fresh, she says.

this would be enough for sun eater; he clutched this shred of her memory to his own self, an amulet which he might hold later. and yet his only rejoinder was a grunt. their conversation for now had ended.

"i keep you safe." his contemplative look was the only signal of softness, for without a word yikaas turned and stalked with dark steps down into the moraine.