Qeya River fear the light, fear the breath

all welcome. hoping to meet someone from qeya

days continued to pass. they were transients here, so ilse made an effort not to get too attached ... though truth be told, it was not that difficult. she only loved her parents and the territory she grew up in. it would take a long time for her to muster up anything close to sentimentality for anything else.

today, she tended to the caches. when they began their journey, she wondered if they'd even have caches anymore. tenderly, she moved the dirt and cleared out the old.

she had caught herself a rabbit; more importantly her path aligned with one of the strangers to the qeya, the one that her uncle called ash. sulukinak was not keen on burying her prize — she had learned to covet her kills after her time spent with the caribou hunting men — but she was here now, and she saw an opportunity.

as quiet as she was, sulukinak did not know her uncle's claim as finely as she knew the deepwood, or the taiga of the everdark. she did not creep upon ash as well as she could have, with the rabbit swinging from her jaws; and when she was near enough, she threw its fat body forwards, and watched it land with a wet thump near the girl's hocks.

she licked her lips and stared, but said nothing yet.

it’s the smell of blood that catches her attention first. when she turns to the source, she’s met with the smoldering gaze of dying suns. the presence of any other sets her on edge, but she weighs herself against this woman and finds herself at ease. 

i can take care of that, she says, but i don’t know how much use it’ll be. ilse realizes she isn’t sure who knows of sun eater’s plan, and finds herself unwilling to say more than what is necessary.

the other woman is accommodating. the shadow girl chuffs and slinks away, seemingly to leave while the work is done.

she stops though, and sits, and preens the fur of her chest while her back is turned. after a few moments of this nonchalance, the girl asks of the air, where did you come from? is this one of the river wolves that her uncle conquered, or someone found after?

something about this casual indifference makes ilse’s skin prickle with irritation. cunt, she thinks to herself, scarcely holding her tongue. it wouldn’t be wise to pick fights before she knew who anyone was, and what their place among them might be. she turns back to her work as if this show does not bother her.

but she is once again interrupted, this time by what she feels is an interrogation that starts with no niceties. damn, bitch, couldn’t even exchange names before getting down to business? one ear flattens as she turns to the stranger, slow blinking with her heavy lidded eyes. far away, she answers vaguely, but for a time i lived in a cave not far from here. she would not speak to sun eater’s sins. 

she cannot help her curiosity. why was that the first question that came to your mind?

far, and not far.
sulukinak wonders about this cave, but doesn't probe further. she blinks and turns to look at the other, unaware of her own social blunder, and in her usual blunt fashion she answers, i wanted to know.

what an odd woman.

you are not from the river. you came after, like the gray man. that is what the sun eater said.

sulukinak wanted to know more but wasn't skilled at this part of information-seeking; talking, being charming, knowing what to say or do — she had never been very good at this.

truthfully, sulukinak had done nothing wrong. it was ilse’s feelings of persecution that had led her to lash out, though with the brown girl’s lame response, she found her fury tempered. 

only the most jagged edges of her softened, but there was softening indeed. 

ilse did not have the personality to make this easy. she kept her circumstances close to her chest even before she had arrived at the river. she simply confirms, sun eater tells the truth.

she has her own curiosities to sate. how did you come to be here? it didn’t sound like she was a qeya wolf either. was she captured, or did she follow him because of her own twisted vision?

how, indeed.
the sun eater man, my uncle.

sulukinak did not want to explain all that came before the qeya. the trial, the banishment. it was not her story to tell, not really - and who would it serve?

would ash lose respect for cen? would they learn fear? sulukinak did not know what was better to have, and would not disrupt what her uncle was trying to accomplish here.

i come from far, far north. met uncle here, followed him.

her uncle. 

she blinks once in surprise, too cautious to let her demeanor change outwardly. to suddenly say, my bad, ask anything you want might make her earlier rudeness obvious to even the most socially challenged. 

no apology would come, either. she would be accommodating moving forward, but she would not lower herself unless the matter was forced. 

have you always followed the caribou?

no, she answered without preamble.

he comes from the caribou-people; i only began to learn after we met. i was away, sent to learn from hunters, when he came to the river.

it seemed innocuous enough to let this be known. sulukinak was thoughtful for a moment, and asked her own question in her pointed way: why do you follow him? if she truly was not one of the river-people, she had no ties to the land and sulukinak could not see any reason for ash to stay — so what had been offered?

perhaps the sun eater was beginning to move on from red leaf? sulukinak could hope.

she turns dirt over and over with her paws as sulukinak speaks. she tries to follow the lines of the story but gets lost somewhere along the way. if she was his niece, were sun eater’s siblings not raised this way? was it a culture he had found — or founded?

she had little time to think it over before another sticky question cut her open. the fading feelings of persecution again came to the forefront, and she stopped her task to now fully commit her attention to the other woman. 

ilse did not have an answer that would satisfy herself, let alone anyone else. why did she follow him? a thoughtful line appeared between her brows.

it began as something else than it was now. and it wasn’t like she could say that he beat the shit out of her precisely one time and she was left quaking in her little boots just waiting for it to happen again. there was the possibility of it, yes, and she had seen the glimmer of a threat in his stance before.

but she had plenty of opportunities to run and never look back. he had threatened her once when he left to take the river — he was a hunter, a tracker, he could find her again. 

she didn’t believe that he would. he had a plan for the future and she was simply a pawn; here or anywhere else, she doubted that it would matter very much to him at all. she settled here for her answer. he’s a forward thinker with an iron will. i trust him to know the way. 

maybe it was luck that had brought her to him. after all, she had come here looking a place to stay. a man who could ravage an entire territory by himself — maybe with the help of one other — could certainly provide that. and if medicine was a respected profession, maybe there was more for her to have.

do you speak landazoii? perhaps this shadow woman could offer ash a crumb to bring back to sun eater.

an iron will. sulukinak agreed with that assessment, slow-blinking as the concept rooted itself in her mind. sun eater was certainly a man of great resolve, and singular focus; he had wanted the river so he took it, he had wanted the support of a pack and so he built it. now he wanted his son. sulukinak did not doubt he would seek the boy, and likely take him.

ash asked her question and sulukinak gave a small nod. he has taught it to me. it is not so different from what my mother spoke, at which mention, sulukinak felt her throat go dry.

if you stay, you will learn. a promise, or an arrangement.