Neverwinter Forest sure as hell not going up

Catamaran came to @Seastorm with another fish in offering. He had been scarcer than usual, these past few days. The sickness on her breath was apparent to him, and a snap decision had been made.

He'd scouted the route today.

"We're leaving," he told her, his voice hushed. "Eat quickly."

Leaving.

She didn't question him, but curiosity was apparent in her bright seaglass eyes even as she took the fish from him. Her coat had regained its glassy sheen, her weight maintained, but the sturdy athleticism of her frame was diminished. Travel would not be easy on her.

Seastorm tore into the fish quietly, but her gaze kept flicking back up to Catamaran, wordlessly questioning.

For reasons he'd not yet interrogated, Catamaran was reluctant to share his worries with her. He watched, grim-faced, as she began to eat. When her eyes darted back to his, he let his gaze drop to his paws.

"There are healers in the mountains," he said, his voice dry. He'd warmed to her in the past weeks, and that had injected color into his voice that was absent now, and starkly so. This felt, somehow, like a terrible weakness. To want to see her healthy. To care whether she lived or died.

The flatness of his voice struck her more harshly than his teeth might have — but it was only his worry, Seastorm thought, studying Catamaran. It wasn't fair to be hurt by it when she was responsible for his distress. In a distant sort of way she almost wondered if he resented the decision to leave.

She wouldn't ask, of course.

Instead she asked, When my leg is healed, will we leave the mountains? Seastorm's own voice betrayed none of her emotion, though truthfully she felt little at the prospect of leaving this place or the next. Travel appealed to the assassin's restless nature, but she'd never formed a concept of home solid enough to loathe it or long for it. The bounty hunter was her only attachment, and an uncertain one even now.

Catamaran shook his head. Not at her question, exactly, but at the jolt that the words sent through him. We. Wife. That couldn't be what was happening here, and yet, he could not convince himself either through honesty or pragmatism to correct her. No more than he could convince himself that it was tact that held him back.

"I don't know," he replied. "If we have a choice, we'll cross that river when we come to it."

We.

Perhaps it could all be so much simpler than he'd thought.

If we have a choice.

She wondered at that — but there were matters more pressing to attend. Seastorm watched the bounty hunter carefully for a moment, considering her next words. He already seemed agitated, to her — or perhaps anxious, but she'd never been good at picking out the finer details.

We'll be followed, She pointed out finally, hushed. Until now they'd been sheltered by the forest and its many inhabitants. Out in the open, where anyone could stumble across their scents, it would be a different story; not a matter of if but when. They knew where to look — and, more importantly, they knew her.

Sometimes, lately, the bounty hunter found it almost painful to look at his prize. His mind would be flooded with rare moments of vulnerability and — and something else; something he didn't know how to name. Something that he was coming to crave with frightening intensity.

This was one of those moments. He turned away so that she would not see the way these words made his jaw clench, pretending instead to examine the personal effects littered about their bedding. He had not the instinct to think of taking it any of it with them, but it was a convenient place to rest his eyes.

"Let them," he said, his voice full of something that felt dangerous and fey.

Mature Content Warning

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Sliiight suggestion, mostly kinda weirdly violent tho

His voice; the tension in his shoulders. These things changed the way Seastorm saw the bounty hunter in an instant, as if the clouds had shifted to bathe him in a new and brighter light. Thus far Catamaran had only shown her the weakness, the vagueness, the volatility of men: things she knew too well to find impressive or unique. In this moment the assassin was reminded that he, like her, was a dangerous thing — that his true capacity for destruction wasn't in his words but in the blood he'd drawn and the lives he'd cut short.

For the first time she looked at him and found appeal in the curve of his jaw and the set of his shoulders, stepping closer hesitantly at first. Then she closed the distance all at once, heedless of her leg. Seastorm pressed her flank to his, her teeth soft and inviting at his jaw — then sharper as her sudden attraction flared to new intensity. She was in no state to play these dangerous games, but she wanted it all the same; his blade against her skin, serrated tenderness in the only way she'd ever known.

bless this mess

Her touch was not unwelcome, but Catamaran bristled all the same. He had resigned himself quite contentedly to her wont for marring his skin, but that did not mean he felt safe with her teeth in his fur. Yet his body prickled all over, pleasantly so, and he fought down the urge to defend itself until it passed.

Something stronger took over, then. Catamaran tempered it even as he gave in, turning his face with a grizzling complaint to fit her muzzle between his jaws. His canines scored superficial wounds across the long bridge of her nose, and he was not satisfied until he tasted blood.

The bounty hunter pulled back, laving blood away in something that might be apology were it not for the utter lack of repentance — in something almost like a kiss.

I will protect you.

The words were heavy on his tongue, pressing at the back of his throat, too big to hold in his jaws. He bit them back anyway.

"Come on," he said instead, gruff instead of carefully modulated.

It had been a long time since he'd felt so out of control.

Maybe she could love him.

That thought startled her, stark amidst the haze of blood and desire; nearly a bitter flavor against the sweet fog of it all. Seastorm only stood for a moment, swiping her own tongue briefly over the cut, caught in the sad seconds between savoring a fading moment and sobering in the face of reality. Maybe she could love him — but she didn't, and she knew that he didn't love her.

So what were they doing?

Seastorm turned quietly to arrange some of their things as best as she could, rolling her few belongings messily into the pelt gifted to her by @Callyope so the woman would know these things had not been abandoned thoughtlessly. It was best to leave them — but it pained her, as much as the assassin hated to admit it to herself.

She allowed herself one last glance back — but there was no hesitation in her when she moved to follow her bounty hunter.