Duskfire Glacier δ

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their little camp was beneath potential threat.

the day of their caribou hunt and their pledge, he had butchered the creature and set its meat to freeze, laying down the hide in whatever way @Ayovi wished. he had thought they might stay for a time while the pelt was prepared, rolling happily and often on his bearskin, but a summary patrol of the glacierland brought to wisdom evidence that the other northman was close.

he came back from his stunted hunt, scowling darkly. "konæ," he addressed her in a grunt. he stooped over fresh snow, created sloppier versions of her earlier vision: himself, her, the abstract of children beneath his concept of a longhouse.

he drew another of those shapes further out, and put many dots beneath it with his claws. a steading, an encampment. a place of others.

two swipes gave the drawn family two choices: a path to a pack, or a path to the unknown, undecided, a path which ended in the drifts beyond.

skorpa looked into her indigo eyes, still stunned that they had come to this moment from such beginnings.

---

Caribou is much softer than kootsin. This particular coat seems more muted than true sable, and Ayovi delights in pulling her cheek along its velvet after forays with the northman and envisioning its isabel on her back as Skorpa wore his bear.
But now he comes to her with a roughened step, depicting this predicament through a series of symbols that Ayovi studies intensely. His marks give them two options. There falls a stillness upon the silver shoulders; a silence, and then with a strong voice that expects no answer she asks, “why should we yield? Faust has known of my desire to stay in forever winter since the day I met him.”
She pulls from the hide, stamping her paw into the center of the proposal to make herself clear.
“No.”

---

faust, she said. no, she said. translation was not necessary. no. his shoulders lost their tension, and he nodded. he heard in some way her meaning, through the tone, through the expressiveness of this woman newly beside him.

he blinked at her. no. but northmen were not held by no.

skorpa pointed to the scar in his belly, then gestured to her own. a highflung brow asked if she wished to risk it. but he said no more. his surrendering was the way he lumbered back to the hide and to the beaten snow where they had gathered, testing the half-frozen meat with a claw.

he listened. they would do nothing. he could argue or he could let her see reason when it came to her.

faust. was that the name? faust.

---

She feels that indication like a tusk through the belly and tears her eyes away to murmur, “I do not believe Faust will hurt me— or them.” But the same cannot be said of Skorpa. Blue follows the scar shredding his flank and memory of its terrible infection swarms her nose.
But she was still in heat and would be for some days. How wise would it be to seek entry into a pack? Could she even imagine the northman living peacefully among droves of others? Would he even want to? Playing nice; obeying orders?
But the unknown second; this option scares her most of all.
Amid quiet contemplations she realizes there has been no beat back from Skorpa. He has done nothing more than stalk back to his work; accepting her answer utterly. It is not what she has come to expect from men.
“Are you pouting?” Ayovi pursues with a tease, snaking her way between he and their frozen meat cuts to come into his arms and bare her throat.
"I don't want to talk," she murmurs, as if they could understand each other, anyway. The huntress begins caressing him tenderly to win back his touch. How can she make a rational decision when all she wants is to fold with him again and again?
And still there is a third option. Ayovi wonders if Skorpa had pondered it.

---

she returned to him, her voice more hushed. her arms wended; his smile flickered and he captured her in ravenous kisses. but when they came apart for a moment, worry crossed skorpa's face in a rictus of weakening he wished he was able to veil.

he took her throat in his arms; wound his forearms around her back; bent her beneath him until their chests held in tandem beating. he wanted her to be safe!

this and a half-dozen more things must then scorch into one manner of speaking, the language of themselves, the things about ayovi that he had been blessed to slowly memorize.

he thought of nothing more than she and him.

---

“A pack, first.” Ayovi relents, her voice shattering this dream as the north wind tears fingers into their fur. She’d never known a man more expressive with his fires of sunset and oxen-blood and she felt she knew his mind at least a little.
“I fear you will hate it Skorpa,” and there is no way to ask what he knew of group mentality, or even who his family was; if they had been happy together at one point.
The cold bears down on them, as if it would drive them away to a place of warmth. Yet Ayovi lingers. She finds these blue mountains so beautiful, clear and diamond-bright with streams of just-melted ice. Far away from hot, rugged summers and the stretch of endless plains.
A silent farewell for this vision in cerulean, then she untangles from the bear, gathering haunches of caribou beneath her paws.

---

she did not want to go. "regnvand," came low thunder in the cavern of his chest, and he followed, intent to still her working hands with his own touch. he was free here atop the glacier with her, more wild than he had ever been. and it was in this feral foedom where he had learned the secrets of warring men.

he and ayovi had no debt to each other. but this faust stood firm and demanded the cold to do his bidding. a warring man waited until his enemy was weak. skorpa would not see any bitter axeblade raised rusty overhead.

"ayovi." he tried to seek her eyes again, if she would let him; he pointed to his crude drawing and then flung a brawny arm in direction of the first mountain where the silent woman roamed. to the valleys cut there, to the ridgelines and snow steppes farther from where they now stood but not without glory.

the unknown path was to forge in danger alone that which might be a fortress in a manifested future. he did not want to go either; he crouched in the snow and watched ayovi until she understood. a pack would be safe, not pleasant. moving from the warrior's core did not mean he would not pursue. but they had a compromise. he wanted to be sure it was not her desire before he began to search for an encampment of his kind.

---

In the week of burning she’d invariably come to heed his voice, and now the red warrior asked her to consider that path which frightened her most: the unknown, taking the shape of the highest mountain, in the farthest reaches of the desolate north. This path would put her at odds with everything that she was, that she knew she was meant to be.
And yet she could only think of how a moment’s error might cast a shadow over their livelihood— and how in an instant she could fail as a wife to this man; as a mother to children not yet born.
Eyes trickle down to where his palm had stilled her hand.
How did he do it? How did he make her feel so strong? Thrilled, and terrified?
She had no way of expressing what she felt. All she can do is take his paw, turn it over and kiss it, bring it against the thudding of silver chest.
“Nägådz.” The last mountain.
She wished to say much more.

---

ayovi made his heart race. for a moment he was only still beneath her kiss and capitulation, and it was why he suddenly wished to seize the taiga entire for her. a strange tenderness had entered skorpa, and its velvet edges scared him if only because it was not what he had ever known.

faust. skorpa had told him to hide sight of what was dear. and now here the white jaw stood, completely undone by a rainwater woman with eyes holding the hue of early night.

her happiness was tantamount; he had begun to fall into idle little daydreams of a hearthstone and ayovi at its head.

skorpa was ready to hang his sword over their door.

"nägådz," he murmured, mountain man for their mountain aim.

he kissed the inside of her wrist and began reluctantly to pack their kill.

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