Blacktail Deer Plateau ◊;

set for tomorrow evening

it was dusk on another day before elk charm forced herself to stop. by now she had found further exhaustion and no respite. wilderness gave way to flatlands, and there she ran faster, hating the exposed strike of air against a body which was far too visible.
starlight had begun its twinkling life over an empty plateau. black-tailed deer bounded away in herds as elk charm made her panting approach, but it was the water she wanted.
hunger sharpened next. but she was so tired. fumbling around the thick foliage overhanging stone, elk charm discovered shifting stones and then the dark yawn of an unused cave, the air thankfully stale.
she sank down and was asleep within minutes.

because why da hell not

 
he hadn’t meant to follow her.
his paws had taken him west—that was true. the wind pulled at him, the old ache in his bones guided him, and the cold silence of the open land felt more honest than the eyes of men. but her scent lingered in the hollows between stone, and he found it again and again. not by choice. by inevitability.
he hunted because he must. the pronghorn had fallen easy beneath his jaws, small but strong—like her.
he did not think of her until the kill was already cooling in his mouth, blood bitter and hot. then, he did. her thinness, the sharp bones pressed against her skin, the way her eyes had gone wide when she ran. not from him—but perhaps because of him. he did not like the thought.
when he found her again, curled small in the dark hollow of a cave, sleep tangled around her like roots, he stood at the mouth of it for a long while. staring. thinking.
then, without a word, he stepped forward.
the pronghorn hit the ground with a thud, legs folded beneath it, neck slack. not a gift. not pity. just... left.
he slowly began to turn.

her dreams were dark. grey cloud ran away from her across snow, across fields of flowering green, across mountains.
eventually he ran into the sea while his sister screamed on the shoreline beyond.
elk charm woke with racing heart, hurt by the dream, but consciousness growing into a pierce as she realized she again was not alone.
there was the smell of blood and meat in the air. 
the man was beyond.
the muradoii man. bladder threatened elk charm with a twinge.
blood and meat.
from inside the cave, her stomach snarled with an audible echo.

his ear twitched at the sound of her waking, the stir of breath quickening, the sharp echo of hunger rolling from the cave’s mouth like thunder trapped in stone.
he did not rise.
he stood just above, a silhouette carved from dusk and ice, wind whispering through the ends of his coarse fur, eyes fixed on the horizon as if the world might shift under his stare. she was still afraid. he could smell it. not raw like before—this was quieter. sharpened by need.
he did not look at her. only raised his chin and motioned once with his muzzle toward the carcass at the cave’s mouth. the blood still glistened in the fading light, dark and thick along the soil.
æt.
his voice, gravel-deep, steady in the old tongue.
eat.
he would not take it back.
he would not come closer.
he had given what he could. the rest was hers to accept or refuse.

she did know the order.
and she did know the sound.
perhaps programming; perhaps early nurture —
perhaps she missed the voice of her father, but whatever it was, elk charm at last crept from hiding.
her dark eyes defied him, dared him, challenged him; yet to lie in that den would be to invite more death. he had her here.
thin voice, tremulous; she did not eat. "muradoii?" and closely, sharply, did the valley-singer watch the man for any sign he knew this word. she would run again!
so hungry; so hungry, and yet angered, indignant, incensed. this was all grey cloud's stupid fault!

geirmundr turned to face her, slow and full of weight, like the shifting of a great stone that had been still for too long.
her voice was thin but sharp—muradoii. a word spat like venom, a trap laced in sound. he didn’t know it. but he knew what it carried. suspicion. fury. fear?
his brow furrowed. he stepped no closer, only lifted a thick paw and jabbed it once toward his own chest.
nei.
the word rumbled low and hard, old tongue sharpened by certainty.
his voice lowered, rumbling through his chest like the growl of distant thunder.
kríghar.
a pause. then, slower, awkward, he shaped the broken word in the tongue she'd understand, maybe. 
figh...ter.
his hand did not reach for her. only the air, open and empty.
he didn’t want her blood.
he only wanted her to eat.

as soon as it was clear this boulder of a man knew nothing of those sea monsters, elk charm fell upon the kill. the body was not so different than those goats and chamois; she slit the belly and tugged its skin over one shoulder.
this man, now that she understood him only to be a strange man, was half forgotten by the sharadoii girl; she was expert in her movements, laying the unfleshed pelt skin-side up and tumbling chunks of meat down into the pink tissue.
only when the ribcage was flensed did she begin to eat, filling her mouth to bursting with organ meat, bits of fat, sweet bitter sinew. elk charm was unsure that anything had ever tasted so good before.
"thank you."

geirmundr watched her eat with the quiet stillness of stone—unchanging, unmoving, save for the subtle roll of muscle along his jaw as he swallowed tension, not hunger. her words, were soft, but he heard them. he didn’t know the tongue well, not hers, but the meaning was plain enough in the way she tore into the meat, in the desperate gratitude of one who had run too far, for too long. 
he didn’t answer. only nodded once, the gesture weighted but not heavy. there was no pride in the offering, no expectation. he had fed her because she needed feeding. 
that was all. 
and the look on his face—rugged, shadowed, unreadable—carried nothing sharp. nothing hungry. i am no threat, it said, loud in silence. not to you. not to women. his kind of violence had always been reserved for men. the ones who deserved it. 
with that, he turned slightly, his massive form angling away, giving her space now that she had found breath and strength again. he did not leave. but he would not loom. not over her. not ever.
if she wanted to come out, she was more than welcome.

elk charm was a naive girl who comprehended on some level that men did not give gifts for free. but those in her life certainly had; a piece of meat, a jeweling, a fine hide. brothers, uncles, her father; elk charm had not been without her own spoiling.
but this man was not sharadoii. he did not even speak a language she understood.
the pronghorn hide was coveted. she wanted to keep it, knew she wanted it as she ran her paw along the pile of short fur.
she inched closer from the den, sinking her focus into the bones of the creature. each portion of the animal was edible or useful in some way, and to leave any of it made elk charm wail inside.
but what would she do with an entire pronghorn? she had no camp, no branches to dry, no time. she had no time! what about grey cloud? what if he was hurt?
a waste. she stood, staring soberly at the carcass, then glanced to the boulder man. "aren't you going to eat?" his kill. his pelt.

his gaze followed her—not sharp, not demanding, but steady, the way a mountain watches the wind. she spoke again, her voice winding with uncertainty, the cadence soft and questioning, but her words meant nothing to him. not in the tongue. only in her eyes, her motion, the way she touched the pronghorn hide like it had already begun to belong to her.
he did not move. did not reach for the meat.
instead, he lifted one paw, calloused and dark with old dust, and made a small gesture. the meal was not for him. his hunger had long since passed into something else. the watchful stillness. the sentinel’s vigil.
she had eaten her fill. there was still more. and he would guard it, if she chose to carry it, butcher it, bury it—he did not care.
she was not his to command.
and the kill—now hers to decide.
his gaze drifted away, scanning the slope beyond them, shoulders relaxed but coiled beneath the weight of instinct.
he would not eat.
not while she still moved like prey.

her brows darkened. elk charm stared wistfully down at the carcass. spending seven days to dry the meat was appealing to a girl who had been taught to do it, but — grey cloud. somewhere beyond, grey cloud was lost. maybe even hurt, suffering.
seven days was an indulgent amount of time when her brother might be in agony.
defeated, elk charm chose instead to dig a cache, pacing some feet away to excavate the earth, grunting with the strain. but she only needed a shallow pit to hide these things. 
her paw flexed against the pronghorn hide. perhaps she could come back for it.
riverblue eyes flickered from time to time at the man, though the sharadoii kept up silence as she worked.

geirmundr stood like a shadow made flesh, the wind threading through his thick fur as he watched her—head slightly tilted, brow furrowed in thought. the girl was small, black as cinders, and full of strange focus, her body hunched over the earth with purpose, yet grief clung to her like frost.
she dug not like a scavenger, not like a beast in hunger, but with meaning. with hesitation. and so he did not move, only watched, the bones of the pronghorn cooling between them.
when her paw flexed against the hide, when she paused to look toward him, wary and unsure, he finally broke the silence—just barely.
hví?
a question without threat.
only a thread of curiosity, loosely held.
he did not understand her silence, or her purpose.
but he wanted to.

the tone was questioning, and elk charm answered though she did not know the word. "because it is too much to carry and too long to wait for it to be more easily carried. it will take me a week to make the meat ready and at least another three days for the skin."
her voice rose and fell in irritable, worried cadence.
"ten days! ten days, and i have to — i am searching for my brother."
her eyes stared at the man, slightly dazed. "he is lost. he is lost and i must find him."
elk charm recovered, stuffed another strip of meat into her mouth, and began to haul the pronghorn toward the cache, claws digging into the earth with effort.
but she did not ask for help. this was light work for a sharadoiii woman.

geirmundr could not grasp her words—her tongue was swift, filled with sharp corners and rising panic, each sound tumbling out like stones down a cliff. but he knew tone. he knew urgency. her paws tore at the earth, her breath ragged between mouthfuls of meat, and her eyes—dark, dazed, desperate—told him enough.
she was searching.
and she would not wait.
so he let her work.
he stood just beyond the edge of her labor, silent as shadow, watching her dig, drag, struggle—not from lack of strength, but from the weight of grief bound in duty. she did not ask for help.
but when she paused, breath heavy in the cold, he stepped forward.
a grunt—low and rumbling in his chest—and then he motioned, broad head tilting toward the horizon. a flick of his muzzle. that way. his body shifted, slow and sure, as he moved to stand near the cached meat.
they would go together.
he did not need her to explain.
she had somewhere to be.
he would take her.

elk charm wanted him to go away. but she found her thinking was not so insistent the more she became accustomed to his silent presence. she peered back into his face, finding little there than stoicism; her ears flattened.
and then the girl shoved away from the cache, shifting the last of rummaged soil back into place. it was not so much a waste as a loss, but she hated to see it either way.
turning on her heel, elk charm headed southeast, aware of a great an unsurmountable wall there in the distance. she would have to go around, she and —
elk charm glanced back for the shadow who had given the pronghorn. her approach was just as swift; she put a paw to her chest. "ȟákac'enyu'." her name in sharadoii.
and then she returned to her journey, remaining aware of him; he had not yet made her uncomfortable beyond the first day, and knowing he was not muradoii had ended the rest.
her valley-honed legs ate at the terrain. if the accented man trailed, she would not mind. after all, she owed him at least one pelt.

he followed—not close, not pressing, but there, like a shadow drawn long by the sun. his steps were heavy but measured, the weight of a man who did not need to rush to keep pace. he watched her without staring, ears flicking once at the way she moved—quick-footed, sure, with purpose in her spine even when weariness dragged at her limbs.
when she turned back—paw to chest, voice quiet but clear—he paused. he did not understand the word, not truly, but the shape of it in her mouth, the way her gaze held his, told him what it was.
her name.
he looked at her, slow and solemn, then lifted a paw and pressed it to his own broad chest.
geirmundr, he said, the word low and thick in his throat, carved from old tongue and colder lands.
he did not smile.
but there was something softened in his brow.
then he moved again, silent as a glacier, keeping pace with the small black girl who did not yet send him away.