Duskfire Glacier The stars welcome him with open arms

His response was not what she had hoped to hear. 

At the very least, she would have liked to hear that he had liked her in the beginning - she had been so sure it was mutual. 

Tapeesa read into his words what he would not say. That it hadn't been mutual, he didn't like her - at least not romantically. He had seen a woman worth pitying in the forest, nothing more. She had needed a group, a family as he had said. They'd spoken the same language and that had been enough. It was worse - knowing that she had been wrong all along and not just for the past few weeks. 

"I see," was all she could bring herself to say, at last. The words sounded empty, even to her own ears.

"I wish you'd said that from the beginning, Siarut. That would have saved us this," a wry smile, humorless, graced her features them for she knew that things would be different now. Sia would pity her, perhaps even more so with her confessed feelings, and he would avoid her. He wouldn't mean to, just as he hadn't meant to lead her on, but it would happen all the same. 

"I will be your sister then," she finally added, schooling her features into something as hard as the glacier they called home. The tundrian would not bother him with her silly notions of attraction, it would only distract him from his newfound responsibilities. 

Uki took the rock in her jaws again and went back to the task of creating cairns - too confused to do anything else.