Dahozhoni Meadow Here where I once

Safiya had been working hard to better train her body and mind. She had found out that despite losing one sense she could tap more readily into her others. Sounds were sharper. Smells deeper. And she relied on touch on the blind side. As such that shoulder often held a rougher texture from using it to feel walls and trees.

Today she attempted to train further and she made it to the meadow. She lifted nose into the air and sniffed about. The crunch of snow under paw. But still beautiful winter flowers. She bent her face to smell one of the winter lilies. Breathing in. Closing her one good eye for a momwnt of reprieve.

he searches for sangre still.

nino would not permit her memory to fade peacefully, as some other ghosts had.

on his walk he thinks of many of them. their faces. their moods. the things they enjoyed and the things they hated. how at once they had been so vividly part of his life, and now they were but ghosts, soon to be lost to the fading of his own leaking memory.

he ranges along the meadows to the north. there's no hope of sangre here, but as he scents the snow he sees the footsteps of another. one deep breath of crisp snow and fragrant winter lily and he knows.

safiya.

his little pearl.

soto's steps quicken.

There was a silence to this area. A soft sort of sound that filled the spaces of her mind and soul. There were no loud stomping feet. No sound of the pitter patter of servants. Just nature and silence.

A sound of movement behind. And she twisted head to look with good eye. Searching for the intrusion. She stared at the wolf in front of her unsure.

She dipped her muzzle and tried out some of the words Belen had taught her. 

Hola Soto, ¿cómo estás?

oh, his sweet summer rain. 

so much strife caused by his softness for her - so much anger brewed in the hard glint of her father’s gaze. 

soto did not advance. yet warmth sparked in his remaining eye to see her recognize him, to speak his own lyrical language. 

someone at the palace must be giving her lessons. he wondered — with a knife twist to his heart — if it was one of verapaz’ recently defected. 

mejor ahora. como estas, mi perla?

Safiya had been the catalyst for it all. She knew that now. Her penance for angering her king and country's gods was her eye. But Safiya was not afraid. Nor was she ashamed to see the wolf that had also caused all of this. She had learned that even the mighty can fall. That even the darkest of hearts can have some small lights. 

She had to think hard to answer him. She was not fluent in his language at all. not even certain she could hold a conversation, but she would try.

Mmm Bien. Estoy cansada.. Mucho que aprender.

pride! it burst in his heart to hear the beauty of his language graced on her tongue. for a few seconds he struggles to control the swell of it in the form of a single tear;

he reaches for her and restrains himself. there is so much to say. no gifts now. only conflict and resentment.

soto sighs.  there is so much more he owes to his pearl than he can give.

so he utters aloud the first word he's ever spoken in that detestable tongue. come. for her. he would learn that language and drink its customs and swallow its entire tradition all for a single glitter of approval in that remaining eye. he would do terrible things, again and again, to see her look upon him favorably.

he moves off, looking over his spine only once.

He was emotional. This dark hearted beast that gave her grace. What was it they say about angels and demons. Surely this is one of those moments. And she should run, run fast. But she did not. Would not. Could not.

 Struck helpless as all girls who find themselves in such situations. And she told herself. She could leave whenever she wanted. She could do it. Not knowing that was her first lie to herself.

Surprise colored that singular eye. And she studied him. Wondering had he understood her all along? 

And like a fool. She followed.

were this summer he would bring her to the gilded glade where lotus and lilypad flowers grew in lazy water; but it was winter, and the landscape had been transformed into bitter bleakness. 

she says nothing as she follows, but she does not have to. 

he traverses down the bank and across the narrow strip of solid ice. there he listens for a drawn pause, absorbing the creaking of ice floe and the groan of the river beneath. 

a splash from the opposite bank diverts his attention. hunkering down, soto creeps forward until at last the round body of a grazing beaver comes into view.

Even in it's winter body. The land was beautiful. Barren but beautiful. But Safiya was always a wolf who preferred simple things. She did not boast nor brag. She preferred service in military to the gilded life of servants and the palace. 

There was something heavenlike of being out in the world with very little and on a march. The creaking of bodies moving in sync. The sound of loud march songs.

Safiya knew that ice could be treacherous. So she stayed silent. Red colored ears poised in sound. 

She went low into hunters crouch. And for the first time she was fearful of her lost eye. She had not tried hunting with her handicap yet.

in safiya, there is a shared code. not for him the softened beds, or the warm fireside. his lot in life runs leaner.

the long cold of the night-march.

the grit and dirt stuck beneath claws that will never wash clean of their grime.

the slow, baited breath of starvation --

such things he does not wish for safiya, but he sees it in that eye that sees nothing: her future. her end.

red as a summer night. glinting and cold as a lonely pearl.

in an eye's blink it all goes away. soto's close, the beaver's rounded back turned. and though he has lost many things, his stride does not falter as he springs from the reeds, a desire unspeakable ringing in that single golden eye;

it was too easy to kill. his jaws sluice with blood as he turns around, the squirming thing held between his jaws. and it is her face he holds in his vision now as the beaver squalls and kicks.

a dream where he holds her father's neck between his teeth --

he bashes the thing against the stone as if it were khusobek's own skull, panting as its body rips from his teeth and goes limb over tail towards safiya.

Safiya knew well what could await her. She had been at death’s door more than she cared to admit. Her life had been a series of unfortunate moments and each had taken a piece of her body and soul. And each had left something simmering in their wake and loss.
 
She readied herself, but Soto did not need her assistance. For a moment relief lit up her insides, because she had been truly unsure if she could have helped him. As was her lot as of late. But she promised herself then, she would make time to relearn the skill of hunting with one eye.

The creature screamed and cried. Pitingly really. But it’s end was swift. Something Safiya had not been given. Instead she had been left to survive and as fever and filth ran through her body. She had whispered of dark promises of death and revenge. And she would have it perhaps someday. If she ever saw the beast that took her eye again.

tómalo.

the bloodied body slumps at safiya's feet. for all her emotive eyes soto senses a distance in them; as if planets whirl and spin in the looming distance between where safiya stands now, and the unreachable frontier her mind wanders.

drawing his haunches under him, soto sits and thinks of how very different things would be if her father had not been so pig-headed in his hate. if juarez or nino had survived.

and if marciela had never turned her teeth into his hide.

Safiya watch3s the creature land at her feet. The gentle red of its innards staining her paws and the dirt. She breathed in the scent of fresh kill and what was Soto's own unique scent.
Gracias.

She bent her head to take a bite. Ears forward. Sea foam eye roaming around. The other closed tightly against red head.

She motioned. And thought hard.  ¿te gustaria?

She faltered on the words. They felt thick on her tongue and she could not form the whole sentence, but she got her point across she hoped.