[m] ice is bark of rivers and roof of the wave

WARNING: This thread contains material exceeding the general board rating of PG-13. It may contain very strong language, drug usage, graphic violence, or graphic sexual content. Reader discretion is advised.

(384)

For Interrogante. Let me know if changes need made! <3

The campsite in the valley was a modest one: a singular hide tent, two mares, and two women organizing rope and other tools as they talked quietly.

"You don't truly need another cow, do you?"

"Milk's drying up. We need calves, and for that we need a bull."

"What about that hairy one you like?" A shake of the head. "You want new blood," Khael surmised. "Good blood."

Katinka smiled and shrugged helplessly as she looped the rope. "I wish we didn't need a bull," she said, and then began to laugh.

Khael laughed too, loudly enough to startle her wife, until she ached.

* * *

Hours later, Khael thought she could still feel a stitch in her side, but she knew it was psychosomatic. She patrolled the valley with Tink, where they spotted a small bachelor herd, then talked plans to split one of the bulls off in the morning. After ensuring that their campsite was well-hidden, the horses hobbled, Khael wandered without really understanding what possessed her to do so.

She wouldn't admit to weakness, vulnerability, though her restlessness spawned from thoughts and ideas familiar to her over the past couple months.

She walked a couple miles through the evening, to the drone of cicadas that silenced when her hands brushed their trees. The soil was warm. Sprigs of bright wildflowers beckoned her with bobs of their heavily petaled heads, steadily muted by the clouds of dusk, and she thought about turning around again.

Her nostrils flared at a stray scent: sage and woodsmoke, male and dominant.

Perfumed in her own spicy aroma, Khael inferred a lot, and began to follow that trail with cautious steps and dark eyes. When the iron tang of blood hit her nose, she unsheathed her wicked black dagger and lifted her head.

They were fighting when she found them, the snarling loner with wounds glinting wetly, the dark back of the large male she knew. Trampled by their feet, she spotted a spread of cards, brightly painted with runic symbols she'd seen in Salsola before but did not understand. The crumpled one she passed had a singlar line, an illustration of an icy river, treacherous and dark. Her gait was brisk but unhurried, her voice a cold purr.

"Would you welcome help?"

It had been no accident that O'Riley roamed the far reaches. He was convinced that this was the area where he would find answers.

He could have ended the coyote menace now growing in the north if he had found them sooner. They could have purged all memory of the Clan and rewritten history to their own making. What had happened to Inferni was a lesson to their enemies, but in leaving little pieces of it smoldering they risked the fire rising all over again.

To extinguish all doubt from his people, O'Riley did what he had always done – he found an answer.

Misfortune, certainly, befell the young man who now backed towards the skinny trees. He was bleeding freely from one hand, clutched against his chest. The bristling form that faced him was not so tall, but on four legs looked a dastardly shape that betrayed his monstrous intent.

This perhaps was why the man, with his wounded hand and precarious situation, mistook Khael's arrival for salvation.

Yes! Get him away from me!

She's talking to me, you moron, O'Riley taunted. He lunged again, snapping, but did not get close enough to strike. The loner took a swipe at him, missed, and stumbled back. There were tangled roots and vines everywhere, filling the forest with obstacles the wolfdog sought to use to his advantage.

Leave me alone! I didn't do nothin'! He attacked me! The curly-haired dog moaned, still trying desperately to convince the impassive woman of his plight.

O'Riley finally broke his gaze from the stranger to look at Khael. There was blood on his muzzle. In the darkening sky above their heads stars were emerging. The area around them had gone quiet at the sound of their conflict, and when O'Riley barked, it filled the whole world with sound.

Those cards belonged to the Crone!