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Fa'liya ? <3

At summer's end, caribou appeared in abundance, migrating down to meet the approaching season in a less vigorous valley. A robust band of thirty had crossed over from the timber wood and Iglux̂ spent her morning ranging the northern foothills, stealing cat-footed through snowcover to watch them. She was captivated, but saatsine still fed from recent kills. It was not yet time to take another. They must kill to eat, and not for wantonness.
It is still her delight to lope back along the lakeside, a buxom ptarmigan she’d managed to flush from roost dangling between her jaws. It is a succulent treat and she wonders if Fa'liya has ever tasted the wild fowl.
Near camp her tread softens, eyes seeking the young girl who wears her father's coat.

fa'liya's maw twisted ugly around the velvet bone of an antler, one lip stretched over a short tine of the antler. her teeth weren’t strong enough yet to break it, but she worried at it all the same, little grunts of effort puffing from her nose.

the scent reached her before the sound of paws—warm, feathery, tinged with the iron tang of blood and evergreen. her ears twitched, head lifting, antler clutched awkwardly between her teeth. blue eyes found the silver bulk of a woman approaching. her scent is familiar where her name is not—her scent lingers on the girl's father. her tail gave the smallest stir against the snow, uncertain but not unfriendly. pushing up on her forelegs, the girl sat up and let the antler drop with a muted clack at her paws.

her nose lifted, curiosity plain on her face. the ptarmigan’s scent was rich, new. her tongue flicked over her teeth, and a small, breathy sound pushed past her throat—a soft whuff, questioning. for me?

The girl is lovely; delicate. Clear blue eyes reflect the rimed wood.
Iglux̂ lays the bird and its soft white down at the child’s feet.
“Ptarmigan,” she names in lanzadoii, thinking how she had failed with Caan and wondering if Fa'liya would suffer the same fate with her. Iglux̂’s heart still smarted. In a way, youth hadn’t really registered. Childhood had scarcely touched crying wind. It was a thing she did not know how to nurture, and yet it was seemingly native to all other women.
A wind whips tiny snowflakes against them, ruffling their napes.
“Try it,” the woman invites.

the girl stared at the gift, nose twitching over the warm spill of scent. her ears pricked at the word spoken—ptarmigan. she mouthed it soundlessly, lips working, tasting the word before the meat.

her gaze flicked from bird to woman, wary but keen, studying her face as though searching for what was meant of her. try.

slowly, she bent. tiny teeth worry at the soft place where belly met feather, tugging until the skin gave. she startled at the sharpness of it, licking her lips fast before she bent again, tugging, chewing.

After a few mouthfuls, she looked back up, a smear of scarlet clinging to her chin. the taste was rich—different from caribou, less wild-musked, lighter on her tongue. her tail gave a small, unthinking stir. good,

Fa’liya is much different from her brother. The silver advances gradually, laying herself across the girl in the snow. A measure of patience learned from Caan.
“It is good, now and then. The plumage will make soft down for your bed.” She leans her cheek against one wing to trace the velvet feathering. The girl’s tail stirs and a smile ghosts Iglux’s lips. It is hard not to endear herself. She studies Fa’liya’s fawn-colored claws, frost-brushed at the tips and stares into her eyes. A shade identical to Cen’s
“I do not see much of you.”

fa’liya did not mind when the silver’s warmth spilled across her narrow frame. she leaned into it without thinking, tucked her paws neatly beneath her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be folded into someone larger, steadier.

a light rasp to the woman's ears: not.. ah— the words still feel strange on her tongue, tongue curling around them clumsily, accent thick. her vocabulary isn't wide enough to try for a sentence, so she starts again. little to see. she gives the woman a slanted smile, somewhat resigned.

Nothing about it is natural for Iglux̂.
She stiffens in surprise, uncertain of how to act and blinking back a rapid flood of feeling. There is no way to prepare for the sudden magnitude of this sensation. It opens something inside her; a tender idea of what could be. Before she has any real notion of doing so, the girl's nuzzling is relinquished to the warm softness of her own belly. A forearm drapes over the small of her back. She looks down and sees two half-moons staring up at her from the frost. The tongue that speaks stumbles with lanzadoii in the same way the huntress’ does with common.
Iglux̂ sets a paw beside Fa'liya's.
“Why do you say that?”

fa'liya blinked at the question, her face half-buried in the silver’s fur where warmth still seeped into her skin. she did not pull away when the forearm fell over her, though her eyes lifted, ice-blue and searching, and for a long moment she only looked. she is thinking. the question made her ears tip back, words catching like burrs in her throat.

the girl makes an obscure gesture with her paw, raising it to hover only a few inches from the snow. small, her mouth twists around the word, and it tastes bitter on her tongue. where her sire was formidable and her mother strong, fa'liya obtained none of it—sickly through her puphood and undersized still as she approached her birthday. weak. she despised the feeling more than his father despised her mother. not strong like lanzadoii,

Omens of weakness come from the lips of elders, but to hear it burdensome in Fa’liya’s young voice is jarring. The huntress tightens her arm, tentatively drawing the girl closer against the winds which gust their chill.
She wonders how brother and sister had both come to espouse this notion of frailty— and then she wonders how they could not with their father and aunt as exemplary figureheads.
“Strength is not only in our size,” and Iglux̂ hoped her own slightness might stand as a testament to this. She lowers her muzzle to trace lightly over the girl’s crown, “it lives in here,” then down to the beating center between small shoulders, “and here.”
Form without practice was futile; without passion was hollow. Others may misjudge her smallness, and then Fa’liya would know the satisfaction of proving their error. Dark eyes examine the young face wrought with so much of her brothers' shared bitterness.
“Come hunt with me. I will show you how to tire the herds.”

fa'liya's ears tipped back at first, but the gentleness in the touch along her crown and the warmth pressed against her spine softened something brittle inside her. she didn’t understand everything, but the important pieces sank in. the touch over her chest made her small heart hammer, quick and birdlike, as if trying to agree before she herself could.

her eyes lifted to meet the dark ones studying her. she gave a tiny huff, almost a laugh, though it rasped in her throat. strong… here, she echoed, clumsy but certain, pressing a paw to her own chest.

when she spoke of a hunt, fa'liya straightened, tail giving a quick stir in the snow. yes, she nodded eagerly. a gasp when she realizes what she has forgotten—what.. name? your name.