not of the sharadoii. the wind told her that.
her ears flicked toward the voice. soft. unsure.
citlali, she repeated, voice gentle and curious, shaped by the vowels of her people. i am cloud lash.
she padded closer, the fur along her spine shifting like the tall grass behind her. there was no threat in her stance, only the strange confidence of one who’d walked these lands all her life. her head tilted once, studying the girl with her mismatched gaze. blind. she’d noticed. and yet, she was here. brave, maybe. or lost.
she did not say more at first. instead, she sat beside her, carefully placing her bundle of herbs down and drawing in a breath of the flower-sweet air. her voice shifted—softened into her mother’s tongue. words spilled like warm river stones: syllables round and meandering, full of breath and rhythm. cloud lash spoke of the valley, of the morning heron who fished at dawn, of the spirit-touched mountain, of the bone-dyed pines where the elders left their prayers.
citlali would not understand the language—but cloud lash didn’t seem to mind.
she laughed once, a quiet, breathy thing, and looked sideways at the stranger.
you do not know words, she said at last, grinning, but i think you know feeling.
and with a nudge of her shoulder, she added in a whisper, citlali stay?