3/2/2026, 2:24 PM
this voice.
this voice.
elk charm stopped where she had been slowly pacing. a moment ago her mind had been filled with the considerations of where to forage before she kept her travels in continuation.
but now it felt as though the world was whirling to a blur, and she clutched at the ground desperately to keep herself from lurching away, aside, forward; of fleeing the voice at her back for the sheer intensity of shock.
bundle slid from trembling shoulders.
she had waited! she had waited --
and then she had left behind the singing hills, trying to leave her memories of samo behind in the wetu they had shared, however briefly. elk charm had not known the magnitude of that wound until this moment, this lilted, impossible second --
at last she turned. that scarring above his right eye were the same. the eyes that looked back at her still held the same soft expression. samo carried a deerpelt, and this framed the hard long lines of his body.
he breathed; he was real and vital, hale and only now hoarsened by perhaps the same shock that seized elk charm. when she had shared her shelter and hunting with him, she had still been militsik. did he know she had sought ritual for him alone? to clear a way where one day she might be free to answer him, if ever he asked?
her breath shook.
now she was no longer. now elk charm stood before samo without taboo between them, unbound to look upon his face, to hear his voice --
it was all she could muster, riverdark eyes glistening with a thousand unspoken things.
this voice.
elk charm stopped where she had been slowly pacing. a moment ago her mind had been filled with the considerations of where to forage before she kept her travels in continuation.
but now it felt as though the world was whirling to a blur, and she clutched at the ground desperately to keep herself from lurching away, aside, forward; of fleeing the voice at her back for the sheer intensity of shock.
bundle slid from trembling shoulders.
she had waited! she had waited --
and then she had left behind the singing hills, trying to leave her memories of samo behind in the wetu they had shared, however briefly. elk charm had not known the magnitude of that wound until this moment, this lilted, impossible second --
at last she turned. that scarring above his right eye were the same. the eyes that looked back at her still held the same soft expression. samo carried a deerpelt, and this framed the hard long lines of his body.
he breathed; he was real and vital, hale and only now hoarsened by perhaps the same shock that seized elk charm. when she had shared her shelter and hunting with him, she had still been militsik. did he know she had sought ritual for him alone? to clear a way where one day she might be free to answer him, if ever he asked?
her breath shook.
now she was no longer. now elk charm stood before samo without taboo between them, unbound to look upon his face, to hear his voice --
samo.
it was all she could muster, riverdark eyes glistening with a thousand unspoken things.