3/10/2026, 8:15 AM
Sulukinak did not flinch at the voice.
It rolled across the snow like a stone dropped into still water—deep, rough-edged, carrying an accent that bent words in ways she had never heard; motionless as he spoke, she was fixated upon the broad russet shape as it drew close. He was a creature lacking all stealth—the opposite of herself—and while he was a large creature, he was submissive. The low and tentative gesturing of his tail told her as much.
The words themselves were strange. Deer scent. Bothering. Names offered freely, as though they were gifts rather than markers of territory or blood. She tilted her head a fraction, ears forward. The oily-sweet scent, like warm wool, or something freshly burnt, clung to him. Smoke, maybe? It was the only mark of the wilderness she recognized that he carried—the rest, alien.
The hollow inside her stirred again—not with hunger, not with fear, but with the quiet calculation of one who had learned that every new thing carried a cost. The dream still thrummed in her bones.
She exhaled once, a slow plume of steam that drifted toward him.
When she finally answered, her voice was low, rough from disuse, each word shaped like a stone laid on an altar:
The wind briefly filled the silence between them. She rolled his name over in her mind, and while it churned the shadow considered the way he looked, and moved, and failed in the basic act of tracking food. If anything maternal existed within Sulukinak she would remain unaware; however, the scar across her belly seemed to pulse.
Her mind ticks back to Tugix—how he waits, festering, and hungry. This had already taken too much of her focus.
It rolled across the snow like a stone dropped into still water—deep, rough-edged, carrying an accent that bent words in ways she had never heard; motionless as he spoke, she was fixated upon the broad russet shape as it drew close. He was a creature lacking all stealth—the opposite of herself—and while he was a large creature, he was submissive. The low and tentative gesturing of his tail told her as much.
The words themselves were strange. Deer scent. Bothering. Names offered freely, as though they were gifts rather than markers of territory or blood. She tilted her head a fraction, ears forward. The oily-sweet scent, like warm wool, or something freshly burnt, clung to him. Smoke, maybe? It was the only mark of the wilderness she recognized that he carried—the rest, alien.
The hollow inside her stirred again—not with hunger, not with fear, but with the quiet calculation of one who had learned that every new thing carried a cost. The dream still thrummed in her bones.
She exhaled once, a slow plume of steam that drifted toward him.
When she finally answered, her voice was low, rough from disuse, each word shaped like a stone laid on an altar:
Not deer.The two words hung between them, flat and final.
The wind briefly filled the silence between them. She rolled his name over in her mind, and while it churned the shadow considered the way he looked, and moved, and failed in the basic act of tracking food. If anything maternal existed within Sulukinak she would remain unaware; however, the scar across her belly seemed to pulse.
You walk loud. Breathe loud. Speak loud.Each observation delivered flat, without mockery—simple fact.
You... lost? Like bear, awake in winter.The question hung in the air like the breath that puffed from her lungs, carrying neither warmth or dismissal. She held no pity for this beastly thing—perhaps recognition, as one drifter to another, and nothing more.
Her mind ticks back to Tugix—how he waits, festering, and hungry. This had already taken too much of her focus.