Closed First Impressions All Over Again

[Khida]

The implicit question, the prompt she presented to him, hung expectant in the air between them. The silence which followed was nearly deafening, tense with expectation and anxiety, with the weight of the bond's potential looming all around them. He did not break it quickly, but looked down at where her hands clung to his, turning them over to examine her human skin. Khida didn't understand what he looked for, what he thought to see -- only that she waited still, and the waiting was more terrible even than hovering outside a mouse-burrow after days of hunger. But she would wait, if that was what he needed. She would give him whatever time it took to think through the choice. ...Yet when he spoke, it was only to ask for still more time. Khida averted her gaze, dropping it towards the grassy earth beside. She could see one of the Strider's hooves at the edge of her vision, the idle unconcern with which Akaidras cropped at the grass. She wondered briefly if, when he and the Strider had bonded, he had also asked the horse for more time. But what he said... it wasn't a no. The potential remained; she didn't feel it dissipate in the face of rejection, because he didn't reject it. In fact, from the way he spoke, the way he stood, the way he held to her hand, the Kelvic thought... believed... hoped... She thought his true answer, the answer of his heart, might just be yes. But he was human; he wanted the words she didn't have, the knowledge humans kept in their books and learning and stories. He wanted to know, not just be... and nothing in Khida was willing to refuse him that right. She had waited this long. She could wait a little longer, for his sake... especially if he did consent in the end. The woman looked back, another deep breath strengthening her resolve. Gently, Khida extricated her hand from his, hesitating before bringing it fully back to herself. "I will wait," she promised softly, affection bittersweet in her tone. "I do not think I can wait forever... but I can wait a little while." She could; she would; she must. "It is right, you should know... and I cannot just tell you."

[Colt]

She dropped her gaze, breaths long and deep in contemplation, and Shahar’s anxiety rose. What if she couldn’t come again? Becoming ‘bondmate,’ was that something that had to happen? If he did not become ‘bondmate’ now, would the same magics that had given her to him come to steal her away once more?

Her fingers slid gently from his, and had he not been so nervous he might have very well attempted to catch them again. As it was, the mystery that surrounded this woman was deep—too deep, it seemed, for him to fathom without ‘Kelvic.’ Why did she break contact, but not step away? Did she intend to leave? That was not an agreeable thought for him, not at all.

Her words managed to assuage some measure of his fears, though the monsoon of what-ifs and could-bes continued to pound upon his shoulders. She would wait for him. But the space between them seemed suddenly all that much more vast in the wake of her touch; did she intend to depart? Now, after so little time? Would she stay until he discovered Kelvic? If she left, when would she return?

“What between?” he asked, tone quiet even for his soft voice. “What between now and knowing Kelvic? I seek, but you? What you to do? Where? Come back, when?" Please. Stay.

[Khida]

He hovered, leaned forward just a little; didn't catch at her hands, but there was that about the way he stood that said he wanted to. That he wanted her to stay. She wanted to stay; in this, they were one. Of course they were. She hesitated, breath caught in her lungs, tempted; potential weighed heavy, dragged at her feet, an anchor rooting the Kelvic to this very spot. To this person. Khida reached out to take his hands in a mirror of before, folding hers around them. "If I stay too long now, I think... I think that is the other choice," she murmured with deep regret, answering first what his demeanor asked rather than his words. To bond, not to wait... Oh, but she didn't want to wait. Khida paused, swallowed, tilted her head back to search his visage. His eyes were green, not so much like the grass, but like the moss which had grown on that tree. That sacred tree. But this, she thought, this between them was far more sacred than any plant could possibly be. "I am done seeking," she said softly, the thought bringing a slow, wondering smile to lips... but one which didn't quite reach her eyes. Not quite, because with only potential yet between them, the Kelvic's search wasn't truly over at all. If still interposed itself, that burden of decision which rested on the human's shoulders alone. "I found. I don' t know... why it took so long, but... now it is. I..." She hesitated, amber eyes flicking to one side, a subtle discomfort leaching into her posture. "I don't know... what I will do. Between." What did it matter, ultimately? She'd do whatever passed the time, however much time he needed, no matter how little she wanted to be apart from him. Khida shook her head a bit, and looked back to him again. "I will wait," she stated, promised; the only act she might do which could possibly matter. "I didn't..." The woman spoke on without thinking, paused, then reached up to brush fingertips against his cheek as she continued the statement. "I didn't think there would be... so much in words. We didn't need them before." Before, she said, giving it a weight far beyond one recent encounter in the Sea of Grass. While they'd had their share of misunderstandings in that absence of words... for Khida, those moments were all forgiven, and mostly all forgotten. A year together, a year she rejoiced in and cherished beyond all before. Now they stood here on the cusp of forever... ...and hesitated there, going neither forward nor back. It struck Khida then, truly struck home, that they could not go back. They would bond, or they would not, and either way, everything between them would be... different. She pressed her lips together, dismayed by that realization... and lingered there in her state of abeyance, giving him time to respond... hoping, hoping the man might yet change his mind, choose the other way. As long as the other way was stay.

[Colt]

She took his hands once more and his eyes brightened momentarily. Though it wasn’t a promise, it was some indication, at least, that she wanted to remain. Though it was her fingers encircling his, he managed to clasp her thumb gently, as if trying to tether her to him.

What she said struck a chord; he, too, knew the abstract, unnamable feeling that hung above, pushed them together. The other choice… to let the shroud descend and enfold them, to tie them together in ways he couldn’t yet understand. For her to stay would be for them to take a leap of faith, to become ‘bondmate’ now even when he didn’t quite know what that meant. And yet his gut told him that whatever ‘bondmate’ was, it couldn’t possibly be a bad thing, not when it called to him as it did. He was afraid of the unknown, yes, but the prelude to empathy drummed loudly in his chest, beckoning him forward. Yes, it proclaimed, this is the right way.

Her words became hesitant, swaying between said and not quite said. She, too, seemed to be unsure as to what would happen now. Finally the admission came, the promise to wait. She reached upwards, ghosting soft fingers over his cheek and conveying her own displeasure with just how few words they shared. But she would wait, and that felt just a bit more immediate than the strange inflection of the word before.

“One night,” he blurted. His grip on her thumb became just a bit tighter, and perhaps he leaned just a little bit farther into the fingers at his cheek. “Stay this night. Please.”

[Khida]

Stay, he said, sudden and insistent, voicing the deeper wish of the heart rather than cautious thought and deliberation. Stay, he said... and yes, he meant. She knew he meant so, because she knew he had followed her words, simple as they were; knew it from the way he stood, the intent awareness in his eyes, the subtle shifts of lines in his face. He knew; he understood. He understood, and he chose, and Khida found no words with which to answer his decision. Words, in the end, were small and simple things; they bounded and divided and defined, while what the Kelvic felt was complex and broad and overwhelming. She made no attempt to give it voice, no more than she attempted to keep pose and expression from reflecting those same feelings. Surprise, relief, vivid joy; impossible to say where one ended and the next began. Khida said nothing, but rather folded to lean in against him, her cheek coming to rest against his shoulder; she nodded, not seen but felt as shifts in pressure. Yes, the Kelvic answered, not with words but with their absence: yes, and always.

[Colt]

It was not with words that she answered his question, for it wasn’t completely with words that he had asked. The communication between them transcended to something else; the decision he had made in asking her to stay was not one that could be captured by speech, Common or Pavi. It was with her body she responded, in the language before all languages, by finally banishing the space between them. She leaned into his chest, head against his shoulder, and silently shared her answer: relief, happiness, desire to remain… yes. Shahar moved with her, encircling her back with the hand that was not hers and bringing his chin to rest on the crown of her head. A feeling of rightness filled him; this was where he should be—here, now, and for the rest of his days.

He fell to silence, and to stillness; the shroud over them continued to hover, but it was different now; some part of it had touched them, and the rest had settled to wait expectantly, as the rocks wait until the right time to slide after the first pebble. He didn’t need to move right now; he was perfectly happy to remain where he was.

He didn’t know how long he stood there; it could have been a moment, it could have been an hour or it could have been anything in between. At some point, however, the simmering pot of thoughts that had been shelved pricked to life once more, and Shahar suddenly found himself with a single, piercing question that had never before occurred to him. Its simplicity rendered it easy enough to put to words, and its power pulled it to the fore. He took a breath, breaking the lull that had taken him over, and moved to put his lips by her ear.

“… what is your name?” he murmured, faintly surprised that the thought had only just now appeared.

[Khida]

All tension, all uncertainty fled as they settled into mutual agreement. He draped his free arm over her shoulders, tucked his chin against her head; she listened to the rumble of his heartbeat under her ear, the softly regular whisper of his breathing. The sun descended slowly towards the horizon, their combined shadow inching out ever farther beyond them. Birds began to settle into stillness beyond the camp, and even the Strider ambled away on his own interests, leaving the humans to their mutual absorption -- if a state so simply experiential could be considered such. After some time, a period the Kelvic couldn't be bothered to try and gauge, he breathed more deeply, a shift in his head signaling intent. Khida shifted as well, if more subtly, telegraphing the abrupt refocus of her attention to actual passing events. To his actions, to his words. The man asked for her name, of all things, and she drew back to blink momentarily up at him; he called her, was that not a name? But perhaps he wanted the human word. Drawing back also meant that she could speak and not have her voice cast down towards the earth. "Khida," she answered simply, for if he wanted the word, he could certainly have it. It would have been human, to ask his name in return; the Kelvic didn't think of it. He was distinct unto himself, and she knew him as such. But as she looked now at him and beyond him, she saw the angle of Syna's light, and thought it might be wise to finish preparing for the oncoming night. "It will be dark soon," Khida reminded him, glancing back towards the bundle he had dropped... what felt like an entire age ago.

[Colt]

Khida.

“Khi-da.” He tested the word, feeling it on his tongue and placing it carefully in his memory. It was without thought that Khi transmuted to ke, the familiar sound that he had come to associate with dawn, quiet serenity and her. Thoughts of the falcon flared suddenly in his mind with bright clarity, but it was strange; handling them became like handing a completely foreign weapon, and they slipped through his fingers to jar his mind back to Khida in time to hear her words.

Shahar looked up to the sky with surprise. The sun was quickly slipping behind the horizon, heralding the end of the day. Darkness would come quickly. Khida glanced behind him, and he followed her gaze to... ah, the tent. The bronze man’s tent.

It was with a reluctant sigh that Shahar parted with Khida for the fallen parcel of rods and canvas. Still, this tent meant that the bronze man would have his own place to sleep, which then meant that Shahar’s own would be empty. That gave him a measure of cheer as he shouldered the bundle and returned to Khida.

Required, apology. Impatience. “I will raise… this,” he said, unaware of the Common word for tent. “And then I and you will…” talk. Not talk. Touch. Sleep. Any of them. All of them. Without words capable of conveying what belonged there, he simply signed; be together. He hoped that was enough.

With that the Drykas walked quickly to the space beside Slither’s tent. If the bronze man found sleeping next to a Dhani unnerving, it was of little concern to Shahar; though there were few things that the hunter minded sharing, tonight, Khida… it was a night that he wanted to be just his. And so the bronze man would sleep on the other side of the hearth.

He straightened. The barest sliver of Syna’s crown still lingered, but within minutes it would be gone and the plains would be plunged into darkness. Slither had been fed. The fire had been banked. The horses had been tended to. The bronze man was resting. The day was dying and night lingering overhead, but whatever time was left… it was theirs, and theirs alone.

He turned to Khida once more, eyes downcast, but every other second they would flick to hers and then dance away again. He closed the distance between them slowly, as if approaching an easily startled animal. He was shy as he took her hand, almost on the verge of blushing when his gaze rose to meet hers. But there was also a smile there—tentative, a little lopsided, maybe a bit nervous, but there.

[Khida]

He echoed her name, shaping the syllables with evident care. Then he looked beyond her to the darkening heavens, and recalled himself to his earlier task. He stepped away, but in some odd fashion, she thought his presence did not... not quite. Khida followed after, pausing only to collect her own small contributions to his possessions -- the brush, and the rest of the kit it had come with. His hands flickered through the red sunset light -- signs she recognized, signs she was less sure of. Be together, she echoed, shaping it with a faintly querying air. Her hesitance only had to do with the meaning of the sign; there was none in the woman's steps as she followed after him. "Tent," Khida supplied belatedly, the word he hadn't been able to say in Common. She could help with that much. That thought reminded her of something else, something which had gone without understanding. The sign the quiet girl had made when trying to define Kelvic to her satisfaction -- perhaps he would be able to put a Common word to it. She waited as the man set up the new tent, her gaze going to the gloom beyond their camp and the dim glow of the banked fire. There was little to see save gathering twilight, but she watched anyway, because he couldn't. When he straightened, her gaze swerved back to him, as level and direct as it seemed to ever be. His, on the other hand, darted and flickered, shy and uncertain. Khida tilted her head, blinking at him, her posture telegraphing perplexity at least as well as the confusion sign she sketched one-handed, almost unthinking. She didn't understand his nervousness. The Kelvic woman reached out to meet his hand, her own uncertainties resolved by their earlier accord; she had his assurance, and trusted it implicitly. There remained for her nothing to doubt or dither over... though her fingers closed quite firmly around his, if gently so. Silence hung; Khida considered breaking it. Words. She had only a few she wanted to say, now, but they were pointless without her hands free to shape the sign needing explanation. They would have to wait. Silence, then, as they walked the short distance around the hearth to his tent, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. Khida found it a comfortable silence, aside from the hunter's continual sidelong glancing... but she couldn't find it in her to be irritated by that behavior. Not tonight.

[Colt]

It was a youthful shyness that filled him as he approached, the shyness of one who has not yet felt the full force of love. Though his body was a man’s, in this way he was still like a child—unsure of what was expected of him, but willing to discover. This woman had chosen him, Shahar, for ‘bondmate,’ but what did that mean? What if he couldn’t do what was needed? What if he wasn’t good enough at whatever she was expecting?

But her hand was as firm as it was gentle when she took his hand. No hesitance, no doubt, not even really in the way she had signed confusion; her confusion was directed towards his actions, not the man himself. She led him back to his tent with confidence—if he had any doubt about the wisdom of her choice, it was a doubt that she did not share.

The silence between them was of a kind that Shahar had often found scarce: a shared silence. He knew the silence of solitude, when he was alone. He knew the silence of caution, when he tried to place his feet lightly upon mold-blackened grass. Then there were the silences he sometimes shared with Slither, the parallel quietness that almost made the silence feel like two different ones altogether. But this silence, it was something that belonged to both him and Khida, one that needed and asked for nothing because it was alright the way it was. It was like the silence he shared with Akaidras. It was like the silence he shared with her.

The falcon.

Once again he experienced the peculiar jarring of thoughts from the raptor back to Khida just as they reached the canvas shelter. He pulled back the entrance, a bit of embarrassment in his posture.

“I… have not many things,” he admitted. “Water, and food, and warm, not many others. I am sorry.”

He released her hand as he went in, gesturing for her to wait as he turned and pulled at his bedroll as he had the night of the storm, turning the coverings into a second makeshift sleeping pad. His folded up cloak was moved to make a pillow, while anything else in the way was tucked into the corners to make space for two people. It was then that Shahar scooted onto the blanket-bed, opening the bed-bed for Khida herself to take a seat upon and beckoning her inward with what might have been the hint of a blush.