Andarin: The Mountains: micah ;

astarte;

Ixtab moves to her, a red-orange and cobalt-black-striped wraith cropping gaily into the night; her fangs glitters in her feline smile, and her voice is a rough cough: tigers cannot purr, she knows, but she tries anyway, as Astarte’s own voice purred to her in the music of the wind and the movement of the soil beneath her tapping feet. It is the way of her familiar, to fade in and out of existence; she weaves between Astarte’s dancing feet as they run, and briefly their skins sink together and Ixtab’s black marks transfer onto the Starweaver’s own, moving and flitting like hummingbird’s wings, and they are one beneath the moon and stars. And so they race, and dance, and sway like reeds, lush and full of life; Ixtab hunts, and takes a hare beneath her jaws, the blood exploding onto her tongue and the flesh sliding between her teeth – and it is not obscene, not strange for Astarte to taste it on her own tongue, for it is life, and death is life, and there was no shame in it.

Later, both sated by the flesh of hare and grass both, and quenched by their own sweat-crisped brows, they behooved themselves into the moonlight; Ixtab collapses, sprawled and boneless with contentment, before Astarte’s spread-eagled legs, her head thrust beneath them to catch her wayward breath. They grin at each other, a feline to a horse, and no words do they speak: they have never had to, or needed to, or wanted to.

Ixtab’s breath slowly eases into cat-sleep, and Astarte folds herself onto the ground beside her, her tigress’ massive paws gently kneading the muscles of her flank and back. My land, she thinks – not in ownership, or possession, but in understanding, and peace; the earth shifts beneath her, subtly and infinitesimally, as the hairs moved on her side as it rose and fell in breath. She felt it within her like a living being, and it comforted her, in this night of stars and striped sides.

“Micah,” she says, as he comes slowly though the trees and into the clearing where she dreamed and her familiar slept; she knew him coming almost as she knew herself.