What we got left is just me and you

Date fuzzy, all welcome. Takes place some time after the Shiroshika visit, probably toward the end of November or middle of December

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 The visit to Shiroshika had annoyed her, but she had expected that. For a while, she had actually taken to not bothering them at all. She stayed away from the mountain and its surrounding areas in favour of exploring the rest of the Tundra. Though she hadn't bothered to move westward very much, she found a strange contentment in returning as often as possible to her Everfrost. And, to her, it was her Everfrost in part.
 She had largely stopped guarding the borders of it, but had taken to marking the north-most boundary often to tell those of Hrafnsvaktin and Shiroshika that this was, in fact, her and Kuhn's forest. Perhaps his affections had relaxed her natural inclination to guard it fiercely, or maybe it was that he was its Lord first and foremost.
 Dragging a juvenile musk deer, Valmúa sneered at the thought of @Tiberius, recalling his intentional ambivalence and aggressively putting more pressure than necessary on the dead animal's neck. He and @Kuhn had seemed to know one another quite well. For whatever reason, this had pissed her off and she had been having frequent mood swings toward him. Some days, she was absent, of course on hunts or scouting. Others, she was quite affectionate and loving toward him, exuding an energy of intimate adoration. Yet at seemingly random times, she would be distant or even annoyed.
 Her brothers @Stjörnuáti and @Solpallur had not come to see her despite knowing that she had left. This made her... was it sadness?
 Pulling the felled young deer to a cache close to their shared sleeping area, Valmúa dropped the animal and chewed until she pried a meaty bone from it. Knowing by scent that Kuhn was probably close, she sat beneath a spruce tree and began gnawing at it.

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Lately Kuhn had noticed things had been different with his princessa.  he had noticed her rapid changes in mood though, the cat wasn't well versed in the nuances of empathy or even consistently reading the emotions of others, so it was easy to overlook the finer details in her mood, chalking it up to 'wolf stuff'.  Recently, he hadn't changed his approach with her, staying affectionate and simply doing his best to understand what he could about this creature. 

He had meant to go on a hunt but instead ended up having an interesting conversation with a polar bear that went by @Thraximundar.   Unfortunately the old timer had helped him burn some hunt time time and he was returning home with empty jaws.  Eventually hunger brought him back to his own cache, now having to settle for old, cold meat, not that it would be half bad. He still had the conclusion of the bear's conversation on his mind on his journey home. So, he couldn't wait to see his wolf. 

Coming through the trees the tiger caught scent of Valmua, and the kill she must have freshly taken. Slowly sauntering up to the den site, Kuhn eyed her, warmly chuffing as he approached. He was glad to see her.
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 When Valmúa heard him (she usually heard or smelled him before she saw him), her ears were alert and she was aware of his impending presence. Despite this alertness, she kept on chewing the meat from the bone she had picked. At this point, she had already pulled the cartilage and bone pieces from one end and was busying herself with licking the marrow from the inside. Marrow had always been her favourite part of a fresh kill, aside from organ meat. She enjoyed the effort it took to get to it.
 His chuff forced her to look up, and from her expression alone it was clear that today was a "bad mood" day. She looked like she had just been dicing tomatoes with the sharpness of her gaze.
 She kept chewing on the bone but was looking at him. She didn't bother to get up, but offered a very weird grin. It was somewhere between joy and anger, which resulted in something contorted, like a smirk. “Anything interesting today?” She asked, trying her best to be genuinely interested.

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As bad as the striped beast was at predicting how others would feel, the look she gave him as she worked on her meal was unmistakable. She was having one of those days. If he had been more tuned in he might have figured it had alot to do with leaving her old pack or a lack of a new one. All he knew was she was in a bad mood and to tread lightly.

In response to her look, his nose wrinkled up a bit, trying not to let it get to him. He took an apprehensive step forward wanting to comfort her but instead retracted it, taking a seat at a safe distance from the wolf, "Well, today I met the biggest bear I have ever seen..."
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 As she chewed at her bone, she took notice of his distance. She waited for him to take from the kill. When he didn't, she rolled her eyes and kept on chewing.
 “A... bear?” She stopped. Looking up at him, her distant expression melted into something of concern and interest. She looked over his body. There were no marks. No visible scratches or bleeding bits or anything of the sort. He looked fine. More than that, he looked... fine. Valmúa licked her lips, putting a paw over the bone she had been working on just to stare at him and ogle his body.
 “Was it white?” Valmúa had seen exactly two kinds of bears in her life, and both of them were horrible monsters that she didn't want to be anywhere near. One was brown. The other was white. They each frequented different types of areas. Both were terrifying.
 She failed to make the connection that Kuhn himself had also once been terrifying to her.

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Licking his chops he watched his princessa eat, though he wasn't sure if he should just take from her kill with her current mood. "Ya... It was white..." Kuhn replied distracted, his gaze snapping between Valmua's body, and the body she had drug back here.

His eyes had caught her gaze as it seemed to metaphorically undress him. Licking his chops, tracing his cannine. He looked on at the carcass and his princessa, slowly stepping forward.

Circling around to her side, the cat leaned in running his muzzle down her side, hoping to wiggle his way into an open spot in the carcass.
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 She watched her tiger flit his attention between her and the kill, mildly entertained by his hesitancy. It was afternoons like this that made it virtually impossible for the prinsessa to stay annoyed at him for very long. He had a habit of knowing exactly how tender to be to butter her up. Bastard.
 Kuhn moved in close to rub against her. Valmúa didn't stop him, but was more tense than usual despite leaning into the touch. She growled half-heartedly, dragging her teeth gently through some of his fur. He had forced an interruption to her bone chewing; it was worth the exchange of musk he gave her.
 “They are called ísbjörn — polar bear in my homeland,” she answered in odd, silken tones, licking her lips before she returned to the gnawing. From her lack of protectiveness, it was clear the kill was as much for him as it was for her. “I am surprised you are not hurt,” she scoffed, wondering how he had managed to get by unscathed. He was formidable, but those bears were of another level entirely.

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It seemed his ploy at the carcass had worked and he had now found himself in an open spot, with the warmth of his princessa pressed up against his side. He felt her teeth drag across his hide; by now he had come to like the gesture, aknolageing it with a warm rumble, though not breaking contact from the kill. 

The cat had his priorities at the moment and his mouth would be busy eating as she spoke further about the bear. After tearing something deep from within the kill; at least to sate the initial wave of hunger, the cat stopped for a moment removing his head from the gore, his white muzzle already stained red.

"Actually, I was surprised myself, he turned out to be a good guy. Though it went through my head, how to take him down" The cat responded picking up some now mutilated organ in his jaws, only half chewing it up before swallowing.  "At least until I got to know him" He continued swallowing the remnants of his last bite and licking the side of his own muzzle, then eyeing another go at the kill.  "How about you? Anything on your mind?" 
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 Valmúa silently (violently?) imagined what Kuhn would look like in a fight with one of the great white bears. She had trouble remembering how large they were — she had only seen them briefly from a great distance, and heard of their immensity in stories. She wondered how Kuhn would appear directly beside one of those beasts. For some reason, the thought excited her. She pressed her teeth into the supple raw bone she held, flitting her eyes to his eating.
 She wanted to ask, but he turned the questioning to her, and her excitement lit a fire through her voice.
 Lifting her head, Valmúa also lifted her lip. “Are you ever going to tell me what the deal is with you and @Tiberius? You seem awful close.” The statement switched gears. She had not mentioned any of her feelings about that day to him since they'd happened, apart from perhaps initial discomfort about the piece of shit snubbing her ass.
 She was showing teeth, tense, annoyed, excited.

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By now, the tigers feasting had increased in tempo, more focused than before. Immersing himself in the gore, tugging at some organ meet, it pulled loose in ribbons. Happily slopping then down, he looked to see what Valmua was up to, side eyeing her working her bone.

Momentarily he leaned into her before returning his focus to eating. This time using his paws for support. Hooking a paw around a section of ribcage and placing the other on the opposite side, the tigers back bulged as he began to pry. The carcass strained for a moment until a fleshy snap, and part of the chest ripped open. "Tiberius?", The big cat was obviously caught off guard as he halted what he was doing with the kill. Missing her initial sneer, he now saw the expression that she held now, not knowing what to make of it, missing it's subtle notes.

"...he is a friend of mine."
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 Valmúa eyeballed him, taking note of the way he hulked down large pieces of the animal she had caught. She watched him take his jaws across the meat, doing exactly what they were designed to do. He crushed, cut, severed, and swallowed. He was an animal, and she adored him for it.
 “Oh, a friend,” she nodded with a look of "yeah okay whatever," almost in disbelief. “Sure, okay.” She snarked. “And you are okay with your... "friends" just, publicly ignoring me? Like I am nothing?” She stood up then, dropping the half-crunched bone in its place. The red woman stood stiff, yet not angry. This was something other than rage pulling her. She barely understood it herself. Tossing aside the interesting bit about the bear he had offered, she seemed to snap. She said nothing, but stood her ground, as if ready to fight.

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From the corner of his eye, the tiger longed to continue his work on the carcass. Though, now he was once again being pulled into a world he didn't quite understand. He completely missed the fact that @Tiberius had snubbed her, things like that really where never on his radar.

Half looking up at Valmua, who was now standing above him, "No ..." , he replied, wondering how he could fix this, and still confused on the nature of Valmua's misunderstanding with Shiroshika. "Since when did you care what they thought about you?"
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 Holding her position over him, she realized at least partially that she was essentially blocking food from a predator far larger than her, but he wasn't the only one who liked to play power games. Valmúa flit an ear sideways, snuffing outward and fogging the air with her nose with an annoyed huff.
 “Care? No. I care how you let a mangled buffoon like that treat me. You stood by and watched him humiliate me after insisting I accompany you to ease tension,” she tossed her head. Stepping backward, she turned her back on him and that silly pile of venison to walk a few yards away and flop down on the snow. Turning her head away from him, she literally gave him the cold shoulder, throwing her head over her arm and heaving a frustrated sigh.
 Of course, he hadn't insisted. She had tagged along, perhaps hoping for some kind of rosy outcome that could never have happened.

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Things where good there for a moment, he had some fresh food to eat and the warmth of his princessa at his side.  But, it seemed there was more crap to deal with.  Reaching back into the shattered ribcage Kuhn took one more bite before standing on all fours.  Knowing he never actually asked her to come along definitely chipped at his temper, only for the fact that she felt the need to lie about it, his frustration was written on his face as his lip curled back. 

He didn't look at her as he started his saunter to the bone yard, leaving her kill behind.  Walking past her, it looked for a moment that he was coming close to comfort her, but just walked past only brushing her with his tail, passive aggressively.  "What did you want me to do?", he growled, walking away with only a glance of eye contact.  He knew there was no good answer, and he didn't want to humor her, he would rather go chew on frozen boar.
 

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 She was ready for him to brush against her and lean into him when she heard his steps and felt the warmth from his skin. She was ready for her moment of control to work fabulously. But the lie was flimsy, and he knew it. With a swagger and graze of his striped tail, he dismissed her action entirely; she lifted her lips and growled, but it was half-hearted.
 “Show a united front.” She stated, not getting up. It was as though she had rehearsed those words, but they flung out of her intuitively. There was a great deal of unpacking she could have done to take those words apart, but she didn't have to. He did. She knew, of course, that he had probably been right to go along with whatever Tiberius told him to do. They had been outnumbered and slightly outgunned, but moreover he had gone to seek diplomacy and respect, not argue.
 Still, she thought it weak, the display they had shown. Devoid of any conflict, Valmúa would always find ways to make their daily lives spotted with anger. It made tenderness far more comfortable later.

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The words she spoke where odd, it wasn't like her to say a phrase like that, it caught his attention.  Giving her another chance he stopped but, didn't turn around,  "What do you mean by that?" It was a strange  that she would say something like that to him, it was how wolves spoke to each other. Counting themselves as a unit rather than individuals accountable for their own decisions.  The cat's relationship with Tiberius had been earned, and had nothing to do with being part of any 'united front'. 

Kuhn was intrigued though he didn't show it, his tail keeping its rhythm. Was she asking him to side with her for its own sake? It sounded like wolf speak.
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 When he stopped, a small, almost invisible trickle of a smile twisted the corner of her lip. He did not understand, just as she had not fully understood him when she had first come to offer a small gift in his domain. There were many things he had said then that she had thought wise and strange, things that seemed premonitions of what was to come.
 “You once told me we can transcend what we come from, what we are,” she said, speaking far more softly and slowly than before. The firebrand seemed to have dropped the proverbial knife she had been holding. Instead, her eyes were alight with something frightening.
 “If the world views you and I as "united," we are not twice as respected —” she actually meant "feared", “we are unbreakable.” Here, she stood up again and moved to his side. Rather than looking at him, she looked ahead of them, as though staring upon some invisible force of evil that they could extinguish together. “But it only happens if I am with you, and you are with me.”
 It was a weird way of chastising him for doing... exactly what the Shiroshikans expected of him, instead of whatever weirdness she had in her head.

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It seemed like the subject had somehow changed, and was now far more interesting than her woes about Tiberius. The fire woman recalled words he had said a long time ago, pulling from the depths of his memory, speaking his language.  Still ringing true he was intrigued, he could see the raw excitement in her eyes , but still didn't quite know what she was getting at. None the less, Kuhn obviously felt they where on the same page now so he completely turned around for her, the frozen boar could wait.  Brushing up against her shoulder then taking some distance, His interest manifested, by him subconsciously circling her , much like the first time they had solidified their relationship. At her talk of being unbreakable and respected together his stride lengthened and he seemed to flex with every step, obviously liking what she was saying and deep in thought. 

"I don't hide anything, I'm not ashamed to wear your scent." , he replied simply, licking his chops.  Exited by what he was hearing, but likely missing the implications of what she was saying his focus was honed on her, circling observing, trying to steal some of that spark in her eyes.
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 At last, she hooked him. Feeling the return of Kuhn's warmth through touch, she made a growling sound not dissimilar to his usual rumble — it had been one of many things she had started mirroring from him. Moving around her, Kuhn seemed to absorb her words, eating them up while she fired herself up with grandiose images in her mind. Valmúa watched him, moving subtly to partner his circling.
 “You are not,” she agreed, and made this point by mouthing his shoulder affectionately. “Nor should you fear sharing my voice. We are greater when we speak together,” she clarified. It had been his ignorance and following silence that had annoyed her on the mountain.
 Valmúa had never desired a partner. She had never seen herself as a woman who would be part of a pair. She had always been the single leader of everything, having many who served her, which often included a doormat male who did whatever she wanted. Kuhn had managed to find something beyond that in her heart, and in her plan.
 She wanted to build something.

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Still trying to see that spark in her eye, his focus was not lost on her, hanging on every word, listening to her rumble in excitement.
When she mouthed him, the rest of his resistances seem to break as he let out one rumble of his own. Strafing the crown of his head down her side as he circled around her tighter than before. "Speaking together? Like a pack?", he asked, while brushing again against her haunches.

Making his way over to her opposite side, "Though I hate when one speaks out of place for another." He growled gently as he latched on to her ear with his front teeth. It was almost a warning, perhaps from somewhere deep down, though on the surface, his affections would show just how much he valued the idea.
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 The fire woman felt whiskers graze along her side, tickling her skin as the touch transferred through even the thickest parts of her fur coat. She shuddered at the touch, electric currents blazing down her spine and through her, warming and comforting like a fine wine. He remained delicious and pure in his essence, carrying a musk that both delighted and confused her senses.
 She thought about the word, "pack", finding it overly formal. Pack was something so specific to wolves and canines that applying it to them felt foreign and uncomfortable. "Couple" was oppositely informal. While Valmúa searched in vain for a label, he mentioned something that made her nod, knowing what he really meant. “It is a criminal thing. It violates trust,” she answered, though if he had not said it, there was no telling whether her morals would match the phrase.
 “Pack is not the right word, but perhaps,” she added, licking her lips at the almost threatening touch he gave, savouring the "ess" at the end of her tongue. “Your kind lives alone, you said. So we must invent something new,” she said, pulling her ear from his teeth and leaning her body against him in a slow-motion shove as she slipped away. The wolf strode a few steps around him, mirroring what he had just done to her, eyeing him with a flicker of mischief.

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Grazing against her, Kuhn's whiskers could gleam many things from his princessa. Whiskers where a tool, designed to help guide his fangs into the vital parts of prey, revealing where their sensitive blood flowed, and when it would stop. He had to admit he liked getting that rise out of her, feeling her heart beat faster, and having her scent change.

His expression didn't seem to change much at least to someone not versed in his expressions. But, Valmua would likely be able to tell that he was happy for the affirmation she gave, and was now slightly leaning in, ready to trust what she had next.

For a long moment he stayed silent and still, only tracking her as she circled around him, once again trusting her with his flanks, and admiring her grace. He hadn't thought much about titles, and until he met the bear he hadn't had to think about it. All he knew was that she made him happy: a light pointed smile shown on his face.

He couldn't at the moment think of a better word, kin came to mind, but he withheld the thought, taking a step closer to his wolf.
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 It was hard to stay angry with him when she had managed to turn him so quickly back to her. It likely wouldn't stop her from wandering back over to Tsukiishi to bother them again. It was just too easy, and way too entertaining.
 Though Kuhn didn't speak, she knew she had struck the right chord and that the very idea interested him. Even she was not sure what she wanted to do with it. Any thought she might have had to take her brothers' mountain from their feet had long been replaced by something both greater and lesser in scale. The red flame would need to rethink what it meant to begin anew, dousing any concept of rulership with one far more powerful and unexpected.
 As she wracked her brain and paced, he took a step closer to her. The wheels turned, but she took a moment to push the top of her head along his side in a feline gesture that he had taught her. “Something unexpected,” she whispered, still thinking out loud. Whatever partnership this was, it was not something either of them could have anticipated. They were of different worlds. How far could she push that kind of power?

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The idea of power, mixed in with the reaction his princessa gave, ticked his spine; a force that was alluring to anyone. Kneading his claws into the ground, he kept himself from showing it too much. Until now he had been content to isolate himself in this section of wood, happy with the hunt and the kill. Perhaps that could become something greater, perhaps they could be something greater.

As the woman drug herself along his side, his feelings only intensified, feeling her warmth and her weight.  She had planted ideas of power in his mind which now seemed to swell with her touch, as he arched his spine in rhythm with her pass. Looking back over his shoulder his eyes where now dilated as if he was in the midst of a hunt.  After a quiet moment, his emotions broke through.
 

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 As he raised his lip, Valmúa flung her tail at his hindend in a weird kind of playful slap, grinning and skip-hopping back toward the kill that she had brought for them to share. “Eat with me,” she laughed breathily, her posture suddenly relaxed and open. The carcass was small, and he needed more calories than she did often enough.
 Situating herself low again as she settled to eat, Valmúa eyed her prince of a cat. It felt comforting to think that she could massage their arguments until they were no more. Still, she wondered what lie in store for them. What did the future look like?
 As his prinsessa tore a chunk from the meal and swallowed it, she remarked, “did you know,” she paused to lick at the food, “a pack of wolves is on that mountain?” The wolf gestured to the southeast briefly. The forest was large. The lands were generally unprotected, and so Valmúa had made sure to tell the grey lady of the mountain that they were only two. She peered at Kuhn, watching his expression.

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