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When Ruairidh had stared long enough, out through the bars of his cage, at the flat monotonous plains surrounding the camp, he began to see the ocean.
The endless steppes stretched dry and featureless to the horizon, not a living creature in sight, not a splash of color to ease the eye. The relentless, gritty wind brought a sort of ripple to the fields of dry, ruddy grasses, and if he let his gaze unfocus, he could almost imagine it was a sunset sea laid out before him; that its crinkling sigh was not a cry of dessication, but the rush and flow of lifegiving water.
The last few weeks of his captivity had been near tolerable, as Tomyris had weakened even beyond her ability or desire to torment him. He'd stayed silent and still in his designated corner of her tent, watching the healers and herbalists come in and out, dodging their stares.
But now that Tomyris had passed, attention had returned to her pet monster.
More precisely, to the matter of his disposal.
Dragged out of the tent and into a cage, Ruairidh had been told nothing of his fate, though it wasn't hard to infer. Out under the elements, the constant wind brought stinging dust to his eyes, and seemed to suck even the remaining moisture from his skin. A few times, he thought a consensus had been formed, and there came decisive movement in his direction: to take him from the cage and finally put him to death, in whatever formal and ritualistic way they'd decided on. But then abruptly they would be drawn into another round of discussion, and on it would go again.
As he stared out into the bleak landscape, tuning out the voices behind him, it took him a while to register a change. A shadow, breaking free from the horizon, cut straight across the blue vault of the sky, with the same predatory intent as a sharkfin. Though it looked like a mere speck in the distance, its twin shadow cast upon the grass grew very large as it neared.
Ruairidh had only a brief moment to process stretched wings that blotted out the sun, before the thing was suddenly upon him, landing with a jolting crash upon his cage, rocking it alarmingly with the impact. Massive talons the length of his own fingers found perch upon a bar right over his head. As he jerked backwards with a cry, the thing's head craned around to poke through two bars and fix him with its golden, piercing gaze. He didn't dare move. It blinked, a darting horizontal sweep across the eye, then canted its head at a different angle, so that its wicked, curved beak next drew Ruairidh's morbid fascination.
He was aware of the voices behind him raising with alarm, but he had never gotten particularly good at the nomads' harsh and guttural tongue, and it wasn't until some of the initial terror died down, helped by the realization that the eagle couldn't actually get into his cage—it was far too enormous—that he managed to focus enough to listen.
"That's the chieftain's eagle," someone was saying. "You'd be a fool to mess with it."
"We can at least feed the monster to it," someone else said, "while we wait for her to arrive."
Though this received some approving noises, no one followed up on it, and gradually Ruairidh allowed himself to sag a breath against the far bars of the cage. Future pain was pain that wasn't his yet. He couldn't escape it, but neither did he have to live it until it arrived.
He'd seen golden eagles like this on the other hunters in the camp, though never so close; he thought this might be an unusually large specimen. The chieftain would be Tomyris's sister, Altani—the younger sister, a point of great fury for Tomyris and consequent suffering for him.
After the news had come—that their mother, the previous chieftain, had died, and that Tomyris had been passed over for the role in favor of the secondborn—it had been a cold yet unsurprised fury that had taken over her. Ruairidh's nights became even more unbearable than usual, for a time, and the rest of their camp, normally awhisper with their quiet comments about Tomyris's monster, had fallen quietly grateful for his existence.
Even then, even through those longest of nights, he had never once gotten the impression that Tomyris was surprised, or even that she particularly disagreed with the choice. Only that this was the natural course of her life and the body she had been born with, and there was nothing left for her but to make someone else hurt alongside her, and share the burden of her pain.
When eventually the pain stopped, so did everything else. As though she'd burned out her rage on him, and her vitality with it. That abrupt lack of energy, that curious listlessness, had marked the start of her final decline. Ruairidh had bided his time, and kept his head down, and healed from his wounds.
Tomyris never did.
By the time horseriders appeared on the horizon, coming from about the same direction as the eagle had, Ruairidh understood what he had to do, if he dared any hope of survival.
As they neared, there came a long whistle, high and piercing through the thin air of the plains. The golden eagle's head cocked, then lifted. With a thundering beat of its wings, it took off towards them, outstretched wingspan wider than Ruairidh was tall. A single feather dropped as it departed: not true gold, but a tawny umber. Without knowing why, Ruairidh grasped it as it spiraled down through the air, and held onto it even as the eagle swept out over the grasslands toward its master, wide wings so steady-still it nearly blended in with the grasses that rushed by beneath it.
***
Though their ride carried nowhere near the noble purpose of a Hunt, Altani still found herself pushing their pace hard. Riding towards Tomy's burial rites should have weighted down her solemn steps. But after the initial shock of mourning, her thoughts went immediately to her sister's consort. The selkie. Rory, as her sister had called him in letters, was in grave danger. Tomy had often written how her band scorned and mistreated the man. Despite the years, they still saw one of the monsters Hunted by their clan, as he once was, rather than their band-chief's sworn and rited husband. With her death went her protection, and Rory—
They came upon the camp at the end of the third day's ride. Yula came flying back towards her with a screech, and she welcomed her companion's familiar weight upon her arm, before resting her arm back in the saddle-brace. They angled their heading in the direction Yula had come from, and soon enough the camp appeared a patchwork of tents in the distance—an outer ring of domes forming a protective wall for the inner camp, open to the south, as all their camps were laid. Behind the camp, on the windward side, the herd would be grazing, horses and livestock; to the east, any preparations that had already been made for Tomyris's final rites.
And outside the perimeter, notably cast out from any protection from wind and elements: a tall cage.
She had a glimpse of Rory in that cage, distinct thanks to his fiery red cascade of hair, despite the distance and the years since they last met.
Then the cage was opened behind him, and he was pulled from it backwards.
Even hooded and calm, Yula ruffed, disgruntled, as Altani urged her horse faster. Instead of slowing from her gallop, as was respectful on approaching, she charged after those distant figures, following them straight through the south entrance.
Such a brazen entrance should have had all the camp's warriors at arms, but instead, as she hiked the reins and scythed sharply around the figures to cut them off, they only appeared mildly startled as they hailed her, their chieftain. Yula must have given her identity away earlier.
"Stop," she demanded, redundant, as the group of them had already stopped, and she could have a closer look at last. The prisoner from the cage was, as she'd suspected from afar, her sister's consort. Altani had last seen him when she'd last seen her sister: at the conclusion of Tomyris's first and only Hunt, when she'd been awarded her own band, and set out, never to return. So fiercely independent, despite or because of her condition.
Rory had been tied to his saddle then, hand and foot. Whatever had changed between them, that led them to be wed, it had happened under the vast and untelling sky, roaming the untamed steppes. Then, he had been the monster brought back from the Hunt, and Tomyris had shown her trophy off proudly to anyone who would look. A selkie! They had stories of such creatures, but from such distant shores. No one in living memory had seen one. No matter what they said about her, she had conquered a myth, and brought back the impossible.
In the years since, Altani had assumed that her memory exaggerated the strangeness of his appearance, but if anything it was more striking now. Thick curls of hair, the color of blood, sprang wild around his head and framed his shoulders like the waves he'd been plucked from. Skin as pale as the moon, red and peeling from his time outdoors. It was no wonder Tomy's band had trouble forgetting his true nature, when even the lifegiving sun rejected him, harmed him, marked him.
The two women who held him could only be Tomyris's sworn guards; judging by the styling of their cloaks, and the charms braided into their hair. Altani didn't recognize them; her sister must have changed guards over the years, a lonely thought. Her own guards had been at her side since childhood, and likely would remain until death. She didn't know when or why these two had replaced the pair that Tomyris had set out with from the Oasis, whom their mother, then Chieftain, had hand-picked. She wondered about these newcomers' loyalty to her sister in her final years, when having a trusted sword at her back was crucial for life out in the steppes.
Also notably wrong was Tomyris's consort. As her widower, Rory should have inherited some temporary command of the camp upon her death—and the protection, if not loyalty, of her guards. Instead, he was held in a tight grip by one, a narrow glare by the other.
All around the camp, people were emerging from their tents, drawn by the commotion. Rather than anger at her highly irregular entrance, they seemed relieved to see her, falling upon her as she dismounted, as if hungry for command. They didn't take it with particular joy, when Altani announced that once they had settled affairs here, they would break up the entire camp, and come back to the Oasis to regroup. But neither did they protest the orders of their chieftain, even one so new to the position. There was an implicit understanding, confirmed by her orders, that the band had only been formed for Tomyris to lead; that without her there was no sense appointing a new band-chief, that the members would return and be merged into other bands at the outset of the new season.
"And what was your plan for this one?" Altani said, pointing to Rory, as the two guards frowned at him and each other.
"Band-chief Tomyris's funeral rites are yet to be finalized—" one began, then trailed off, belatedly realizing that Altani was meant to have the final say in finalizing them, now that she was here.
"We decided not to kill the monster, but to set him live upon her pyre—" the other filled in, a show of support. Rory flinched; he had clearly not heard this plan.
"It's what she would have wanted," the first guard finished, and there was something incongruous about her tone, not so pleasant as her words might suggest.
Altani stared at them, but she had trouble seeing clearly over the image of Rory in flames, rising around him as red as his hair. That was why she missed what happened next, to cause the guard holding Rory to give a grunt of pain, and the selkie to slide from her grip, slippery as the legends. But he didn't break for freedom; he must have known he wouldn't make it. He raced for Altani instead, throwing himself at her feet. The guards, two steps behind him, hesitated to retrieve him from her personal space, and he made use of that minute pause.
"High Chieftain," Rory cried out, grasping at her riding boots. "I beg you to exercise your claim on me."
Last she knew, Rory hadn't even spoken their language; but of course her sister couldn't have married the man without being able to communicate with him.
On the way here, she had planned everything else out in such meticulous detail. Every last element of Tomy's last rites. The future of the band. But in all that time, she had shied away from thinking too closely about what to do about Rory. She had known she had to get here, to save him, but hadn't let herself acknowledge there were only two possible fates for him. Her marriage bed, or her sister's funeral pyre. Foolish of her. What other path was there but this?
Rory by contrast was clear-eyed when he darted a look up at her, gaze as pale and foreign as the rest of him. Whatever he saw in her expression had him slumping back down in defeat; as if her paralyzed silence was a refusal.
As the others began to jeer, and one of the guards stepped closer, Altani shook off her shock and straightened her shoulders. "Indeed. This man was consort to my late sister. Now, with her passing, I claim him as mine."
"But Chieftain," said the guard, a handspan away from grasping Rory by the hair. "That's not— Your position— You can't be—"
Altani brushed her hand away, and laid her own upon Rory's head. His hair was springy and voluminous, and it took some strength to resist the urge to sink into it. "If he was suitable to be my sister's consort, why can't he be mine?"
The guard struggled to find a politic way to respond, and this time her partner had no save for her.
"Take him now to the tent you have prepared for me." Altani declared, finally managing to tear her hand away. She tried to catch Rory's gaze one last time, but it now seemed glued to the ground. "Give him some rest from the cage. The rest of us have many other matters to finalize."
***
"She was only born because I was too weak," Tomyris had said once, of her sister. She had said this while holding Ruairidh down, pinning him easily with one hand, hard bone of her forearm digging into his chest. Despite his height, Tomyris could always overpower him; he was just about the only adult in the camp with that distinction. This was long after the shame of it, being pinned helpless with so little effort, had ceased to draw a fight out of him. So she had turned to other methods to make him struggle, futile, against her grip.
Weak, that was the word she'd used, and he wouldn't have believed it except he'd heard the jeers himself, whispered around camp. That their band-chief was born sick, frail, unfit to lead. Hard to imagine such a thing when she was holding him down, eyes and hands merciless.
But after a long evening's wait, in what was formerly Tomyris's tent, Altani finally arrived, and he could see the difference for himself.
Altani had the same dark, fine hair as her sister, braided tight against her skull; the same tan skin, the thin lips. But she was taller than her sister, nearly as tall as Ruairidh himself, her bulk looming in the opening of the tent flap with the central campfire burning behind her. Ruairidh knew well the measure of Tomyris against that entryway, because it often announced pain. Altani stood much taller, broader, ducking her head slightly to fit as the tent flap fell closed behind her.
How much stronger then, her hands would be. How much colder her eyes, when she took her due.
As she entered, she put a hand to her cloak, as if about to remove it, but then she spotted him, and frowned.
"I am very grateful," he said quickly, when the silence had drawn too long, and his rigid spine had gone so taut he thought it might snap. "I'm aware it's no small thing, for the chieftain to take on a spouse. I will do my best to learn your preferences, as I did your sister's."
At that, Altani resumed undressing. "I'm more interested in learning how it was between you and Tomy. I have to admit, I never thought she'd be one for marriage."
Her cloak came off first, heavy and thick, dense like wool. It was dyed a rich, vibrant indigo that he hadn't often seen since his captivity. Trimmed with silver-white fur, it put him in mind of the deepest shades of the ocean, and the whitecaps it wore on its choppiest days. Automatically, he stepped forward to assist, but remembered that he didn't know this wife, didn't know her whims and wills.
Altani looked up at his abortive gesture, his outstretched hands hastily pulled back, and then she draped it over a chest in the corner. Next came off her weapons: a short bow, a hunting knife, a series of pouches heavy and clinking, and a tapered whetstone hung on a braided thong.
"I know my sister. I'm sure things weren't always easy between you," she prompted as she set these aside, and he realized with a jolt that her last comment had been a question he'd failed to answer. He couldn't keep doing this. This was going to hurt no matter what, but the first night set the tone for things to come. Bearable or not, his future came down to how well he could guess at what answers would please her.
"I—" he began too hastily, then faltered. Even in a few exchanged words, he could tell Altani loved her sister dearly. What's more, she had unsheathed her knife, and was in the process of cleaning it, checking over its sharpness. He had no desire to say anything negative about Tomyris, and earn earlier than needed the feel of its edge upon his skin. "I have no complaints."
A smile came to Altani's lips then, thinning them further. "Like I said, I know her, and her temper. It's our fault, you know? My mother's and mine. Ever since Tomyris was born, the Chieftain—our mother—has had a soft spot for her. She's always gotten away with anything. Even I, her younger sister, had a hand in spoiling her. It was hard to help it."
She looked over the sharp edge of the knife at him consideringly, and then reached for her whetstone.
"You probably know, hunting is everything in our culture. Tracking down the supernatural beasts that would threaten our people and our land. For my sister, who was never able to participate, we always wanted her to have… well, everything. Everything else."
"She did have one hunt," he put out there tentatively. "Though she did not kill her prey in the end."
"No, she didn't," Altani laughed, and finally put the knife away with the rest of her things. "Tomy's only hunt, and she went farther than any of us, brought back something we'd never seen."
It wasn't a new feeling, to be referred to his face as a thing, but he held his tongue. The knife was sheathed, but still in easy reach.
"Did she ever tell you? The original reason she left these plains, traveled over mountains and forests, all the way to the ocean, was because of a vision. One of our healers dreamt that the ocean air would improve Tomy's condition. It took her band many moons to travel there and back. Slow pace, resting often. She must have hated it. No wonder she made sure to come back with a trophy, to make it clear it was the expedition of a warrior, not an invalid. Her only hunt, beyond the training games that kids play, and she returned with something unique amongst all our past quarries."
"She never told me," he said, keeping his voice even with the effort one might devote to walking along a narrow cliff's edge. For him, this was a story about the end of his free life, the last time he'd seen the ocean, the start of the horrors that awaited him in captivity. For Altani, this was a story about her sister's triumph. But her perspective was all that mattered now, if he wanted to make this as tolerable as possible for himself.
"No? She must have wanted to save face in front of her husband." Altani sat down heavily on the bed, and began to unlace her boots. Again, he thought he should kneel at her feet, work the dusty laces himself, but her fingers flew with such brisk efficiency, it felt difficult to intervene.
"We don't know much about your people, out here in the steppes." She pulled one boot off, and then the other, and let them fall to the floor. Cast aside, they no longer felt like a part of her person, and Ruairidh finally steeled the nerve to grab them. She made a protesting noise when he took them to the corner of the tent. Then she waved him on, and he breathed again, and got to work cleaning them. "It must be very strange for you here, even after all this time. I understand selkies live a long while. That your lifespan may even double, triple ours."
Ruairidh made a noise of agreement, rubbing a cloth over the dusty leather of the boots. It occurred to him abruptly that, when Altani someday fell, in battle or otherwise, he might again be inherited by another. Whoever came next, would they too sit here and muse over Altani, romanticize over her life and upbringing, and rationalize why she had hurt him and used him in whatever manner she chose?
A sigh caught his attention, and his shoulders stiffened. Altani was looking his way: not impatient, thank goodness, only a little bit at a loss, almost helpless. As though there was something she wanted from him, but it was her fault for not knowing how to get it, rather than his for not offering it up.
"I don't suppose your selkie skin is still around?" she said, and that he knew how to answer.
He had to lie.
"It's gone," he said firmly. "Tomyris destroyed it early on."
He had stopped searching for it over the years; there were only so many places in a narrow camp to look, and she always knew, somehow, when he was looking. It couldn't have been destroyed, because he would have felt it. All the same, if he knew anything, it was that he couldn't let Altani get her hands on it, at any cost. What power she had over him now, it would become absolute with his skin in her hands.
"That's a shame. If you had your skin, I might be able to send you back to your home. On horseback, maybe you'd even survive the journey. Without it, that's a death sentence."
He nodded quickly. He'd narrowly escaped the pyre, thanks to Altani; no matter what she did to him, if he was ungrateful, if he tried to run, she would return him to it, one way or another. Again, his eye fell to her sheathed knife, then slid off it to the floor. "I understand fully. I wouldn't dream of escape."
Altani was unpinning the braids from her head, and they fell one by one, down to her shoulders, like soft chains. "If you can't go to your home, your other option is to come with me, to mine. Tomy might have mentioned it? Our people may be nomads, but there is an oasis, jealously guarded, that we return to. In sickness, in winter, in low times. I know you must miss water. You could swim in it, though our people don't. It's not the ocean, but it might be… something."
"I would be grateful to see it someday, if you allow it." The offer puzzled him. Another thing to hold over his head, perhaps. To be ruled over with reward rather than, or even in addition to, punishment, would it be an improvement over life with Tomyris? Or just another form of being kept?
"We'll return after the funeral. My party, myself, some of my sister's things. And you, if you want. It's a few days' ride. Well, we only took three on the way here, but it should be four or five days, at the proper pace," she added, with a smile that edged on mischievous. It reminded him a bit of Tomyris.
He returned with the boots, now cleaned, and set them neatly at the foot of the bed, not far from her feet. "I gratefully accept, and obey," he said to her wool socks, and was startled by her hands slipping over his face—not to hit, not to yank, but to gently draw him in, resting his chin against her lap. Soft tanned hide, the heat and firmness of her legs present underneath, a silent bid to rest his cheek against her thigh.
He remembered suddenly the way she had touched his hair earlier, in the moment when she had declared he would not die, but would instead be hers. As he braced himself to learn what the consequence of that would be, of belonging to the chieftain, her hand fell upon his hair again, as soft and careful as he remembered, petting gently the back of his skull.
Rather than a threat, the weight of her hand was warm and strangely reassuring. He had the wild thought that perhaps her golden eagle, hooded and jessed, was occasionally stroked like this. And so learned over time to accept the fact of its captivity.
***
Altani set out with her party the same day the funeral rites were completed, eyes still stinging with ash.
Rory rode with her, and it was pleasant to have his presence at her back, pulling her from the dark thoughts that would otherwise have plagued her the full duration of the journey. Whenever she looked back at him, he seemed to be staring out at some mundane part of the landscape. Usually animals: a hare startled to flight by their passage, a herd of elk crossing in the distance, a flock of cranes standing still: a patch of white in the dry grass.
When questioned, Rory confessed, in that reticent way of his, that he hadn't thought anything lived out here. He had mostly been kept in the camps, and never seen much in the way of wildlife. After they had ridden on in silence a bit longer, he even volunteered, "Back home, the ocean was teeming with life. I would have been surrounded by it."
Altani looked out over the grasslands with new eyes; how empty it must have seemed to Rory. The cranes were a familiar sight, slate gray feathers, long white plumes curving from behind the eyes. She might have glossed over the sight on her own, but on closer look she spotted something amiss, lurking amongst their number.
She pulled Yula's hood off, and the eagle stirred, hungry.
"See that in their midst?" she pointed the creature out to Rory, toward the back of the flock. "A mimic-crane. They haven't noticed it, but it will have been picking them off from within."
With the designated whistle, she sent Yula off with a lift of her arm. The golden eagle shot off as directed, circled once in the air, and then descended, swift as an arrow. Unerringly, it snatched the creature up by the neck, while the true cranes went scattering in alarm. Even as Yula returned to the air, the creature was transforming in her grip, wings growing claws, beak broadening into a maw, with carnivore's teeth. But though it slashed at Yula, it couldn't reach, and she barely struggled with the weight of her prey. Once it was close enough, Altani pulled her hunting blade, and made swift work of the thing.
After a thought, she snatched a long white feather from its crown, presenting it to Rory like a trinket. She'd seen him pick up a few of Yula's feathers here and there, running his fingers over the vane. This one would be unlike any he'd seen before: shifting and near-translucent without the mimic's dark energy to keep the illusion, wisps of smoke rising from the edges. When he made no move to take it, she slid it into his hair. Then she turned away, unsure what to make of his lack of reaction.
The body of the mimic-crane, she tossed to the side, for Yula's dinner. She would feast, reward for a successful kill, and then catch up with them when she was sated.
In the evening, they set up camp. Most of Tomy's band had stayed behind, to settle things before joining them at the Oasis, but a few had come with Altani's advance party. With a larger group, they had to do things more properly than when it had been just her small party on the way over. They set up a few tents, facing south, rather than sleeping right on the grass, and put up a campfire.
While dinner cooked, Altani found herself at the supply wagon that held Tomyris's things, which she hadn't been able to bear leaving behind.
It was silly of her, to wander over at first opportunity and paw through them like a sentimental fool. But when she arrived, she found that Rory had the same idea.
"I miss her too," Altani confessed, with a smile, and that eased some of Rory's startled tension at her sudden presence. He was holding a long, narrow bundle that could only be Tomy's bow, and she fondly reached for it. He gave the slightest hint of resistance as she took it, but reluctantly let go.
"She had no endurance for riding or tracking, but when it came to outwaiting her prey, she could outlast anyone." Laying the bundle on the ground, she began to unwrap it, remembering how Tomy as a child had surprised them again and again, bringing home elk, sheep, more. "People underestimate her strength—but she had strength enough to draw any bow, from this size to the height of her own body."
As she undid the last fold, she noticed that Rory wasn't really listening. Instead, he was staring intently at the bundle in her hands. When she uncovered the familiar bow, something else fell, half-unwrapping from the polished wooden grip. Dense fur, like the thickest velvet, a mottle of silver and black, smelling strongly of salt and something foreign she couldn't place.
A pelt. A skin. Rory's sealskin.
Before she could react, Rory snatched the skin, shook it free from the bow, and took off at a run. Dusk had fallen, gray and hostile, and the shadows stretched long over the plains. Rory wouldn't survive alone in the harsh steppes at the best of times; in the coming dark, he'd be lucky not to fall and break something.
That was all logic she applied after the fact. In the moment, seeing the figure darting away from her, that blaze of red hair slipping away like a retreating flag, it was instinct that sent her sprinting after him.
"Rory, wait!" she called out, but the sound of her voice only made him flinch and run faster. "Watch out!" she yelled again, but it was no use. Like prey startled to find the pursuer much closer than he thought, Rory was frantic in his escape. With a sudden cry, he stumbled over something unseen in the grass, and crashed into the ground.
He was begging when Altani got close enough to make out words. Weakly, more like a mantra than like he had any hope it would stave off whatever he expected was coming. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lied. I haven't been whole in so long, I just wanted— I'm sorry—" He had a scrape on his face, and he was curled around his leg, as if protecting an injury.
She took the pelt that was clutched in his hands, and he let out a sound of anguish then, but even as his eyes flicked desperately around, he could tell there was no other help coming. "Please don't," he said, but she took it anyway. Marveled at the feel of it under her hands, rich and unctuously soft, incomparable to any fur or cloth she'd felt.
"Taking your other form heals your injuries, doesn't it?" she said, studying his leg. Broken? Sprained, perhaps.
Under the force of her gaze, he nodded minutely, then let out another, "Please."
Carefully, she draped the skin over his form, covering him with it as she would with a blanket against the cold of night. There was a moment when he remained human, when shock stole over his face, plain against his features.
Then he transformed before her eyes.
Before, Altani would have said she knew what a seal looked like, from the illustrations in their books. But either they didn't do justice to the true thing, or Rory was something else altogether. His true form was enormous, longer than any human was tall, massive in his bulk, with a prominent snout and huge, deeply black eyes. Like the skin had been, he was gray like stone all over, spotted with black down the face and belly. As she watched, he rolled fully onto his stomach, and raised his head to stare at her, round black eyes somehow more expressive than they'd been in his human form.
Though he was a powerfully built creature, though she had no doubt he could slam into her underwater and drown her, the ocean was an unfathomable distance away. Here on land, his form was ungainly, hard to maneuver. Muscle or not, he'd never catch her, if he had to chase.
As she held out a hand toward him, he bared sharp teeth, but she approached anyway. Putting herself this close was risky; her instincts as a hunter faced with a dangerous creature screamed at her to strike first.
But with tentative, telegraphed motions, she got close enough to wrap her arms around his form, feel that velvet fur all over, the dense flesh underneath, immovable as a mountain, tense as a wound spring.
She held on until a second change came over him: almost as dramatic as his transformation into this form. Until taut stone softened to flesh. Until powerful muscles relaxed on a tentative exhale. Until the gathered tension within him melted away, under her embrace.
***
The oasis turned out to be a canyon, splitting the endless plain like a jagged wound carved into the ground. Ruairidh could smell it before he could see over the edge of it: damp earth, flowing water, living things growing down there, sheltered from the dry wind above the surface.
They descended one horse at a time, Altani's at the front of the line, which meant only Altani's head, and her horse's, were between him and his sightline toward the bottom. There was a long strip of green down there, shocking after the monotonous, colorless landscape above. Actual vegetation, lush and vibrant, its exact hue long forgotten, sent a pang to his heart.
The horse picked carefully along the trail, which switched back and forth against the canyon wall. Their progress sent cascading pebbles tumbling down that unfathomable drop below them, but Altani was calm and relaxed, and he could even hear easy chatter from the riders behind them, relieved to have made it home. As they descended, the temperature noticeably dropped as well, and the scent of growing things grew more powerful, more enticing. He could hear the rush of water underlying the echo of hooves, and he longed so badly to be down there, even a moment sooner, a part of him wanted to jump. He must have squeezed Altani's torso unconsciously, because she half turned in the saddle, and laid her free hand on his shoulder. He couldn't help but flinch slightly at the touch, but she only gave his shoulder a brief press, and then pulled back.
At the bottom, they might as well have been in a different world. Actual trees grew here, outstretched canopy filtering the harsh sun. One by one, they dismounted, and led their horses to drink from the water. Ruairidh physically yearned to do so too, but Altani led him away, and he knew better than to protest.
Farther down the bank, away from the others, the stream broadened and deepened. "You can swim here, if you like," she suggested, motioning out to it with a wave. As he stared, she took a few steps back, and settled herself against the trunk of a tree.
She had given him a pack to carry his skin in, and he shrugged it off now, pulling out the folded pelt. It was still a wonder to be able to hold it again, in his own hands, this piece of him that had been taken and kept away from him for so long he hadn't known if he'd even recognize it.
Yet it felt natural as anything to slip back into his skin, to become himself again, and dive.
The water was a shock of cold, refreshing to the core. It wasn't salt, and felt flat and weak compared to his native ocean, but the moisture alone was a relief, like he had been a parched leaf, blown by the wind for far too long, and suddenly flooded with his fill. There was always a certain heaviness of being on dry land, that vanished when he submerged, like the water itself was taking on some of his weight, and carrying it in his stead.
Cutting through the stream, diving, floating, moving quick as a thought. And every time he surfaced, there was Altani watching him with something like awe on her face.
Eventually, he swam back to the bank, still reveling in how easy each movement was, how effortless it felt to live, to breathe, to exist. She met him at the edge, squatting there to put out a hand to him. With some hesitation, he leaned forward, and met it with his face, so that she could cup his chin in her palm.
"This is where my people come back to rest, and heal, after their time out on the hunt. If you want to return to the ocean now that you have your skin back, I won't stop you. I'll send you off with supplies and my blessing." She gently rubbed at his face, and seemed startled by how his fur felt, wet when she'd only felt it dry, and lost a moment before she went on. "But if you want to rest here, and heal, before going back out there, I would be very glad."
With a simple flick of his tail, Ruairidh eased back from the bank, and she made no move to follow him, only let her hand fall. He didn't know how it was for these dusty humans, who willingly roamed the arid, sun-scorched plains, but for him the water was utterly healing, quenching, refreshing.
Yes, he could see himself resting here, with her. Maybe recovering something that had been taken from him, something he'd thought was long gone. Becoming more himself again each day.
At least for a little while.