She leads them north of the lake, where laurel and pockmarks of quaking aspen make it feel as though they are far removed from saatsine’s run. Autumn gathers in the trees overhead, spilling russet on the frozen ground and crunching even their hunter’s fleet steps.
The silver does not expect they will be perceived from this position downwind— not when powder dusts their hides and nearby clacks shake litter from branches. For a breath she stills, tasting the air, tuning in odors of imperishable sweat and putrescent wounds.
“ Fa'liya, ” a hush beckons swiftly. She motions the raven-girl closer and flattens against the snowy ridge, pressing her nose through the low cover to carve a small window in the underbrush. “Look.”
Below, ice mists the air, flung up in furious rushes and the knocking aside of bloody tines. A wild fenzy! Several bucks churn in scuffle while more are thrown athwart, sputtering their hot breaths in protests which fill the girded embankment in bugling.
It is an ancient dance, witnessed only once before by Iglux̂ when she was a girl no older than Fa’liya is now.
“The bulls battle for access to cows. They lock each other's antlers together and try to push the other away.”

fa'liya slinks closer at the huntress' call, body folding easily into the brush beside iglux̂. the snow bites through the fur at her belly, but she barely notices—her wide eyes fix on the chaos below.

the noise alone is enough to make her chest thrum—deep, grating bellows crash through the air. hooves rake and thud, snow flying in plumes where the stags collide. their breath steams like smoke, their antlers glint wet with sap and blood.

beautiful, her ears flick back, inhaling sharply. it is half fear, half thrill and for a moment she looks every bit the young thing she still is: trembling and breathless, wholly alive in the hunt’s shadow. she can feel the vibration of their struggle in the ground beneath her forepaws. her gaze slides to iglux̂’s, searching her face for meaning. they fight… until death? she asks at last, voice rasped and small. as she speaks, one of the bulls stumbles, thrown hard into the bank.

The sight holds Iglux̂ in quiet rapture, those first few memories out with the crying wind hunters blending with her stillness. Wolf-breath smokes faintly, the pair's napes twinning with rigid anticipation. Beyond the melee stands her pearly-coat, dark eyes just as wild. Her bull would be chosen this day, but she would not have a choice in it.
“Sometimes,” an ear tips towards the girl. Fa’liya is not repulsed. She looks on bravely.
The fallen caribou rises again, staggering with matted shoulders and a bowed head. His rival circles, tines shedding flesh, dripping red.
“Do you know why?” Her eyes follow in question now. This is how winter’s bloodline is chosen, but she wonders how much of it the girl understands.

the girl's breath clouds faintly in front of her, drawn shallow from the cold and from what she sees below. the clash of antlers seems to echo inside her skull with the same rhythm as thunder. she shakes her head, fur brushing iglux̂’s shoulder.

to… prove strong? she suggests softly, gaze fixed on the bleeding bull. a flicker of something—recognition, maybe—passes through her expression. the way the stag lifts himself again, staggering but unbroken, sparks a kind of ache in her chest. so the herd follows him?

she watches as the losing bull falters again, legs splaying beneath him, and the only thought that crosses her mind is get up. he was determined, certainly. after a moment, she speaks again: does it hurt them much? it’s a child’s question, she knows, and she asks anyway.

A vigilant eye watches the clash from Fa’liya’s perspective, ears oscillating between the battle below and all the subtle stirrings which lurk in the wood around them.
She nods, pressing her voice closer to the girl’s ear. “The victor wins rights to the harem, and he will go on to sire the year’s fawns. It is the caribou way of ensuring only the strongest traits are passed on. It flows into their meat, their flesh and hides, and thus into us. Our bones. Our blood, and we in turn grow stronger for it.”
The bulls grapple again, but the fight is waning. The reigning stag is more beautiful than any Iglux̂ had ever seen. She can feel him, devoted to endurance. Unburdened by complexity.
The child’s nearness still feels strange, yet Iglux̂ secretly craves it, most of all when she isn’t looking. When Fa’liya is wholly absorbed in the life around her, the silver aches to draw her close and glimpse the world once through blue eyes. The huntress’ lips press together and she averts her eyes from the obsidian profile
“Yes, raven-girl. Survival often hurts.” It is something Fa’liya has already learned.
Heaving, the weaker bull rests. If he survives the night, he will fall to saatsine tomorrow. Dark eyes flare. “What do you think, shall we hunt today? Or, I can show you something new.”

fa’liya’s ears tick toward her, the girl’s breath easing in a slow, visible thread as she thinks. the grunt of the standing bull fills the silence, the hiss of snow shaken loose from branches, the muted thud of antlers raking against a trunk.

she doesn’t answer immediately, instead allowing her gaze to track the defeated stag below, the way his ribs heave, the way he trembles but refuses to fold fully into the snow. something in her softens. something hardens, too. he is weakened—death today would be a mercy, but there was no honor to an unfair fight. mother taught her that.

when she looks up at Iglux̂, there’s a faint line between her brows, sure. something else, her tongue works around the words, not fair now.

Where Iglux̂ sees grace, Fa’liya sees cruelty. There is a silence.
“They cannot rule without fighting,” the silver voice falls again to a whisper. “He will not survive without surrender, but such consideration is not within the stag’s heart. Every bull he kills gives him a few more trees, a little more land for his cows, a longer future for his children. A man’s work is war.”
From the rift she leads them north, where the ways thin out and in the trees above them are many singing winter sparrows. She herself passes silently beside the sunclan girl, not visibly loosened until at last the trail cuts down a slope and the pines cede to bright white land. Air is passed through lungs over her tongue in audible exhales. The wind is salted.
“Have you taken the march, Fa’liya?” Steps quicken now, trotting high above the tough ice-crust.

fa'liya's jaw tightens at the silver’s words, thinking. her gaze follows the staggering bull a beat longer, and her shoulders shift, a restless ripple under her young coat. not say it is wrong to fight, she murmurs, almost brusque in her effort to make the words fit her mouth.

not wrong to win. a brief lift of her chin, stubborn but not unkind. wrong to fight when one already beat. it is a cowardly act. that, at least, she is certain of. she falls into step when iglux̂ moves, brushing close enough for warmth but keeping her head low, thinking. the sparrows chatter above them, a bright skitter of sound against the trees.

when the forest opens and the land flares white beneath the sky, she pauses on the edge of it. salt rides the wind. iglux̂’s question pulls her attention. a faint swallow, then a shake of her head. no. an embarrassing truth, maybe. is march soon?