Young Writers Society

(I love it so much, they're like pen pals but with gifts!)

(And I finally figured out his name!)

The Marrow Man removed the bracelet and put it back on, wary of getting it dirty or singeing it when he was building fires. He bent his head and looped it over his right horn, then took it off again when he found it was too loose to fit. It would have to stay on his wrist for now, then. He'd just have to be careful and not lose himself while he was feeding.

(It's so wholesome :') and ohoho -- I love how Ky is like yes, Ruh is a reasonable name -- meanwhile, he seems like he thinks Kyruiarc is her name rather than first and last haha)
(also I'm trying to research it and Google says a black bear pelt weighs ~60 pounds once it's tanned and is much heavier straight off the bear, and white bears are even bigger, so poor girl is probably trying to manhandle 100+ pounds haha)

Ky had broken a sweat by the time she got it packed away, and it took her no small amount of time to manage it. The longer it took, the more paranoid she got that a guard would catch her, but she, somehow, managed to get away with it. Which probably wasn't great, that she'd managed to move freely about the camp without then noticing her -- wasn't it kind of their job to make sure people couldn't do that? Oh well. She wasn't going to worry about that just then. It made her life easier. And Ruh was going to protect her, too, and she doubted anyone would be able to sneak up without him smelling them first.

She finally wrestled the fur into the luggage and pulled one of the other blankets on top of it to hide it. Then she leaned against the carriage, panting, as she tried to catch her breath from the exertion.

Ruh hadn't seemed to strain under it whatsoever. She was glad she'd taken his offer rather than trying to carry it back herself. She wouldn't have managed it.

(Oh that poor kid! Ruh didn't even think about that; he's got those mythic cryptid muscles.)

(The guards aren't worrying about watches this far from civilization, I think. And the animals aren't persistent enough to go digging to get the tents)

(Wanna skip?)

(sounds good to me! do you wanna skip to Ky being like "HAH! TOLD YOU SO GAIUS" or elsewhere? Doesn't matter to me! )

(We can do that!)

Ky was too excited to fall asleep for quite a while after that. She kept slipping her hand under the blanket to feel the bear's coarse fur, proving to herself again and again that she'd managed to make friends with the Marrow Man himself... why hadn't she been able to make Aleth like her?

She shook the thought away. The bastard wasn't going to ruin this moment for her. No. She gave Ruh a gift that seemed to mean a lot to him; and he'd given her the fur, and she knew for sure it mattered a lot, a lot to her.

She slipped back in the tent and eventually drifted off, dreams pleasanter than they'd been in a long, long time. She knew they wouldn't last. She always had to deal with nightmares, and this hadn't fixed this. But tonight she imagined introducing Ruh to Papa. To Tomhas. To Gaius and Zander.

She woke early the next morning at dawn and decided to slip out into the chilly air, asking the guard to make a fire for her, and hoping Gaius woke up early enough she could talk to him before anyone else woke up. She needed to present the evidence to him. To prove herself.

Gaius was up already and had been staring down at the hoofprints crossing the camp for the better part of ten minutes. It hadn't snowed at all last night so they were clear and plain in the snow. He looked up as Ky exited the tent and approached immediately, eyes round and eager.
"I heard him," he said in a low whisper. "Last night."

She grinned, bouncing happily. That was even better! "His name is Ruh, not Mark... and he likes the bracelet!"

"I heard." Gaius actually grinned. "Gods, you find yourself with the strangest friends, don't you? He delivered the fur?"

"Yeah!" She grinned even more. "It's heavy. I put it over there. Wanna see?"

"Indeed I do." He glanced down at the prints. "We ought to hide these, cover them up. Bipedal ungulates aren't exactly common things around here."

What an odd way to phrase that. She understood what he meant, but it was amusing that he'd said it like that. And she agreed. She nodded and kicked the snow by the tent where he'd been crouching down. It seemed like he'd gone straight to Ky's tent from Gaius's, and the best she could tell, he hadn't wandered the rest of the camp. She walked down the slight incline into the woods that his hoof prints led into, kicking the snow until she got to the brush line, then she started back towards the tent, backward, kicking her own footprints out of existence, too.

Gaius waited where he was, watching her. He still felt a bit giddy from last night; he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe what had happened.

Ky was thoroughly pleased that Gaius had heard Ruh, too. The fur was proof enough, but it was nice that he'd heard. Now he knew how nice Ruh was for himself. How human he still was. Ky made quick work of it, then walked over to Gaius's tent and kicked out Ruh's hoofprints from the woods up to his tent, then the path that Ruh had taken between the tents. Then she turned back towards Gaius, checking to see if he was happy.

Gaius gave her a little nod. "I want to know more," he said, approaching. "Everything you can tell me. Please."