#sataro

After taking one look at the utterly unprepared bed in the room they had chosen, Sataro and Vekna had quietly sought, and found, three of the unclaimed mattresses throughout the house. All three mattresses joined their original single one on the floor and made up a wide bed that would have been luxuriously spacious to anyone but Vekna and Sataro.

"Big enough, you think?" Sataro asked without much faith.

"Of course not. There is no bed big enough in this sodden era."

"We made do in Redbite."

"You were on me like a fool clinging to a fight the night in Redbite."

Sataro quirked a brow at her wife, "And you were not?"

"Well, you are so little," Vekna drawled, "I was worried you might freeze to death without our… four quilts from home." She made a great show of counting all the layers Sataro's trancing once demanded and mirth quirked at her lips once she was done.

Sataro sent her a typically unamused glare, and Vekna responded to the call accordingly; with a shameless grin.

They sat in their stalemate for a moment before Sataro conceded a silent defeat and grunted, "Dekash.. But it is too warm here for clinging."

"We don't need covers." Vekna offered immediately, quicker than Sataro had expected.

"… I suppose the open window and sea breeze should keep it icey enough," she said, smiling.

"It will." Vekna assured decisively. And then continued in a grumble, "Beggars belief how quickly snow is left behind in the south. At least in Bane Anvil I could find relief on the surface."

"You lived there then?"

"A little while." She replied, though immediately turned on Sataro as if knowing the thought that caught in her mind, "Ack, of course the cows were long dead before then Rybka."

The centuries-old 'little fish' nickname hit them both gentle and harsh and without discussion they stepped closer, shoulders brushing as they began unbuckling their armoured layers. "Yetty and Etta survived the war?" Sataro asked in a lower tone.

"Mhm," Vekna rumbled, matching her pitch, "I swear, too clever by half for just pulling burdens. I did not even go looking for them, they just came back to the yurt by themselves after the dust settled."

Sataro snorted, "What a perfect way to annoy you," she smirked back, flashing her teeth.

"They did it on purpose, I had thought for sure I was finally rid of them," Vekna growled.

"They weren't easy animals, even for the two of us. You could have sold them on." Sataro set her splint mail aside.

"No, I couldn't have."

They allowed that admission room to breathe and by the time they could speak again Vekna was rid of her heavier layers.

"The kits helped." She continued, eventually. "With the cows."

"They made migration with you?"

"Yes, but they cared for them in Mithlond too."

Sataro's head tilted curiously, a soft look coming to her eyes. And Vekna gave an irritable sigh of something before answering her silent question, "Your brother's family made their settling in the city for a few seasons, after."

"Gnestat hated Mithlond."

"So did I."

"… Did it help, to have them there?"

"Mm, for a time. In the beginning."

"And after?"

Vekna paused before turning her massive bulk fully towards Sataro and looking down at her with a hard stare.

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"Of course."

Vekna sucked her teeth in frustration, sarcasm bleeding into her tone, "Fine, let me say that differently, are you going to brood over ancient history just for the sake of feeling guilty if I tell you?"

Sataro grimaced.

Her nose scrunched with a displeasure that dug the scars around her eye even deeper and she bit her tongue against any rebuttal. Instead, looking for retaliation and reassurance both, she reached for the heavy blue cloth bound so particularly around Vekna's waist. She felt more than heard her inhale at the contact but Sataro did not pause, she stroked once over the wedding fabric before digging two fingers into each knot and beginning to gradually prize them free.

"Probably," she conceded, though she clearly did not like the admission, focusing on the patterns of metal thread woven in the familiar garment. And then in an even lower tone she admitted, "It is not why I asked."

Vekna's brow cocked curiously as Sataro finally pulled the long scarf away and let her hands act out the careful muscle memory of folding it over her palm. The colour was more faded than she remembered it, but it still held. Vekna said nothing for a moment as she watched this action with eyes full of something unspeakable.

"Why then?" she finally asked and Sataro seemed to writhe at the question.

Vekna held her breath as she watched Sataro struggle with what she wanted to say. Her shoulders tensed, her brows knitted and a muscle bounced in her jaw in a way that looked painful under the scar tissue. Eventually the look of conflict, ferocity and scarlet that had been growing was directed Vekna's way.

"I do not know how to say this."

"The look on you…" Vekna said in a release of breath, tracing her hand over Sataro's brow and following the scars down her cheek, a touch Sataro pressed into like a cat.

"Thinking too hard again, as always," Vekna chided, "It is not like you to falter though."

That won her weary smile and Sataro's ears wilted a little as she let her forehead drop to rest against Vekna's chest. "Mph, my head has been full of wool since I awoke. Makes giving up on thought very appealing."

Vekna clicked her tongue once again, her hand coming to rest over the back of Sataro's neck. "That is because you don't 'think', you agonise."

"And you arbitrate."

"And you are dodging my question." Vekna gave a single tug on Sataro's braid and drew her eyes back up. "It is me. Just say it."

Sataro thought she heard the rarest note of a nervous plea in Vekna's voice and, real or not, her blood rose to meet it fiercely. For her, she would beat her thoughts into words. She dug one hand into the fabric of Vekna's shirt at her collar, breathing out through her nose once, before, "Fine. I think I am too… uh.. ravenous."

Vekna's beautiful brows rose. "Ravenous?"

"Yes. It- ah… it is too much. It makes my hands and my voice shake."

"For what?"

"You, obviously."

"You have me," Vekna hummed warmly, but Sataro was not reassured.

"No, even telling you this, I feel as though I am trying to tear pieces out of you."

"Maybe you should."

"No, listen-" Sataro urged, trying to shake her for emphasis, "I want to lock us in this room and hear you talk for a hundred days, or however long it takes until I have heard it all-"

"That doesn't sound so bad, a little dull."

"-Especially what you don't want to tell me, I want to-.." her free hand clawed the air in her effort to explain herself, "-dig it all out of you. It is a brutal feeling."

This does give Vekna pause, "… Wanting me?"

"Or missing you. Maybe they are the same. Either way it is too much, it feels like I will break something."

There was a silence between them for a while, Sataro weathering Vekna's usual unreadable but intent stare with a durability grown from centuries of practice.

"Mm," Vekna began at last, "so my standing here is not enough, you want to tear out everything new about me that you do not know, even the secrets I find hard to explain, just to wet your thirst of me after so long apart? It all must be yours?"

Sataro's expression pulled towards rueful and raw annoyance at having been so concisely laid bare and she opened her mouth to fluster a response, but Vekna's eyes were raptorial when she interrupted her, "And what have I just done, Rybka?"

Sataro frowned, then blinked, eyes widening with a surprise that soon folded and broke into an emotion so potent it gagged her. It made her reach for Vekna's face, cup her near manic canine grin with hands that dragged at her skin as she pressed her battered nose into Vekna's cheek. As arms enveloped Sataro's chest she pushed and Vekna laughed through those canines as her back collided with the wall, a warm but sour sound that made Sataro's torn ear twitch and her chest burn.

They breathed as one for a while, until their hearts calmed and the burning tempered.

Sataro's hands were still greedily running over Vekna's grinning features that nuzzled into every touch when she finally sighed and her gaze sharpened with renewed purpose.

"What happened between you and the family, after?"

Vekna grunted, rueful amusement showing on her face as she realised what she had encouraged. Still, she did not try to deny her a second time, her expression as she held Sataro's gaze pinching with something like melancholy, or pain.

"They were there. When I was told nothing could be done and you were taken away."

Sataro did not blink. "They grieved with you?"

"Yes, in a way," there was a pause before Vekna pushed away from the wall in a huff and concluded darkly, "-then they moved on without me."

She looked away, down, to fix upon Sataro's waist sash. Her short in and out breath was sharp and her fingers touched the fabric almost nervously at first, before sinking into it's softness as if to savor it. "They said your name again, as though you were dead. I could not be there for that."

"Did you stop seeing them?"

"They came to find me a few times, they tried to bring it up with the Order too."

"They did?"

"Yes!" Vekna said with a hollow laugh. "Went crying to the Mother-Superior, something about my needing help, to stop going to see you, needing to 'let her go'. When I told them you were conscious at times they thought I had gone mad I think." Vekna's manner of prizing the knots of the fabric free was decidedly slower than Sataro's had been, giving her wife time to slide arms about her shoulders as she worked.

"Gnestat did not come to visit?"

"Not when you were awake." Vekna muttered.

"… but I am sure I remember speaking to someone else.."

"The kits would make the journey with me, even after their father stopped."

"Oh! Yes," Sataro chuckled fondly, "Jurnat left flowers…" Memories of her niece and nephew seemed very sharp suddenly, jagged and bloody with a grief she had yet to grow around.

"I'm surprised they were so dogged," she said with a hoarseness that Vekna lovingly ignored.

"Busybodies all of them, I preferred it when they barely tolerated me."

Sataro's closed her eyes, swallowing around the bittersweet lump in her throat.

But Vekna's frown only grew and her lip curled venomously. "And then there was your fucking mother."

This was all but spat, making Sataro flinch in place, though Vekna quickly halted her efforts and let go of the scarf to instead just cradle Sataro's ribcage in her hands.

"I hadn't meant to say that."

"I'll forgive you." Sataro said in a sardonic but tight hum, "… so even she felt compelled to finally speak to you?"

"When she could not help it, and I couldn't escape."

Sataro settled her back and torso into Vekna's confident hold with a weary and resigned sigh, running her hands up and down Vekna's shoulders throughout the silence. It seemed to soothe.

"Gnestat and I would complain about her together, now and then…" Vekna mused with a distant look.

"And what would you say?"

Sataro's attempt to make the question sound casual failed abysmally and Vekna growled back at her. "Why ask me something I want to tell you but I know you do not want to hear?"

Sataro gave a frustrated shrug. "I will have to know eventually."

"Who says so? I think I will take it to my grave."

"If you must, let's see…" Sataro's eyes wandered to the ceiling.

"… See what."

"What's the worst thing I can imagine my mother doing…"

Vekna leaned forward and bit her ear, hard, worrying at it's cartlidge as she pulled her closer whilst Sataro chuckled and tried to shake her free.

"You really are ravenous." Vekna growled through her teeth.

"You're the one consuming me ear-first."

"I could start elsewhere-"

Sataro kissed her. Vekna's hands at Sataro's back shook just a little so that, when she pushed, the monolith of a woman went down easily to sit on the mattresses below. Sataro followed her, dropping into her lap and her waiting arms.

"Luuchik," Sataro burred, arching to make space at her still-tied waist as Vekna gripped her tighter, "Finish your work, and tell me what happened."

The command was fruitful. Vekna returned to her methodical untying.

There was a quiet between them as they waited for Vekna's 'sunbeam' petname to stop choking her at it's invocation. But, eventually, she began in a croak;

"… She wanted to parade you through the plaza."

Sataro was still and quiet.

"Just take you, as you were, up the city. Set you there, like any other monument. She would not stop calling you her 'martyr-daughter'. It started the moment she returned to the rubble, I only ever saw her weep about it in front of someone important."

Her words were burning and she looked to the side with a bitter, gritted laugh that left Sataro cold.

"I had to- we spent days in the district court just to keep you from her scheming hands."

"Gnestat?"

"Mm, and Yurtar too."

This was a surprise, to which Vekna only nodded a confirmation. "Yes, even Yurtar. It was their words that got you sent to the monastery, in the end. My protests were nothing in comparison."

"Did they say why?"

"Something foolish about, 'whatever you were, you did not deserve to be a toy'. But they still did not visit you after the fact."

"I never expected it."

"You should have."

"Their convictions were noble."

"As noble as they were flaccid."

"Vekna."

"What was ignoring you ever going to do, hm? Force the Titah to strip the 'Marshal' title from a statue, all because a cross-dressing seditionist sibling disapproved?"

Sataro butted their heads together, "You were a cross-dressing seditionist."

"I had more backbone about it."

"Are we still having this fight even after they are so long dead?"

Vekna gave a deep, long sigh, and a sudden aching weariness seemed to come over her. Sataro felt, perhaps for the first time since their reunion, that this was something new in her wife she had never seen before. She held her tighter on instinct, her severe shape somehow still finding it's perfect fit around Vekna's full curves. In silence, Vekna pulled out the last knot, letting the scarf lie still and loose about Sataro's waist.

"They did not deserve you," she croaked, "None of them did, but their kin-rights were paramount in the end."

Ah.

Vekna looked down at the gold fabric in her hands. "The binding was literally set in stone, and still no one's claim of you was in doubt but mine."

Sataro made an animal sound, "Our vows were recorded in that court, did that not-.."

"What worth are a pagan barbarian's promises?" Vekna grinned through gritted teeth.

It was a look so hateful that some cautious reign about Sataro's heart snapped and steel wrapped her spine. Perhaps she needed to break something, what was a little brutality between them, after all? Sataro had always known what to do.

She wound her fingers into Vekna's long locks of greying red hair and pulled her gaze back, like it was hers to take. (And wasn't that true?) It wiped the awful grin from Vekna's face at least.

"Take it off," she ordered and Vekna, unblinking and transfixed, obligingly pulled the scarf away from Sataro's narrow waist and set it aside.

"The records are gone and no one alive remembers what that scrap of cloth means," this did hurt, it hurt them both, but Sataro drew Vekna's hands back around her as she continued, "but we are still here."

Vekna listened, and Sataro kept going.

"You conquered my death, and then you conquered time, no claim over me has won more of a right than yours. It outlasted empires and all meanings but ours."

In the stillness after, Sataro still worried for the three hundred years of a Vekna she had not known. There were new lines she could not see, new borders that might consider her trespasser, a distance of time that might prove so wide she'd lose her in it. She felt more a coward now than ever before in her already long life, but still, she had learned how to face a fear at some point in that time, she would still reach across the distance anyway.

And, apparently, Vekna had love in her for a new, ravenous, weary coward too. The words had lit a fire and slowly Vekna's eyes began burning a dangerous red and her breath against Sataro's mouth grew supernaturally hot as a touch of the old world's divinity purred in approval. Her smile returned, vile and hungry, but Sataro liked this one much better.

"That is true, isn't it." Vekna affirmed with a lion's satisfaction.

"Mhm," Sataro sighed, slumping back into Vekna's hold and giving into weariness once more, "and I hope I am a worthy prize for the effort. I am far more battered than before."

"Worth doing it all again," was snarled into her ear.

"Even worth my mother?"

Vekna gripped Sataro's jaw and she went limp into it, "No more talk about your mother, besides the crone died barely ten seasons afterwards."

"She did? H-"

Vekna slid her free, still burning hand under Sataro's remaining loose tunic and pressed into the skin of her back, making her hiss pleasantly.

"No more about your mother."

Sataro obeyed and chuckled fondly as Vekna so easily hefted her and rolled them both into their makeshift bed, undoing the past year of experience that had begun to make Sataro feel big and heavy.

Vekna kissed her this time, which felt new in some ephemeral way, and let her full body press Sataro into their makeshift mattress that barely softened the hard stone floor. Tension left the both of them, even softening Sataro's thin ligaments and tight chords as the weight of Vekna's breast pulled creases into her shirt and came to rest against Sataro's sternum. Their legs tangled, Sataro found the crease of Vekna's hip with her fingers and they both sighed.

"I still have more to dig out of you." Sataro murmured, as warning.