Swallowed by shadows

[Tenzin]

Andre tested the strange words. His jokes were not met with much reaction on Tenzin’s part, else she just didn’t understand the humour. Mik’s scent shifted at the revelation, turned a little sour in the nose. Her gaze flicked between them, but she did not much care for their interplay; it wasn’t something she considered her business. Andre denied the implication, but the low dip of his towel had spoken otherwise. They might think the interested glances between them had been subtle, but Tenzin found the whole thing deafening. Wolves could be the same way. The tease and snap. Welcome and rejection. It was all part of the dance.

There was not even a ring on the finger he flashed.

“Should not have been down in sewers,” she pointed out. This time she was only blunt with the warning. Andre vowed against returning, but most people did not find themselves so lured in the first place. At least Mik had the protection of the spirits.

“Not darling. Have name, if either bothered in asking.” Too wrapped up in each other to even notice. She wasn’t offended, as the twitch of a smile suggested, but she didn’t care one iota for the pet names. Her intentions here had been brief, the only reason she had not offered it before now. She missed the respect afforded back home, where superstition still held sway and she felt less like a pariah. "Am Tenzin."

“From Ladakh. Is still India, these days.” Though Pakistan and China both lay claim; the land had been disputed for longer than Tenzin had been alive. Culturally, they probably had more in common with Tibet though. She wondered if he was well travelled, to be wondering at the specifics of her accent; most wouldn't notice those kinds of small differences. She didn't ask though. Whatever tourist adventuring he may have done was likely be a world away from her experiences.

“On a string?” she repeated blankly, before she caught Mik’s meaning. It was a strange way of putting it, and not an outlook she found particularly endearing, though it was an unsurprising attitude in a lone male. She considered it an empty existence. In India the land was expansive, and in the mountains of the north sparsely populated too. Rākṣasa hatyārā usually worked alone. Tenzin had lived that way a long time, with only her four-legged pack as company. Ephemeral encounters were utterly alien to her.

“Who says she stays home?”

She and Jacinda were braided tight as could be with the secrets Tenzin must also keep. Yet she had never noticed the hint of anything more. Tenzin accepted the closeness of pack like another night interpret romantic interest. Sharing space and skin and intimacy was entirely natural, like breathing, but she'd never scented attraction before the words Jacinda had spoken that evening.

There were no strings. The notion bristled. Tenzin would not pledge herself to something uncertain; it was why she fled in the first place. A mate held nothing back from a mate. But Jacinda's self revelations were yet too fragile to trust the secret of Tenzin's nature, and she worried at the detriment it would cause. That Jacinda would see strings no different than those that tied her once to Regan. Given that history the fear felt like it might easily become loss, or resentment. She valued Jacinda too much to rush.

The rest she considered carefully. Mik hunted carefully for answers, and someone with his extra gifts was a quarry any Athari would be wary of. But unless he gave her a reason, she would prefer for him to understand she presented no danger. So she only shrugged, and explained, “Don’t hunt spirit-touched.”