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She was ready to go and seek humans. She was. She was ready to seek other humans.

Not quite this fast, not nearly this many. Golden eyes flinch from the light, pale limbs cringe from the noise, and only the questioning noise from the long-legged, long-furred hound combined with the sight of the land outside the door causes her to move.

She flees from the front door and out the back without ever testing the wall behind her, or managing to acknowledge anyone she may have run over in her wild flight.

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No, not soon. Its too (much) bright, and full. "Ash can take down a deer." She says with a nod, running her fingers along the puppy's back before returning to the spot behind its ear.

Very like the Russian dogs, then. Mind, it's been years on end since he last saw that book. He mostly just remembers the pictures.

The puppy's hind end wriggles, as is often the case with puppies too small to really know how to wag their tails and tails only yet.

"Will you need any help dressing one out?" he says at last. He's not sure if she'd be carrying a knife under that, and anyway he doesn't think of too many women as being the sort to butcher their own meat.

"I." She says, and stops. I know how, I have done it before, but not well. (Yes) "Please. I don't do it well."

He nods. "I'll be out here a lot," he says. "The pup needs to get used to the cold. When she pulls one down-" He nods at Ash. "-I'll be about, and I'll help."

When he was younger, he went into the open lands that lay past his father's ranch and spent a summer on his own to see if he could. The next year, or the year after that- it blurs together after a while- he took his leave of his kin and spent a full turn of the seasons in the wild. There was someone to teach him what he didn't know then, an old and bitter man named Weng Hao, and Weng Hao had strongly suggested he'd better be ready to pass those teachings on to others someday.

Some things you don't forget, not even thousands of miles and a country's gulf away.

She fought with the animals Ash brought her, and learned a crude way of doing things. It is, however, very crude. She knows how much waste she's left. "Thank you."

"All part of the job, ma'am."

He'd tip his hat, but the muskrat-fur cap hasn't got a brim, so he merely touches his fingers to his brow for a moment instead.

"What job?" I was a (No). She looks at at the puppy again.

He gets the feeling 'Royal North-West Mounted Police' isn't going to mean much to her. And anyway, it's not as if this is his jurisdiction. There'd been a Mountie before he joined the Force, a man who'd gone on to become a legend, who said that the Indians of the Yukon had once called him White man's law- but Sergeant Preston's words probably aren't going to do much good either. On the other hand, Sergeant Preston had been very fond of quoting a certain motto, so he'd been told...

"I'm a Mountie, ma'am," he finally says. "We uphold the right."

It's in the rules.

"The right." She considers it for a while.

He's very small. He cares for his puppy. He is colored like the moon. Is it safe? (In places.)

"Yes'm. If I was home, I'd be doing my work as a law-man, but this isn't home. All I can do is what's right, and needs doing."

He sounds a little wistful. Not that this place isn't a little like the northlands, but he misses the chase. Even if his is the sort of chase done slowly, quietly, so that the bad men of the north never know they're being hunted until it's far too late.

Ah, well. Soon enough. Once the pup's older.

I have proclaimed it- (NO) you have heard me proclaim it- (NO) "The law." She says, and her voice is tight with (horror) fear as her eyes grow wide and wider still looking at the small man while her finger still in the fur of the small puppy. (No)

That didn't sound right at all.

He's met some bad policemen along the way, and spent a night or two in jail when the lawmen in Montana thought he was a troublemaker; he knows there's men out there who'd abuse their badges when women were concerned...

"You've had trouble, then," he says, and it's not even a question. "I'm sorry, ma'am. That ain't right at all."

I choose not to open it. (Yes) "I won't remember." She tells him, her voice calm and her body half a breath from dying of its fear, "I don't remember."

"I wouldn't want you to," he says, his own voice quiet and low.

Where he comes from, men have died for offering insult to a woman. Some things you just don't do.

If he'd moved, she would have been gone. The long-legged fleethound would have followed, but she would have been gone. His words let her stay, for now, this moment, this time. "I don't remember." She says for a (second) third time.

One of the first things the little man learned, years and years ago, was that wild things pay less mind to you if you stay very still. It's a kind of invisibility, the first lesson of its kind he ever learned.

"You don't have to," says the little Mountie, the sometime Wyoming cowhand. "It ain't my business to ask you to."

"How do you know right?" She asks, abruptly. Ash blinks at her, Ash's person rarely says things so sharply.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," he answers first of all, easily as breathing. "Respect anything that lives. Seems like it's kinda obvious, if you don't mind my saying so, ma'am."

(No) I choose not to open the box. "I don't remember enough to know obvious." She says after a moment.

"Oh." He'd wince, maybe, but he doesn't think that'd do him much good. "Mighty sorry, ma'am. I don't mean any offense."

"I don't remember enough to be offended, either." She says after a minute, "I was...I think I was an apprentice."

He gives the prospect some thought, and then he nods. There's plenty trades that'd have woman apprentices. "What sort?" he asks. "D'you know?"

Maybe, maybe not. Either way.

A garden (No) "Herbalist." She says hesitently, "Her name was...Rinnol." (No more) and she stops. She was going to say something else. She doesn't remember.

There's a lot of medicine women hereabouts, it seems like.

"That's good work," he says. "Good stuff to know."

The puppy makes a squeaky noise and attempts to gnaw at the little man's finger. He glances down and makes a low warning noise in the back of his throat.

"I should take this one in, ma'am," he says. "Time I fed him."

"They need that often." She agrees, and Ash unfolds herself to lean against her person again, "Good morrow."

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ninja-mountie.livejournal.com - 2007-01-11 02:14 (UTC) - Expand

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