A raucous cheer welcomed them back to the Lodge when they entered the next afternoon, arms around each other's shoulders and brandishing their trophies. Aloy felt Ikrie start a little, though she rallied just a second later and held up the talon she'd taken from the Blazewing.
"Thunderjaw!" Ardik laughed, shaking his head. "A Thunderjaw, in her first week here."
"Not just that," Korduf observed. "That's… wait, what is that?"
"We're calling it a Blazewing," Ikrie beamed. "Wings as wide as a Stormbird's, only it breathes more fire than a Bellowback."
Talanah descended the stairs elegantly towards them, looking amusedly at the milling hunters. "I dare say another tale needs telling, Ikrie. If you'd be so kind?"
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A little while later, Aloy managed to prise Ikrie away from the rest of their fellow hunters, and they made their way to the balcony. She'd been turning Petra's advice over in her mind for most of the journey back to Meridian, and decided she might just be able to find an opening.
Not to mention, it looked like Ikrie was a little close to being overwhelmed this time. The competitive side to some of the hunters had come alive with the talk of a new, deadly Machine. There had been an edge to certain questions, an implication that the questioner was after information they would use to better Aloy and Ikrie. It was a tendency less pronounced now, under Talanah, than it had been in the past, but it was still very much there – an undercurrent.
"Some of them sounded like they didn't believe my description, until you spoke up," Ikrie said wryly.
Aloy shook her head. "Foolish of them, after everything Hephaestus has thrown at us over the years, and the ancient Machines that Helis dug up." She looked at Ikrie, saw the hurt that her companion didn't fully manage to conceal. "But it's still rough to have your account questioned like that."
Ikrie gave her a little smile. "Thanks for having my back, Hawk."
"Any time, Thrush – not just as my Thrush, either," Aloy hastily added.
Then she halted, not entirely certain where to go next. But Ikrie seemed to be hanging on her words. Alright, next step. Treat it like a hunt – don't rush, but also don't let yourself freeze up in the long grass.
"So now we've something to celebrate," Aloy murmured. "How would you like to… come to dinner with me?"
"Come to dinner?" Ikrie looked perplexed, and Aloy realised with a start that she had every right to be. "Isn't dinner just what we've got at yours?"
Aloy grinned broadly at her. "Oh, just you wait."
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Talanah had insisted on introducing her to restaurants, a little while after their hunt for Redmaw. Aloy had been about as startled as Ikrie looked now.
"No, really, Ikrie. We just sit here, and a server will come, tell us what's on offer… ah, good evening."
By now, the server knew better than to fawn too much. He arrived with a bottle of wine – the years of the Mad King hadn't been good for much, but they had been excellent for wine – and explained the available dishes.
"What do you recommend?" Ikrie asked.
"Well, the mixed grill isn't far off what the Oseram laid on for us yesterday. The Avanuk is pretty close to what we ate when we first got here, only with rice and more vegetables."
"And the Kalatik?"
"Ooh, that's a favourite of mine. Rice as well, but they use lamb and marinade it with fruits. You can practically taste the sun in it."
Ikrie puffed out her cheeks and let out a long exhalation. "Those two are gonna be hard to choose between."
"Let's split 'em, then," Aloy smiled. "You get the Avanuk, I'll share half my Kalatik." She turned to the server and raised her voice. "Excuse me? We're ready to order."
She waited until the server was out of earshot before she turned back to Ikrie. "You know, I've spent a lot of time lately, listening to you tell my stories."
Ikrie shook her head, shrugging it off. Her freckles – already she had plenty more with her time in the Sundom – showed strongly in the candlelight. "You've also let me yammer away on mine, from the Longroam to here."
"But I still feel like I ought to know more of yours, Ikrie. If you… want to tell me?" Aloy swirled her glass, hoping her nerves didn't show too much also hoping they were… just a little apparent. She wanted to be able to show some vulnerability with her companion.
The pale blue eyes flickered nervously before they stilled, Ikrie looking at her quizzically now. "What do you want to know?"
"More that I'm wondering," Aloy said, choosing her words carefully. "Do you feel as distant from the Banuk as I do from the Nora, now?"
"Hard to say." Ikrie's expression was still one of caution, not all that different to the way she looked at the start of a hunt. "I don't know how distant from the Nora you really are."
Aloy sat back, taking a sip of wine. "Then I guess we ought to share, don't you?"
There was a momentary pause before Ikrie nodded. "I think so."
Once she started, she chattered all the way through dinner, breaking off only to rhapsodise about the food and ask how Aloy's experience compared to hers.
In essence, the tale went like this: Ikrie had been a foundling, not dissimilar to Aloy, and the same as Mailen. Their parents had all been lost to Machines, the elements and sickness or some combination of the three, and they'd become wards of their Werak. There had been other children with them, growing up, but Ban-Ur took a harsh toll. Those who didn't perish soon found their own places, with a mate or pursuing membership of another Werak.
As such, Ikrie and Mailen had clung to one another for friendship – and in Ikrie's case, it seemed, more than that. Where Mailen went, Ikrie followed. "I did actually play it out many a time in my head. If Mailen took a man to be her mate, how I'd take the blow but wouldn't for a second let it show. I'd find other girls I could kiss, maybe take a tumble with. But we'd still be with each other in some way. Or so I…" Her jaw clenched.
Aloy laid her hand over Ikrie's, and gave her a comforting smile. "My turn to tell, for a bit?" She cast a nervous eye around them, but the other people in the place looked to be out of earshot. So she decided that she was probably safe.
And for the first time, she let it out to someone who wasn't Sylens, piggybacking on her Focus. She told Ikrie about the Focus, about going from Outcast to a Seeker and how she felt a mingled relief and sorrow at that. "I never had to conform to what the Mothers wanted of me… but then I never got the chance to just be another Nora, even another Brave. Circumstance took me, and just pitched me straight into the fire. Maybe not unlike you, with what happened to Mailen up on the glacier."
That led her to wandering outside the Sacred Lands, to running down the fragments of the truth, and then finally learning that she truly was motherless. "More than that, I'd been born for this frightening purpose. I was Gaia's last throw of the dice, her last calculated risk. Which meant that the settled, together life as part of something bigger, the one I'd dreamed of for so long… I don't know if it can ever be."
"Perhaps you can be alone with someone else," Ikrie responded, before nervousness took over again and she glanced down at her food. "I mean… I'd rather be a snow ghost forever. I think I see where you're coming from."
Aloy found herself having to hold back tears. "Mm hmm. I think you do."
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They strolled the long way back to Olin's old house from there, taking in the view from the balcony and gazing across the Alight. It was a bright, clear night, and the Spire glittered in the silvery glow of the stars and moon.
"Funny," Ikrie said. "The Sundom looks pretty great in the moonlight too. Even if it's not as bright as home, under the stars." She went quiet again for a little bit, taking in the full expanse below. "So the battle raged across all of this?" she asked.
"All across," Aloy nodded. "When I came down back the mountain with Talanah, Erend and Varl, the Machine corpses stretched from the gates of Meridian, along the ridge, all the way to the Spire. There were so many to strip for parts, and so many of our dead to bury. But when it was done oh, the feasting and the revelry."
"I can't imagine," Ikrie said. "My… the Banuk don't really revel. As I guess you saw, back in the Lodge."
Aloy gave her a soft-eyed look and nodded, just a little. "Perhaps they might in time, with the right occasion," she said. "It was that way for Meridian. You know that feeling when you come through a fight by the skin of your teeth and you're terrified all the way through, but then, quite suddenly, you've won? Imagine that, but you're a city's worth of people and what's more, you know that it meant the whole world's survival." She lowered her head, recalling how she'd slunk away that night. "Makes me almost wish I'd stuck around, you know?"
"I do," Ikrie said. "But I think I also know why you didn't. I…" She seemed to catch herself. "Can we maybe continue this at yours, Aloy?"
Laying both hands on her shoulders, Aloy smiled at her. "Sure."
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Ikrie didn't seem quite ready to talk until they made it into the bedroom. "Aloy, I've had a lot to think about while we've been running together. Really, since we met." Her next words nearly stopped Aloy's heart. "And what you've come to mean to me."
Aloy raised her hands gently, not daring to do anything that might pre-empt the other woman. "Take your time, Ikrie."
Ikrie drew a breath. "Thanks."
Her eyes kept trying to flit evasively away, but each time they returned to Aloy's face. Aloy didn't presume to know what that meant. She just waited, and let Ikrie get it out.
Eventually, she seemed to find the right words. "When you found me on the glacier, I was in a lose-lose. Like you said, I'd gone in with a plan, and events just turned it upside down, put me between a rock and a hard place. Either Mailen would die on my watch, or I'd lose her as a friend, forever. I made that choice and I stand by it, but…"
"But?" Aloy gently prompted.
Ikrie scrunched up her face. "But I can't help being sour about it because I lost, but Mailen… Mailen won. She got saved and she got to reject the help. She made all the choices that a true Banuk of the Werak would. She proved to herself that she could shut so much out." She looked straight into Aloy's eyes, her expression pleading for Aloy to understand. "I was her sacrifice. She took a knife to the friendship that saved her life."
And Aloy realised, as never before, how much that was the inverse of the two times she had lost Rost. When he had left her at the gates to Mother's Watch, he had done so in order to give her the answers and belonging she longed for. Without hesitation, he had placed his happiness on the altar to ensure hers. Giving his life to save her on the mountain had simply been an extension of that.
Ikrie's experience had been nothing like that. Still, she continued, "I can't even blame Mailen for it." I could, Aloy thought, but she left that out. "She just did as the Banuk always taught us. So many times she was warned that I'd bring her low."
"They made that her test," Aloy said, shaking her head. "It wasn't planned, but it was the outcome they'd hoped for on some level. They got Mailen to pry the two of you apart."
Ikrie nodded, a little tremor showing in her bottom lip. "I'm not sure I'd realised how alone it would leave me," she whispered. Tears started from the ice-blue eyes, startling Aloy.
Aloy moved close to her, and reached out to take Ikrie's hand in both of hers. "I remember what you said, back then. You told me you were going to find a crevasse and let your grief out there."
"And I thought I howled it all out." Ikrie put a hand to her forehead, tears running freely now. "At the time I thought the ice took it all, but no…" It took a long moment before she could look at Aloy. "Why do our Tribes do this, Aloy? Why do they drive us apart and call it strength? Why can't anyone look at friendship, or love, and see strength there?"
"I see strength," Aloy said, reaching out to touch Ikrie's cheek and wipe away those tears. "In that, and in you. I've seen it whenever we've hunted together, and I've felt it inside me, knowing you've got my back. I want you with me, Ikrie. And… not just for hunting."
Even as she said it, she felt a great welling up of emotion in her heart, like the old yearning which had spurred her to train for the Proving and then driven her across the land, seeking the truth of who she was. Only this wasn't a push, it was a pull, and it was coming straight from Ikrie.
Ikrie clenched her jaw just a little, forcing a little look of resolve, and nodded. "In a heartbeat, Aloy. If you want me, you've got me."
"I wouldn't dare hope for me," Aloy said, seeing a smile finally break out on the Banuk girl's face. She peered into Ikrie's eyes. "Ikrie, did you and Mailen ever, you know, play at kissing? Or practice?"
"Practice is what we called it," Ikrie nodded. "Mailen thought of everything as practice for when we were truly of the Werak. But I…" She tailed off, but Aloy saw where she was leading to. And immediately, she knew that she wanted to follow.
"It wasn't really for a future mate after a while, was it?"
"Not for me." Ikrie smiled shyly. "Even when I reminded myself that Mailen wouldn't let it show, even if she felt like it was more than practice. I got to thinking, if it feels this right with a girl and I've never wanted to kiss a boy, then why shouldn't I stick with girls?"
"I like your thinking." Emboldened, Aloy moved a little closer, so Ikrie's face filled her field of view. "I mean, I agree. I like kissing girls, and I… I especially like you, Ikrie."
Ikrie's eyes lit up at that. "So you… wanna practice with me, Aloy? she asked, just the ghost of a laugh dancing in her voice. What came through most strongly, however, was an upswell of tremulous affection.
"No." Aloy cupped Ikrie's chin. She realised that her choice of words could definitely be taken the wrong way, and bulled on, hoping that passion would make her intent clear. "I just want to kiss you."
They moved in unison. Their lips met with halting nervousness. Then they broke apart, for just a second, regarding each other and both understanding now what they felt. Then they came together again with an urgency that made them both frantic. They pawed and clutched at each other, a whirlwind of motion that sent bits of clothing flying across the room.
Under the Blazon garb, Ikrie was warmer than Aloy had ever imagined a Banuk could be. Warmer than she'd dreamed, and she returned Aloy's kisses and caresses with the same fervour, neither of them caring about their clumsiness.
"I love you," Aloy gasped, pulling Ikrie down onto the bed with her.
"Then kiss me again," Ikrie beseeched her.
She did. And for a long while after that, they had no need or desire for words. Except for when, a little later, Ikrie affirmed that yes, she loved Aloy too.
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That night, by unspoken agreement, they slept with Ikrie spooning Aloy, arms around her waist. After all the time she'd spent up behind her when riding, it just felt right. Everything felt right.
