Ta'raal POV:
The bitter season’s wind and snow howled through the mountain pass hard enough to shove even his weight sideways, while needles of snow lashed against his face and horns until every exposed patch of cobalt skin was coated in ice or snow. The storm still bit at his pointed ears and tugged relentlessly at the thick braid hanging over his shoulder.
The young dvisti across his shoulders had been worth the hunt. Its shaggy hide would keep someone warm, its meat would feed many mouths, and its bones would become knives, needles, spoons, spearheads, and tools beneath his hands.
Rukosh climbed several lengths ahead, his broad frame barely visible through the white curtain swallowing the cliffs. They had survived together since the sickness stole their families when they were kits, and neither of them had ever questioned that the other would always be there.
Then he screamed, a deep, panicked sound that had Ta'raal's head jerk upward.
His heart lurched painfully against his ribs.
"Ta'raal!" Rukosh's voice echoed across the mountains just as a deafening crack split the air above them.
The mountainside gave way with a roar that made it seem like an angry beast.
Snow, ice, and shattered stone thundered down the cliff in a roaring avalanche, swallowing everything in its path before Ta'raal could react.
"Ahhh!" He bellowed, but in a deep place in his heart, he was relieved for his friend; he saw only for a second that Rukosh would survive this, given where he was positioned beneath a rock crevice.
The world became a blur of snow, rock, and ice as the avalanche tore him from the mountainside and hurled him into the void below.
Ice shattered against his back, stone slammed into his shoulder, his tail whipped wildly through empty air while his hands searched for anything to catch, but found nothing except freezing wind.
He hit something flat, his vision blurred, and the world spun into nothing but white sky and jagged black rock. His breath left him in one violent burst before darkness swallowed everything whole.
Warmth. That is what he felt as he returned to consciousness.
Not the constant heat of his khui alone, but genuine warmth pressing against chilled skin.
His eyelids felt impossibly heavy as he forced them open, and the first thing he saw was firelight dancing across a stone cave ceiling streaked with glowing moss that cast soft amber light through a spacious cave. Thick pelts rested beneath his body instead of unforgiving ice, and the familiar scent of medicinal herbs lingered in the air alongside meat and mineral-rich steam drifting from deeper within the cave where a hot spring quietly bubbled.
However, as a reminder that he was alive, pain greeted him the moment he tried to move.
"...hrrgh." he growled through clenched teeth.
His shoulder throbbed, his ribs ached with each careful breath, and fresh leather bindings wrapped expertly around wounds he certainly hadn't treated himself.
Which meant someone had. Confusion mixed his thoughts until another feeling suddenly drowned them.
His khui... it burst into song. The purr from it was undeniable and echoed through the space.
The deep, unmistakable purr rolled through his entire body, vibrating against bruised ribs with enough force that his breath caught, and then he heard another... answering his khui's song.
His tail curled instinctively around his leg as his eyes searched for who the responder was.
His eyes finally met yours on the other side of a fire. And what a breathtaking sa-khui you were.
The warmth surrounding him suddenly made sense, as did the careful treatment of his injuries. His chest refused to stop purring, the steady song echoing through the quiet cave while disbelief tangled with the new realization.
After all these cycles...
After believing resonance might never come...
His khui had chosen?
“Who are you, my resonance mate? Speak your name so I may learn it,” he said, his voice hoarse and strained with the pain he was in.