“I thought you were asleep,” he said softly.
“I was,” she replied, but I knew you were near.”
He set the blade aside and murmured, “I always will be.”
She smiled, her heart warmed. Then, “You always rise before the sun,” she said softly.
He smiled. “The sun has farther to go. I only need to turn toward it.”
He faced her. The calm in his eyes held something new, a depth that felt both steady and dangerous, like deep water after rain.
“After-Thunder,” he said, using her Kiowa name. “When I look at the river, I see two currents meeting—one that has run through me since I was a boy, and another that came fromfar away. When they joined, they did not fight. They became something larger.”
He reached into a small pouch at his side and drew out a piece of tanned hide folded around something that gleamed. Inside lay a narrow band of silver, hammered smoothly and set with a single turquoise stone. It caught the light like sky trapped in metal.
“This was my mother’s,” he said. “She wore it until her death. I have carried it since. I want it to live again … on your hand.”
Violet’s breath caught. The air seemed to still, listening. “You mean…”
“I ask you now to join your life to mine,” he said. “The old way, and the new. I would have the people see it, and the river hear it.”
Her eyes burned with sudden tears. She had imagined many things since coming here, fear, loss, courage but not this. Not being chosen so fully, so simply.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Grey Horse. I will.”
He slid the ring onto her finger. It fit as though made for her. Then he leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers, and for a heartbeat the world seemed to balance perfectly between breath and silence.
?
By midday, word had run through the camp like sunlight through grass. Red Willow laughed when she heard it. “About time,” she said, thumping her stick against the ground. “The spirits have been waiting for you two to stop walking in circles.”
Pale Moon came to Violet’s side soon after, her face bright, her hands warm. “This is good,” she said. “The camp will be glad. Grey Horse has carried your shadow long enough. Now you will share the same one.”
Violet squeezed her friend’s hand. “I don’t know the customs. Will you help me?”
Pale Moon nodded, her dark eyes glinting. “I will help. We will make it right both the Kiowa way and yours.”
That afternoon, Grey Horse spoke to his people beneath the cottonwoods, his voice carrying clear and low. “The woman called After-Thunder has stood with us through fire and rain. I would take her as my wife, so that the river may know her name as it knows mine.”
There was a murmur of approval, and laughter among the children, who darted between the trees like swallows. The men nodded; the women smiled behind their hands. A marriage was not only joy, but it was also a sign of unity, proof that life still chose itself even when the world tried to unmake it.
One man in the gathering stood a little apart Tall Elk,Grey Horse’s oldest friend, a quiet hunter with calm eyes and a scar that ran from his temple to his jaw. He had played and fought beside Grey Horse since they were boys and shared every trial but one: he had never spoken his heart aloud. His gaze found Pale Moon across the crowd. When she laughed with Violet, something in his chest ached like a bow drawn too long.
Red Willow saw it. She always did. Later, as the camp began to prepare for the joining feast, she nudged him with her stick. “The river is greedy today,” she said. “It takes two brides at once.”
Tall Elk blinked, startled. “What do you mean, Grandmother?”
“I mean,” she said, “that you’ve stared at that girl so long the sun has begun to notice. If you mean to speak, speak before someone else calls her wife.”
He looked toward Pale Moon again. The light caught in her hair, and for the first time in years, she looked unburdened—thesorrow of losing Grey Horse gone, replaced by something tender and free.
“I will speak,” he said quietly. “If she will hear me.”
?
The next morning, Violet and Pale Moon worked side by side, stringing beads and gathering flowers from the riverbank. The air smelled of wet earth and crushed sage.
“Red Willow says I must wear blue for the sky,” Violet said, laughing. “But I have no blue dress.”
