He drew her to him, and the world fell away. His kiss deepened, unhurried, respectful. The warmth of his skin against hers was not possession but recognition: the meeting of two souls long traveling toward the same point. The river murmured beside them, its voice low and endless, as if blessing what it saw.
When they lay together beneath the cottonwoods, the earth itself seemed to breathe with them in a rhythm ancient and kind. There was no fear, no shame, only the soft surprise of finding home in another body. His hands traced her face as though memorizing a map he already knew by heart.
Afterward, they lay in the hush between heartbeats, the night so still it seemed the stars had drawn closer to listen. Grey Horse pressed his lips to her temple.
“The river has joined us together,” he whispered.
Violet closed her eyes and let the words sink deep. “Yes,” she breathed. “And it will never let us part.”
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Blood Remembers
Autumn came slowly that year with a thinning of light: a gentle gold that clung to the prairie grass and turned it to honey. Days shortened, winds grew curious, and nights deepened into quiet. The river no longer roared; it whispered, as though content to rest after carrying so much.
For Violet, now truly After-Thunder, the days fell into rhythm. Each morning she rose beside Grey Horse to feed the horses and check the snares, to share bread by the fire while mist clung low over the valley. She learned which woods smoked sweet and which smoked bitter. She learned the names of stars by how they leaned toward dawn. And she learned that peace was not stillness but a thousand small labors done with love.
Grey Horse watched her with a pride he did not need to voice. When she laughed, something inside him loosened, as if he had spent years holding his breath. He taught her to read the sky for storms and how to find a deer’s path by the slant of bent grass. In the evenings, they sat outside their tipi and listened to the wind moving through cottonwoods, speaking its eternal language of change.
“You hear that?” he said once, tilting his head. “The trees talk about tomorrow. They don’t always agree with each other, but they talk.”
Violet smiled, resting her head against his shoulder. “And what do they say tonight?”
“That winter will test us,” he said. “But we have each other. And the river still runs.”
?
Sometimes, though, Violet’s peace came tinged with questions she could not name. The dreams returned, insistent. She saw faces she didn’t know but felt she should; a woman standing at the edge of a campfire, her hair chestnut brown, her eyes filled with both grief and belonging. The woman would reach out a hand, but the dream always ended before their fingers met.
One morning, she mentioned it to Red Willow as they sorted herbs.
“The same dream, again and again,” Violet said. “A woman who feels like family, though I can’t place her. She’s standing in a Kiowa camp, looking at me as though she knows me.”
Red Willow gave her a long, thoughtful look, her hands never stopping their work. “Dreams are rivers too. They come from somewhere, and they go somewhere. But they do not always tell us which bank is which.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Red Willow said. “When the river bends.”
?
The bend came two days later.
The tribe had moved along the river to higher ground, where stands of oak broke the wind. It was a day of preparations mending tepees, checking stores of dried meat. Violet workednear the fire, helping a few of the younger women twist fibers into cordage, when a shadow fell across her hands.
She looked up to see an elder woman she did not know well. The woman was small and bent, looking older than the land itself, but with eyes sharp as flint under a fringe of white hair. Her name was Little Bird Woman, though time had long ago taken the lightness from her step. Her gaze held the weight of many winters.
“You are the one called After-Thunder,” the woman said, her voice rasping like bark.
“Yes,” Violet answered, setting down her work. “I am.”
Little Bird Woman studied her face with unnerving intensity. “You remind me of someone,” she said at last. “Long ago, when I was a girl, there was a woman named Singing Fawn. She came to the Kiowa for help after her own people fell to fever. And she stayed. She learned our ways. She married a warrior named Two Arrows. They had a son they named Eagle Hunter.”
Violet listened, her heart slowing, the world narrowing to the old woman’s words.
“One spring,” Little Bird Woman continued, “they left, heading back to the white man’s towns. The woman said her child should learn both worlds. Some here thought she was wrong to go, but Two Arrows said the river does not own its banks. He went with her and the child. ”
The old woman paused, her eyes clouding for a moment with memory. “You look like her, After-Thunder. Your hair, your eyes, the way you stand as though the wind belongs to you. I thought I was seeing a ghost when you first came.”
Violet’s mouth went dry. “You think she might be my kin?”
