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Reckoned by both distance and sheer contrast of terrain, any expedition from the heart of the Sundom to Banuk-held lands is an ambitious undertaking. But eager hunters and seasoned wayfarers refuse to balk at the challenge To face it becomes a glittering provocation, adventure ripe for the seizing, taking glory with spear and bow and sling. Ever forward. Ever in search of beyond.
Until they pass through the final gate of Dawn’s Sentinel and traverse the Longroam, where they’re forced to brawl with enough Glinthawks to make even the High-Radiant Araman himself damn them to something more horrible than Shadow. From there—stone, wind, craggy steep cliffside. Season-change arrests the land as a question of hours, not moons, in striking foreign ways. And then the threshold of the Cut looms just one more day’s trek ahead—the air’s bite shifts from mildly unpleasant to quite unpleasant to an outright assault—and they realize the weather-warnings were no poetic exaggeration.
Each time before, Aloy has taken this path alone. But now there’s a brief and unplanned pause ahead of the climb. They’ve barely weaved their way through the coiled arms of the Metal Devil sitting astride the Grave-Hoard when Talanah starts to shudder with cold.
“I really can’t believe you have the audacity to shiver like this when you knew it would be freezing—and you chose to wear those stupid silks anyway.”
If Talanah’s supposed to respond, Aloy leaves her no space for it. Eyes flashing in the overclouded daylight, she heaves out a sharp sigh—utter exasperation billows into a cloud of mist in the space between them.
“Do you think I’m wearing this just for show?” she asks, incredulous, sweeping her hands from shoulder to waist in an abrupt gesture at her Banuk garments: skillfully-cured hide and fur. Thick and sturdy, bright-dyed in blues and yellows and greens that cry out against the pallid snow and metal-gleam. So warm—especially with the pauldron-shouldered fur mantle tied around her neck—in a place where finding warmth is already a matter of effort. She looks seasoned, chin held high. And her irritation: righteous and formidable. “Not your smartest decision. At all. I mean, look at your damned pants, Talanah. They hardly even count—the holes!”
It’d probably be a second unwise decision for Talanah to quip at the close attention Aloy apparently pays to her pants, or to let a chattering-teeth grin sneak across her face at all the fuming. While she manages to do neither, the latter is tough to resist. Because though Aloy would not enjoy it being said (or even implied) right now, it’s undeniable: she’s downright cute when she’s disgruntled. Upper lip curling back over teeth, clenched desperately, hardly smothering a frustrated growl—brows knitted over a gruff glare, nostrils flaring and scrunching up her face, nowhere near as stern as it probably wants to look—crimson tinge crawling from neck to cheeks to ears under freckles and thick blue stripes of Nora face paint. It’s not difficult to imagine the heat, and how it should send steam rising from her head. The snowflakes that began swirling around as they passed the settlement at Hollow Fort melt away as they dust the coppery braids left uncovered by her headpiece, or land on her face.
But they cling to her lashes. Sparkle there. Noticing them brings distraction from the bitterness all around. Talanah tries to cling, too—to the bold shimmers of affection that course over her chill-rippled skin. Taking a slow, freeze-shock breath, she considers what it’s meant to dismantle without coming apart. Not changing shape, but edges allowed to blur and meld all the same. This is how it’s been to exist as whole and half, at once—to slowly unravel all of the ways in which Aloy has learned to show care.
And where Aloy’s worried seething is charming, every riled-up bit of it reflects compassion. It’s also not at all misplaced. Because the weather is exactly as cold as she had warned, and Talanah is shivering as a result of her questionable travelwear. And she might have voiced her displeasure at the temperature, once. Or twice. Three times, at the very most. Just as any Sun-struck Carja would, given the circumstance.
“It’s only going to get worse, you know.” Aloy sighs again. Shaking her head and then letting it hang, she sets her hands on her hips. “The first thing we’re doing when we reach Song’s Edge is buying you a proper kit. You should’ve taken care of that in Meridian, though. It wasn’t only me nagging. I know Ardik was on your case, too.”
The urge to smile wins, then, taking form through the tremors as a coy smirk. “I got these, didn’t I?” Wagging her eyebrows, Talanah lifts her foot from the snow-swept ground, showing Aloy (not for the first time since they left Meridian) the heavy fur-lined boots she’s swapped in for her sandals—looking frankly ridiculous in clash with her standard silk-and-Blazon.
A long pause. Talanah stays balanced on one foot, nodding at the offered boot. Aloy ignores it in favor of staring right at her face, stone-set in the jaw but also wild in the eyes. Like she could physically erupt. Like she could take hold of her own skull and tear herself apart straight down the middle. When she finally finds the calm to speak, her words are measured and bitten back with worn-thin restraint, grasping coherence in gloved fists balled at her sides.
“And the rest of what’s in your bag?”
Talanah takes her turn to sigh, throwing her hands up before regretting it with a frost-flutter cringe. Wrapping her arms back around her midsection to guard herself from the snow pellet assault, she sputters out her rebuttal, hoping it doesn’t sound as feeble as it feels leaving from her throat.
“I packed what I need, Aloy. We’re on this trip to hunt!”
“Yeah, and the four slings that were absolutely necessary to bring along won’t be of any use if you’re frozen to death!”
In the waxen northern air, raised voices carry. But their echoes are stolen by icy wind that howls against the facets and flaws of frozen-rock cliffside and tendrils of ancient metal. With an abrupt turn of her head, Aloy squeezes her eyes shut and pinches the bridge of her nose with leatherbound fingers. Then she draws in a deep, deliberate breath. Not a sigh, exactly. Not intended as one. Just a means of reaching for a splinter of steadiness. On the slow exhale, her eyes find Talanah’s again through another onrush of snow-haze. Her mouth is still drawn into a tight frown, freckles still drowned in the fury-glow of her cheeks, brow notched under her headpiece. But in her eyes, there’s a change, subtle in the bleary windswept gleam: blooming smolder—wary softness.
“Here.”
The one word, spoken so quietly in the narrowness, brings on a different bout of shivering as it flows in through Talanah’s bones and courses along her spine. Aloy steps near, loosening the ties of her fur cloak, then pulling it from her shoulders. She throws it around Talanah instead.
“This will help until we get there.”
She’s right. The warmth is almost immediate: body heat lingering in the garment, and a deeper simmer exuding from the gesture. The needle-point Sun, come close through dreary clouds. Aloy’s fingers brush against Talanah’s neck on their way to work the fastening at her throat (which is helpful, because her own have admittedly been without feeling for a while now). Talanah nestles in closer, overtaken by a sudden and compulsive greed, seeking as much of it as she can cling to. Motion matches motion where, once—and not so long ago—otherwise-adept hands tasked with this would fumble. Aloy grasps the edges of the mantle in her fists and gives it an easy tug, holding Talanah’s body tight against her own.
They stand still for a long moment. Huddled together, tangled in the snowfall and all of these fringe territories. Aside from the wind, there’s absolute quiet—Talanah thawing out, Aloy sweltering the chill, foggy breath mingling in double—until Aloy breaches the hush.
“Sorry for getting angry.”
It’s genuine, if strained. Reticent. There’s a fraying at the words’ edges as she murmurs them into the fur at Talanah’s collarbone. Without having to reach out from under the cloak into the scorching cold, Talanah’s numb-stung hands settle on Aloy’s waist and offer a reassuring squeeze.
“It’s alright,” she says, her own voice an apology—much smoother—to match. “I understand why you’re frustrated. You’re right. It’s frigid, and I should’ve come better prepared.”
“It’s—not that.” Then Aloy pauses, reconsidering. “Okay, it’s not all that.”
“So what remains?”
And though the careful prodding leads Aloy to lift her head from the crook of Talanah’s neck, her gaze doesn’t follow. Instead, it falls into avoidance—the full truth kept locked in hesitant quiet, unable or unwilling to shape it into substance. A slip back into an old tendency like an arrow finding its place between the nock-knots on one’s most highly favored bow. Clasping her lip between teeth, Aloy squints into the distance over Talanah’s shoulder, like asking the snowdrifts to speak for her. They don’t. She has to wrestle it out herself.
“I’ve been looking forward to coming here with you. Excited for you to see it. Maybe that was a mistake.” So much smaller than all the aggravation—but no less jagged, no less charged. A rasp of rawness bleeds through, sinking into the pit of Talanah’s gut. Aloy’s eyes fall on hers long enough to lay bare the doubt creeping through golden-green. Then they dart away. “I don’t want you to be miserable.”
Some shades of apprehension fester no matter how much time passes or how many layers crumble away. Hear a story repeated over and over, and some of its roots will permeate. Rejection and otherness in all its forms become twisted into truth. And they flare up as fear. As the impulse to lash out in defense. Living extraordinary moments comes with its burdens; sharing these moments with others, even more. To offer them with both hands open and unarmed, to peel back ribs and expose tender marrow to blistering sunlight. To stand powerless and breath-held while they are examined. Scrutinized. Waiting: acceptance or scorn? Embraced, or discarded? These have become parts of me. Watch me lay them out, for you—trust, in spite of what I’ve been handed before—and hope you do not turn away.
Aloy looks up at Talanah, mouth tense, eyes shadowed with the swirling discord of vulnerability and defiance. Anticipating every outcome. Daring her to give an answer.
You lead. I’ll follow, is the greater contrary truth Talanah might provide. Show me anything, every piece, and I’ll be beholden.
But: all things, in due time. There are plenty of paths left to be carved.
If Talanah could feel her hands—if they didn’t feel bathed in chillwater—she’d place them on Aloy’s face. She’d use her fingertips to soothe, to burnish out the uneasy creases etched on Aloy’s brow. Instead, second-best: she leans in, resting their foreheads together. The gesture comes with the gentle clatter of headpieces. They’ve grown used to that.
“It’ll take more than some cold weather to chase the Sunhawk back to Meridian,” she promises, voice certain, her shuddering at last subsiding. “I’ve told you, time and again—I’m excited for this as well. Believe me? I know what I want, and it’s right here.”
Right here. Surrounded by snowstorm and winter-snapped wilderness. Two outlanders, content in closeness, latching to a flash of familiarity in the midst of a journey that sprawls out both behind and before them. Belief can be granted in the subtlest of ways. Aloy’s shoulders go slack, relieved of the stiffness they’ve been bearing since Dawn’s Sentinel—capitulation, but willing. Glad for it. A trembling breath follows, so tiny it could have gone unnoticed if the cold didn’t render it visible. Talanah smiles and draws Aloy in even closer, arms encircling her waist, giving her nose a quick nuzzle with her own.
“Besides,” she says, lips hovering close, and the shared warmth swells enough to sear, “I’ll have all I need to keep me warm in the Cut.”
Aloy considers this for half a heartbeat. Then goes deadpan.
“I swear—if you say my Thrush, I’m changing my mind. I’ll take back my cloak and leave you here for the frost and the Glinthawks.”
Talanah rolls her eyes with no lack of exaggeration. “Scorchers, Aloy,” she says. “And Fireclaws, if you’ve left any for the rest of us to take on. Roaring bonfires to sit beside while trading stories with your werak—”
“Not my werak.”
“Right, sorry, your former werak,” Talanah corrects with a teasing twitch of her eyebrow, “all of whom I’m eager to meet. I can keep going, you know. I have a whole list.”
Aloy scoffs, head tilting, “Talanah, you don’t—”
“Visits to the Carja encampment for meals spicy enough to leave you complaining instead. The pulse-thrill of tackling new and daunting hunting trials. Clashing full-to-brim mugs with your friend—Ikrie, that’s her name—when she and I shatter your record score. Lots of time enjoying the hot springs—” (and here Talanah’s eyes darken as her hands find pockets near Aloy’s hips and slip inside, suggestive of an unspoken but blatant future intention; Aloy’s frown falters with a blink and a hard swallow, cheek-fluster deepening) “—and...my Thrush.”
Before Aloy can carry out her dramatic and very empty threat, Talanah surges forward to steal a distracting kiss. The touch is fleeting, but precise. And its effect spirals beyond its manner. Pulling back, Talanah watches, satisfied, maybe smug—how Aloy’s eyes flutter open, dazed and spun out even from brevity.
And when she comes back to herself, the doubt’s been spun out too. In its place: something that trusts. The kind of reliance that’s taken time and risk to learn, distance to flourish, and effort to sustain as journeys trace together. It glows warmer than any mantle she could have offered.
“Okay.” Simple, final. There’s a smile trying to break through. Snowflakes on her eyelashes, pure persistence. The cold grants more than helpless shivering and numb skin, and for now, neither of them feels it. Aloy lets go of Talanah like she’d rather not. “Then we should press on before we lose more daylight. Song’s Edge and actual clothes await. We’ll reach the climb soon, so try to warm up your hands?”
By the Sun, can’t she see how she makes it too easy?
“Got any suggestions?” Talanah asks, gaze embered and heavy-lidded, voice caressed by a smirk that’s impossible to stifle.
Pointedly ignoring her, Aloy moves ahead, ever ready to make the frost-glazed trail yield. But even through the blinding dizzy snowfall, Talanah can see—can sense, and know, fire-streak in her ribs—the tight-lipped, crooked grin that flickers through in the instant before she turns.