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They lay traps in the clearing and take cover in the brush thirty paces away. This Fanghorn’s a clever one—a loner, wandering in that irregular looping way that can make a machine difficult to track. But thanks to some hunters’ patience and a combined-algorithm pattern prediction from their Focuses, this is where the intercept is bound to happen. The last two Fanghorn antlers Beta and GAIA need to fabricate the base’s refrigeration capacity upgrade, theirs. A long day’s hunt finished.
Just have to wait, now. Crouch still and breathe quiet into the gentle late-spring breeze. Aloy’s used to biding her time like this. Vigilance and diligence and an aching sense of self-control are lessons she learned in a faraway place, in a faraway life. Over the last few months, though—since she crossed into the west and remained there, friends by her side—it’s been different. Senses so on edge, now, and extended exposure, one that reaches beyond her own body, her own self.
Because it’s one thing to be alone. It’s another thing entirely to be alone with someone else.
Talanah is vigilant and diligent and self-controlled, too. And she’s close—Aloy glances at her from the corner of her eye—close enough to brush bracers. Aloy’s awareness splits then shifts, a quickened pulse, a leap in her gut, the faint scent of honey and spice and clean sweat. The westward-falling sunlight glinting off of Talanah’s headpiece. Her watchful eyes, trained ahead, glowing amber in its warmth.
Self-control? Sure. Aloy still makes sure to keep her voice low.
“I’m glad you came back.” Quiet as the wind-rustle. So soft that she wonders if she said it at all.
She must have, because Talanah blinks away from the clearing to meet Aloy’s wary gaze. Her mouth is already curving into an easy close-lipped smile as she moves. Aloy swallows dry.
“So am I,” she says, and she says it like she means it. Aloy’s learned that there’s this calm way she looks at you, where the world goes all narrow and you feel like you matter. All tender, all heat, straight through. It makes Aloy’s ears prickle and burn.
And it would be fine just to leave it at that. To turn back to the task at hand, pull an arrow from her quiver and play with its fletching until she settles down enough to nock it. Or to busy her hands with one of the flowers blooming around their knees, and try not to think too hard about the one that’s been sitting outside of her bedroom at the base. Try not to think of the one Talanah was holding before she left, in the hand that pressed firm against Aloy's back and left her searing.
But things like this are fragile. One lapse in restraint leads to another and suddenly everything tumbles down. Tumbles out. Aloy clenches her jaw and her fists against it, but that only makes her sound more frustrated than she already is when she speaks.
“That thing you said to me, before you left?” Her heart’s in her throat and her hands are shaking because Talanah hasn’t looked away. Aloy wishes she would—Aloy hopes she doesn’t. “I think you were right. I think I might—understand.”
The next few seconds stretch into an eternity, and Aloy’s fingers throb relentlessly through it all, and her heart might shatter her ribs. She watches the quick subtle changes on Talanah’s face—the furrowed brow and tiny frown of confusion, the glimmer of recall.
The hitched breath of realization. (Aloy’s been holding hers.) The widening and brightening eyes, the surprised fall of her jaw, the flush beneath her freckles.
And then the soft, whispered laugh. Relief and lightening and a sudden shyness Aloy doesn’t recognize, but one she likes and can’t help really wanting to see so much more of. Talanah’s smile grows into one that convinces Aloy—the knowing? It’s shared.
Then the smile is shared, too. For a long moment, they stay like that.
Thirty paces away, completely unnoticed, the clever Fanghorn avoids their traps and darts back out of sight.