[Memory] What: Memory Will characters be viewing the memory or experiencing it?: Experiencing Warning, this memory contains: Implied Sexual Situation (non-graphic)
The plain stretches below you like a goldengreen ocean, grass like the waves, like the tide. You remember the roll of the water and the way it was expansive in every direction, and it is the same feeling you get when you look out over the grass. You're seated on a rise, watching animals in the grass below, and you don't know what they're called. You can't get your mouth to form around the strange word that you've heard the others using. But it's alright. They don't seem to expect it from you. The same way they don't expect you to join in the tasks of the others, but yet they let you stay. They seem pleased to have you there, honored, but at the same time they rarely linger too close to you. You are both a part, and apart.
There's so many of the animals below, dark brown islands that move through the green sea, and you smile as you watch them. The sun has been hot and high, and apparently that means that there are smaller, redder islands that move close to the others. They are the children, you know that much, even if you don't know what they're called. You find it peaceful to watch them, it gives you a sense of calm that seems strange to you, like it's something you don't often experience.
The grass next to you rustles as he sits down. You hadn't heard his approach, but it doesn't surprise you. He's the best hunter this group of people has. The best warrior, the best tracker. He's the leader's eldest son, and he is the strongest and the bravest. You know from the way he carries himself, the attention he gets from the others. You know from the embellishments on his clothing, whereas yours is plain and unadorned. He is also the only one that has spent any amount of time with you. He seeks you out and you see the whispers of the others. He sits with you quietly as you watch the animals below, and sometimes he points things out to you, tells you their names.
Once, he reached out to touch you, his hands calloused but gentle on your skin. Careful, as if the simple action of meeting skin to skin might be dangerous. He is the bravest among them, but you could still saw the gleam in his eyes that might have been fear. You are strange to them, and touching you is like touching nothing else. But when he sits again with you on the ridge above the plain, he reaches out to do it once more. Fingertips abraded from the string of his bow, scars rough on the back of his hand, he traces a line down the inside of your arm and it makes you shiver. He'd only touched you the once last time, but it must have given him courage because he does it again. And again. Each time watching his fingers or your face. Though the day is hot and dry, you shiver again as your skin raises into bumps.
He smiles at you, and it is such a rare occurrence that you can't keep yourself from smiling in return. It emboldens him enough that the next touch of his hand moves up past your elbow, under the sleeve of your borrowed top. The next to the thick braid of your hair, done up that morning by one of the women. The next to the hollow of your throat. You allow it and begin to touch him in return, his skin hot beneath your hands and smooth except where he's been scarred by his life. He's as careful with each touch as he was with the first, treating you like a thing to be wary of and cherished at the same time. Every moment continues to build his courage - he is not being punished for whatever transgression his boldness may be. You're doing nothing to get away and everything to move closer.
He goes back to the rest of his people with the mark of your teeth on his bare shoulder, the crescent moons of your nails pressed into the low curve of his back, and the scent of you on his skin. And you stay and watch the animals move in the grass below.