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Aloy's stomach folds over itself in knots as she approaches Barren Light, ignoring the way her fingers twitch and tremble at her sides. The desert night brings a cool breeze along her brow, but sweat beads there regardless.
"Okay, Aloy, you can do this..." she mumbles to herself.
Talanah is easy to find, her bright Carja silks standing out amongst the crowd of tanned hides and brushed steel. Though she's definitely a strange sight to see this far out west, the other Oseram patrons pay her no mind. She stares thoughtfully at her mug of ale, and Aloy knows a heavy heart when she sees one.
Aloy quietly sidles up on the stool next to Talanah, a gentle hand brushing along those elegant shoulders as she does so. Aloy cannot resist the opportunity to touch her Hawk, even if it is nowhere near how she actually wants to.
She craves Talanah like a woman starved. It is her shameful desire in a life she has devoted to everyone else—her one selfish craving, even as the world cries out for a solution only she can provide. If Talanah asked, Aloy would follow. But Talanah would never ask this of her; her Hawk knows all too well the burden of destiny and duty, and it is the world's cruelest irony.
Too many nights Aloy has spent thinking of how she might worship her Hawk, in any way the older woman might desire. It brings another flush of shame to her cheeks as Talanah gives her a warm, but forced smile.
"Aloy!" she greets, waving over the bartender who plops a thick mug of ale in front of her. "It has been too long, and we did not have time to catch up amongst all of...things. Tell me of your adventures, my Thrush."
It should be criminal the way Aloy's heart flutters as Talanah calls her my Thrush, stomach twisting and jumping around like a riled up Leaplasher. She hides her brief moment of muteness by taking a thick swig of her ale. It's never been her favorite flavor, but she needs something to numb these nervous jitters. She has been looking forward to this for too long only for her silly girlish desires to get in the way of a conversation with her Hawk.
Aloy and Talanah regale one another with tales of their hunts, adventures, and battles. The bartender keeps the ale flowing, and soon Aloy doesn't mind the sour bite of the liquid as it runs over her tongue. Their laughter becomes raucous and unrestrained, pleasant tingles running over Aloy's skin everywhere Talanah touches. She can't help but lean in, drawn to the older woman like a moth to flame.
Despite her progressively inebriated state, it is not lost on her that they have not mentioned Amadis once.
She is watching Talanah’s lips, the dark stain of her face paint beginning to rub off on the rim of her ale mug, when the bartender finally shoos them out. All of the other patrons had cleared out long ago, and the moon is high in the sky. They stumble out of the makeshift tavern giggling like a pair of girls, arms linked together as they head to Talanah's camp. It isn't much more than a leather tarp covering a lean-to, but it is their kind of comfortable. They collapse on the bedroll, limbs tangling together against the brief rush of desert chill.
"Oh, how I've missed this," Talanah says, grinning from ear to ear. Aloy's breath stutters as her Hawk tucks a lock of hair tenderly behind her ear, eyes flickering up to Talanah's. "Remember when we spent the summer like this? Teaching you, hunting Redmaw, felling machine after machine along the way."
It is a wonder Talanah has not heard her blood rushing through her veins at this point, for it is a constant thrumming in Aloy's ears by now.
She has never been this close to another human in her whole life—pressed chest to chest, hips flush and slotted together, dizzying sparks running up and down every inch of her skin. It makes a strange hunger bloom within her, one that makes her chest ache and her core burn with the heat of a Blaze fire.
"Do you miss it, too, my Thrush?"
"If I could spend the rest of my life on the hunt with you, I would." The words leave Aloy's lips faster than she is able to actually process the vulnerability of them. "I would give my life for you, my Hawk."
"Do you truly mean it?" Talanah's voice drops to a dangerous whisper, the barest hint of a tremble in her question. Her eyes glint in the firelight, making Aloy's stomach twist hot and sharp. "Be careful to mean what you say, sparrow. My heart can't take much more treachery right now."
Emboldened, Aloy brings a hand up to trace the back of her knuckles along Talanah's cheeks, green eyes flicking up to meet that ashen hazel, glowing like molten metal in the firelight. She feels more than sees a shudder run through Talanah's body, only alighting that heat inside of her.
"Would you let me show you?" Aloy can barely hear her own voice over her heart hammering in her ears. Her hand travels over Talanah's elegant jawline, down her neck, and Aloy relishes in the gasp that she pulls from the older woman. "Please, my Hawk, let me show you that you are no second choice."
Talanah's eyes flutter closed for a moment as Aloy's fingers trail over the column of her neck, over her collarbone and shoulder. She pulls her lip beneath her teeth as she gives a nod, the heat of arousal and a desperate need for touch burning behind her eyes. The shock has not run it's course through Aloy yet, her fingers trembling as she reaches for Talanah, the panic of hesitation obvious in her shaking hands and stuttering breaths.
Her Hawk sees her falter, and promptly weaves her fingers through rusty locks and tugs. This alone pulls a whine from Aloy that she has never heard herself make, that heat in her gut twisting like hot iron.
"Very well, Thrush," Talanah murmurs, her other hand coming up to cradle Aloy's jaw. Her thumb traces Aloy's lower lip, and now it is Aloy's turn to shut her eyes in absolute bliss. "Show your Hawk your worth, like you always have before."
Talanah's lips are soft and move against hers with a graceful dance of teeth and tongue. Aloy, by contrast, is clumsy and hopelessly nervous, but every gentle caress from her Hawk fills her with a slowly building confidence. Her Hawk pulls Aloy into her lap, and with hands she has dreamed about roaming over her body and her core flush against Talanah's muscular thigh.
"Take this off," Talanah commands, tugging at Aloy's tunic. "Let me see you."
"I thought I was the one who was supposed to be taking care of you here," Aloy retorts with a nervous, breathy laugh, but obeys regardless.
It's one of her simpler outfits, one she bought from an Oseram trader a few days before, and with a quick motion she is exposed before Talanah. Her nipples harden quickly beneath Talanah's heated gaze, and Aloy is hit by the significance of this moment. Aloy feels dizzy with the arousal washing over her body, feverish beneath her skin.
"Oh, my Thrush..." Talanah murmurs, and Aloy shivers as her Hawk's hands run up her body. "You're so beautiful, so beautiful for me."
Aloy's head rolls back, eyes drifting closed as Talanah's fingers ghost over her ribs, the hard plane of her belly, before finally skating along the underside of her breasts. The heat in her stomach twists sharply, feeling herself grow slick in her underclothes. Her fingers dig into Talanah's bicep, letting out little stuttering gasps as her Hawk's fingers trail teasing patterns along the sensitive skin of her breasts.
"Please, don't tease me," Aloy manages to gasp out, barely able to hold her eyes open to meet Talanah's. "I haven't—I've never—"
Talanah's hands still momentarily. "Never?"
Aloy's chest heaves, cheeks burning as she looks nervously down at Talanah's unreadable expression. She bites her lip and nods, unconsciously mirroring her mentor.
Talanah pushes herself up onto an elbow, a hand weaving into Aloy's hair and pulling her in for a searing kiss. Aloy whimpers happily into her Hawk's mouth as their tongues slide together; her hips twitch against Talanah's firm thigh, sparks shooting up her spine.
"So good for me," Talanah breathes after they break apart, pressing kisses along Aloy's sternum. "So beautiful for me, Aloy."
Between hearing her own name on Talanah's lips and the latter's fingers tugging and playing with her peaked nipples, Aloy can't help the ragged moan that escapes her mouth. It is deep and desperate, and Talanah's enthusiastic reaction only makes her wetter. Talanah's hands burn like forgefire along her already heated skin as they explore the newly revealed planes of Aloy's body, sending shivering sparks along her spine and making her keen.
"Wasn't I—ahh, mm—supposed to be the one—fuck, Talanah..."
Her Hawk gives her a near predatory grin, leaning up to take a pert nipple into her mouth, teeth and tongue lavishing the sensitive skin with praise. Talanah's hands comes to splay along her waist, that devilish touch making her dizzy with pleasure. She props up a leg and suddenly Aloy finds herself keening, delicious friction shooting through her as Talanah guides her hips to grind along the older woman’s sleek thigh.
"Shh, we'll get there," Talanah murmurs as she presses hot kisses against Aloy's stomach. "This is what I need right now. Be a good girl for me first, can you do that?"
Aloy's brain has short-circuited, and she nods breathlessly, caught up in every minute movement of Talanah's attention—but Talanah won't let her off that easy. Suddenly, all of her Hawk's touch is gone, and a desperate whine falls from Aloy's lips, quickly followed by a little gasp as Talanah takes firm hold of her jaw.
"Look at me, Thrush."
Aloy can't help but obey, and Talanah's predatory grin is painfully attractive. Talanah's umber eyes glint in the firelight as she traces Aloy's lower lip with her thumb, and suddenly it is so hard for Aloy to keep her eyes open. But she does, and she hopes that her Hawk can see the heady desire in her eyes.
Aloy has never had time for romantic dalliances, and even less time to think about sex. She was separated from anyone of appropriate age for most of her adolescence, and the moment she wasn't, she was set off on a quest to save the world. But she knows enough to understand how this works, and to realize that the tremble beneath her skin when Talanah speaks to her in this way means that she is very, very thoroughly enjoying this.
"I want you to tell me," Talanah murmurs with a dangerous glint in her eyes. "I want to hear you say how much you want to be mine, Aloy. Can you?"
Talanah's hands are roaming over her as they have before, tending to wounds after a particularly vicious hunt, but this time her veins are filled with fire and they ignite the sparks that run through Aloy's blood. There is something desperate in Talanah's voice, an ache that Aloy knows well—the yearning to be loved, to be accepted and made whole in another's heart. It is an ache she has suffered her whole life with, and under her Hawk's reverent gaze it is almost enough to forget about entirely.
"Talanah," she breathes, curling over to press their foreheads together. It's hard to speak, her mouth thick with desire and breathlessness running raggedly through her, but she manages. "I wish I could tell you how many nights I've spent thinking of you like this, of how it would feel to have my skin under your deft hands, to hear you say my name with desire on your tongue."
Talanah's heel digging into the ground beneath them to slot her thigh against Aloy's core; those lips, those devilish lips of hers mouthing along Aloy's sensitive neck. Her breath hitches as delicious friction runs through her, words faltering into breathy moans.
"Keep going," Talanah murmurs, teeth nipping gently at her throat. "Just like that."
"You are as deadly as the hunt itself," Aloys gasps, brows furrowing together in exquisite, delicate torture. "I've ached to be your prey, my Hawk, to be taken apart and undone beneath those hands of yours, to yield beneath your gaze. Let me become undone by you." Aloy's voice becomes breathless, barely more than a whisper above the crackling of fire. "Please, grant me that honor."
Aloy has asked for nothing the way she pleads with Talanah now. She is strong-willed and broad-shouldered, ready to take the world on with nothing more than her spear at her back; no, she does not ask, she takes what she must. She is a woman of forgefire and teeth, harsh as the Wilds, but Talanah makes her soft in a frightening sense. Talanah is able to disarm her with the same refined swiftness that has felled countless machines, and beneath her Hawk's unyielding gaze, she is completely and utterly exposed.
She bares her neck and waits for the killing blow.
It does not come; instead Talanah cradles her even more fiercely, fingers dipping beneath linen and cloth. The whine Aloy lets out at this is high-pitched, more girlish than she'd like, but Talanah doesn't seem to mind as she explores deeper, past her coarse, ruddy curls until she finally finds what she is looking for.
Aloy is alight, every nerve singing through her thrumming blood as Talanah expertly memorizes her, trailing along the seam of her lower lips. Talanah's fingers tease over her throbbing clit, drawing a guttural moan from Aloy's throat before brushing at her entrance. Aloy's breath hitches, waiting for Talanah to enter her, her entire body craving that sensation—but her Hawk's fingers slow.
Their eyes meet, and Aloy's stomach twists like hot metal again at her Hawk's blown out pupils, dark and gleaming for her—what a glorious feeling, to be wanted, to be desired like this. She can see why it is a natural instinct to crave this closeness, to be devoured whole by another person.
"Tell me you mean it," Talanah whispers—and suddenly Aloy understands that it is not just her being undone. "Tell me it is not just the buzz of ale or the convenience of my touch that makes you ache for me. Please, Aloy?"
Her Hawk yearns like any other woman, it seems, for the intimacy of love and desire. This, Aloy is happy to provide; she runs her nose along Talanah's jaw, pressing soft kisses as she follows the column of her Hawk's throat as she has seen so many Nora couples do in the warm embrace of firelight and brew. It is undeniably intimate, breathing each other in, feeling one another's heartbeats thrumming just beneath the skin.
"I swear on the honor of the Lodge, my Hawk," Aloy murmurs, lips pressed to Talanah's metal-punched ears. "My heart has yearned for yours since the day we laid eyes on another, and every moon in between."
Her words are thick and heavy on her tongue, dripping with more vulnerability than Aloy has ever let past her own lips before—but the sincerity of them must ring clear because Talanah's fingers move against her, finally. They dip into Aloy's drenched entrance, ringing a gasp from her raw, dry throat as they push inside of her.
"Oh, so wet for me," Talanah praises. "By the Sun, Aloy, you're so beautiful."
They move into a rhythm that sends Aloy's head spinning, Talanah's nimble fingers curling inside of her, the smooth heel of her palm nestled against Aloy's throbbing clit. Aloy's hips grind in stuttering, desperate motions against Talanah's. Her Hawk's free hand comes up and caresses her everywhere—her breasts, the taut muscles of her abdomen, before finally settling along the curve of her hips. Talanah's nails dig into the soft skin there, guide her rhythm as she rocks back on Talanah's fingers.
Her cheeks are flushed and hot to the touch, sweat beading on her brow as that tightness in her gut curls tighter and tighter, growing as warm as molten steel. She whimpers desperately as she feels her ache grow more and more insistent, pleasure rising like flood waters in the valley. Talanah's name spills over her tongue more times than she can count, fingers tightly curled in Talanah's silks.
"T-Talanah," she gasps, brows knitted together in an expression of damn near painful pleasure, chasing that peak that her body so desperately craves. "S-So close, so good, oh, fuck—"
"That's right, Aloy," Talanah murmurs, soothing her with the hungry look in her eyes alone. "Keep going, I want you to become undone for me, give yourself over, that's right, good girl..."
Talanah's sweet, heady praise helps her over the peak—(more like shoves, violently and suddenly)—and Aloy comes unabashedly around Talanah's fingers in her cunt. Her hips rolling a stuttering staccato as she rides herself through her orgasm, choking out her Hawk's name, whimpering praises, prayers and everything in between.
"So good for me, so beautiful, I've got you, Aloy."
She feels her wetness leak out of her as Talanah removes her fingers, sliding them out of her underclothes. Aloy is struck with yet another return of that damnable twist in her stomach as her Hawk holds her gaze and places her fingers on her tongue. Talanah hums in pleasure as her lips wrap around them, covered in Aloy's slick before she licks them clean.
"Fuck, Talanah," she breathes, before leaning down to kiss her.
Her Hawk tastes of her own juices, delicate salt and musk swirling on her tastebuds as their tongues slide along one another, allowing the delicious burn of post-orgasm to fan the flames of their yearning ever higher. Her desire does not wane like it does when she is alone; it merely takes a moment to breathe, before flaring once again inside of her.
It's her turn to tug at Talanah's silks, which easily give way to her nimble fingers now that her mind is not clouded by her own desperation for pleasure. Talanah's breasts are a little larger than hers, spilling out of her small hands, but Talanah gasps in relief all the same as Aloy leans down to take a dusky brown nipple into her mouth. She swirls her tongue around the hardened bud, relishing in the way her Hawk keens under her, the twitch of her hips that is reminiscent of Aloy's own just moments earlier. Aloy allows her lips to drag up Talanah’s sweetly-scented skin to murmur in her ear.
"Let me show you how the Nora worship."
For a moment, she is worried that she has said something silly—she is not religious, and she has never truly been a Nora—but Talanah's eyes burn with a fire that tells her she has said exactly the right thing.
She explores with the refinement of any proper Oseram delver; there is not an inch of skin left unexplored, left uncovered by her lips or her reverent touch. When Talanah finally parts her legs to revealing her dripping core, Aloy is left stunned—what beauty, what godliness exists apart from this moment? Her lips are flushed the same swarthy color of her nipples, framed by soft curls of dark hair. The scent of her is intoxicating, and Aloy cannot help herself as she leans in to inhale her.
Talanah lets out a breathy sigh of pleasure as Aloy's breath fans across her sensitive skin, thighs twitching underneath Aloy's calloused hands.
Aloy is inexperienced in matters of the flesh, but she allows her desire to guide her as she delicately parts Talanah's lips with her fingers and cautiously drags her tongue up her Hawk's folds. She revels in the throaty moan that draws, Talanah's hands trailing down to gently twist in her braids.
"Oh, Aloy..."
Talanah's thighs tremble beneath her hands, and Aloy takes this as an eager sign to continue. Her heated gaze settles on Talanah's face as she explores her Hawk with her tongue, testing with wavering pressure, occasionally letting the tip of her tongue dip inside to taste the sweetness of Talanah's slick. She is absolutely entranced by the way her Hawk gasps and moans for her, the way her fingers tighten in Aloy's braids with every sensation that pleases her.
Her Hawk murmurs sweet nothings—to Aloy, to the Sun, to anyone who might be listening, which is incredibly endearing. It spurs Aloy on, causing her to grow more insistent with every flick of her tongue, eager to devour Talanah whole. She can feel Talanah's clit harden beneath her tongue, her juices beginning to flow more freely, her muscles tightening up under Aloy's touch. Talanah's heels dig into her back, thighs taut beneath her hands; Talanah's hips begin to roll, her breath growing quicker with every fervent moment. Her hands pull at Aloy's hair so tight it makes her moan into Talanah's cunt, and it seems like that is enough to finally pull her Hawk over the edge.
"Oh, oh—! Aloy! Haah, ah, yes, yes, yes!"
Talanah rolls through her climax with the same elegant ferocity that she hunts with, and it fills Aloy with a glowing satisfaction that surges through her like Vigorstem. She is loud and unabashed, crying out Aloy's name to the heavens in a keen that sends blood rushing back to her cunt all over again. Finally, Talanah's hips slow and her fingers untangle themselves from Aloy's braids as her chest heaves for air.
Aloy presses a final kiss to Talanah's sex, enjoying the overstimulated shiver it pulls from her Hawk, before settling besides her amongst the bedroll once more. Her heart swells as Talanah tangles their limbs together almost immediately, despite the sticky sheen of sweat that glistens along both of their bodies. Their hearts thud alongside one another, and Aloy strokes Talanah's soft hair as the older woman catches her breath.
After a long moment, Talanah's eyes finally peek open at her, her movements as slow as honey in the winter. She pulls Aloy to her for a searing kiss, filled with an entirely different kind of heat this time.
"You are divine," Talanah breathes as they part. "Aloy, by the Sun..."
She has never experienced intimacy like this, and it is strange but not unwelcome. In fact, it warms her like the summer sun of Mother's Heart—a warmth that refreshes her skin and brings her the sweet ripeness of summer fruit. They are both naked, exposed in more ways than the obvious, but her head only swims with thoughts of how addicted she already is to this feeling. Her blood sings beneath her skin, and she knows that she will ache for Talanah's touch for the rest of her life.
"You are no second choice, Talanah," Aloy says, tracing her Hawk's face once more. "Always my first."
At this, Talanah smiles, taking Aloy's hand in her own and pressing the most gentle of kisses to her scarred knuckles.
"Thank you, Aloy," Talanah murmurs, lips brushing along Aloy's skin. "You are more treasured than you may ever know."
This is not saving the world, and it is not fulfilling some long-written destiny. Aloy understands now, more clearly than ever that this is life—feeling her heart beat in time with another, to be seen for once as more than the Seeker of the Nora, the Savior of Meridian, the Champion of the Tenakth or any other damned title.
Her Hawk has always seen her for who she really is—just Aloy, and when Talanah calls her divine, she believes it, this time.