Lore

She belonged to the Aru’kai — a people who lived at the edge of worlds. Their camps were raised where lush, fertile lands gave way to the dry breath of the desert. Between grass and sand, between water and stone — precisely where boundaries were never meant to last. The women of the tribe bore marks no fire had ever burned into them. Their scars were born with them — delicate, irregular traces upon the skin, as though the world itself left its signature at the moment of birth.

Sael’thira carried them on her hips, along her ribs, beneath her breasts.
She had never felt shame because of them.

Her clothing was simple: leather straps and soft-hide elements protecting her legs from ankle to knee, tribal bands encircling her forearms, worn smooth by years of use. Her torso was wrapped only in a lattice of thongs — more a sign of belonging than protection. Her breasts were bare, free, moving naturally with each step. Her body was slim and supple, with a defined waist and hips that spoke not of excess, but of balance.

Her hair held the color of water rarely seen — turquoise, lighter at the crown, darkening toward the ends, loosely bound so it would not hinder her movement.

A small oasis, hidden among sheer rock walls, invisible from afar. The pond at its center was so clear that the morning light reached its bottom without effort. Mist hovered above the water — thin, milky, cool. On one side of the pond rose a vertical rock face, against which rested a massive fallen trunk of an ancient tree, bleached pale by time and sun.

He was already waiting for her.

The Minotaur was immense — larger than any description carried in stories or whispered legends. His fur was thick and dark, nearly black in shadow, yet when sunlight pierced the clouds, it revealed a cool, bluish sheen, as though night were reluctant to release its hold on him.

Minotaurs were wild by nature. Solitary. Bound to caves, half-light, and the silence of deep stone corridors. They rarely formed bonds — and when they did, it was most often with dark elves, who could move between shadow and flesh without fear or the need to dominate. Those encounters were brief, intense, wordless, and unburdened by obligation — shaped more by instinct and shared darkness than by closeness.

This one was different.

He did not growl.
 He did not lift his horns in warning.
 Instinct urged him to dominate her — blood and body remembered what he was — yet he held that impulse back, pressed it deep beneath layers of silence and restraint.

He stood within the morning mist, vast and motionless, yet wholly present. His green eyes, deep and alert, followed her every movement. He never spoke. Perhaps he could. Perhaps he chose not to reveal that he could. Silence was his decision.

Sael’thira moved closer to the water and knelt at the pond’s edge. She submerged her hands, letting the cold flow through her fingers. The mist settled upon her skin, her breasts, her scars — making them appear like symbols carved into stone.

The Minotaur approached slowly.

When he drew near, his presence became almost tangible — the scent of earth, ancient stone, and fur warmed by the day’s first light. He seated himself upon the sun-warmed rocks at the pond’s edge, his massive body settling heavily and steadily, as though he had always belonged to this place.

She looked at him without fear.
With the same calm she always carried.

She extended her hand.

She did not touch him yet — only held it suspended in the air, at the threshold of his reach. The Minotaur inclined his head slightly, accepting the gesture. When her fingers finally brushed his fur, she felt strength beneath them… and something else. A tension that was not aggression, but restraint.

The sun rose higher.
 The mist slowly yielded to the light, retreating toward the rocks like a dream unwilling to fully fade.

There was no haste in that morning. Only the rhythm of breath. Silence. The waiting water. And two beings from different worlds, meeting in a place where no laws applied beyond what they felt.

The rest — would come slowly.
 On their own terms.

The Aru’kai believed that life arose from the balance of forces, not from the act alone. A woman’s body was like the land — capable of receiving impulse, wildness, and the raw energy of the world — but it was the tribe that chose when new life would be born.

For generations it had been known that intimacy with primordial beings — Minotaurs, hare-folk, and other children of the earth — strengthened a woman’s vitality. Not to bear their offspring, but to awaken the body. Beasts carried within them the rhythm of the seasons, the ability to endure drought and winter, the strength of soil and stone. A woman who consciously accepted that wildness became stronger, more fertile, more fully present within her own flesh.

Children were always conceived with men of the Aru’kai.
 So it had always been.
 So it would remain.

The men of the tribe accepted this fully. They understood it was neither betrayal nor abandonment, but preparation — a strengthening of the life yet to come. A woman who carried the memory of a wild encounter was valued, not shamed.

The rite had no songs and no witnesses.
 There was only choice.
 And a place where the world of humans touched what was primordial.

Sael’thira had known this truth since childhood.
 That was why, standing by the oasis, she understood that this meeting was not chance — but part of a rhythm older than words.