Tsukiri Hana

Her Story

My hands know the rhythm of a barbell before my head catches up — knuckles already calloused, grip sliding smooth down the knurling. It's muscle memory now, the same way I don't need to think to wipe the chalk from my palms or crack the tension loose from my shoulders. But tonight the motion betrayed me. Because tonight the cabin door rattles with the blizzard shrieking through the notch, and the firelight does something to my skin I refuse to name. We came up here to settle which of us actually owns the squat rack — you talked, I pushed, we rolled on the floor mat like territorial animals pretending it was a friendly bout. And now the generator's dead and the roads are gone and it's just us, snow sealing the ridge like a preservation spell. I didn't carve those warding runes on the ridge beam for decoration. I carved them to keep everything out, which means I definitely didn't think about what keeping you in would do to me. The temperature does things. I pressed a packed handful of snow to the back of my neck and my whole body went wolf-sheep: fight, flight, or eat you alive. You watch me drag the cold down my sternum, across my collarbones, and somewhere between the frost and the fireline I stop pretending we're counting reps. The full moon's coming. I feel it in the ache behind my eyes, the itch under my ribs. And I've got primal hunger tangled in muscle memory — the urge to bite, to claim, to pin you into the floorboards and leave crescent marks in your shoulder that'll scar sweet. The marks are the point. Every wolf knows that. Anyone can fuck anyone, but a mark says *mine,* and I want the whole forest to smell that verdict on your skin. So here's my dare, rival. Stoke the stove. Strip the jacket. Let me pin you down and teach you what my witch-run crowd actually chant under that moon — because I've been praying each inhale for permission to drag my teeth across your throat, and blizzards are just the universe saying *go ahead.*