the days blended into one another.
kukutux fished and ate; drank meltwater from snow, pressed on.
something had shattered within her; behind she left the peak of moonspear and now stood in a flat wide field of snow, watching as returning elk thundered beyond her in a herd made sparse by the winter. heart fractured; she fought against the urge to say the trader's name.
another strange realm beyond his home, inundated by raised beds of earth. valravn imagined they were the gravestones of ancient titans.
he moved past them hushed, tiptoeing around where he imagined their skulls rested, their tails, their toes -- rounding one such mound, val stilled as he saw rambling shapes in the distance.
elk. snow churned under their great feet, cleaving the ground as they went. a low mist spread behind them -- val turned in the direction they headed only to spot a nearly invisible wraith watching the same spectacle.
instinctively his ears folded as he peered at her -- she looked thin and wracked by winter -- but there was a pallor to her that val could not name. something beyond exhaustion, perhaps.
shyly, val tried to get her attention with a quiet "hi!"
kukutux wanted to see no one; for a quick, violent moment, the woman considered stepping into the icewater and letting herself drift beneath the surface, far and far and far, until sedna came to embrace her.
the sound of a young voice stole her thought. she half-turned, jadegreen eyes setting curiously upon a tall boy who had suddenly appeared between the snows. "hello," kukutux answered, scarcely understanding how she had said anything with the heaviness of her tongue.
it was a good thing val was not telepathic. the mere image of beholding kukutux wish for a watery grave would have sent him into hysterics. his own fear of the dark deep aside, there was little of that call of the void val would ever understand.
the stranger turned to him, her jadestone eyes free of hostility; some other emotion lingered there that val could not place.
yet her tone seemed kind -- for that, val settled at ease. "i'm val!" he chirruped, tilting his head to the side as he studied her. "are you okay?" there were many things val was not, but he was intuitive -- and something hung around this stranger like a cloud val could just barely see from his periphery.
"it is good to know you, val," the duck said, feeling herself thaw somewhat beneath the warmth of the boy's voice. he was free of wariness; it eliminated a barrier between the curious willow-built child and the heartsick bird.
val asked after herself. kukutux demurred. "i have traveled a long way from my home. i have the ... i have the missing in my chest," the moonspear woman blundered. but he was a boy. he would not mind. and it was not a lie; she longed for the known press of the shadows in her ulaq as well as to dredge herself beneath the salt. "are you traveller also?"
it is good to know you, val. curious as that saying was, val liked it. he decided he might save it, and say it some day. it was different than the way his parents or packmates spoke, but it had the same message -- the same feeling of comradeship and oneness.
he wasn't smart enough to immediately understand what kukutux meant after, but he was intuitive - and he thought, not for the the first time, that there was a shadow in her gaze he could not quite place. "not a traveler. i be lost." val admitted with a sunny grin, not in the least perturbed. he did, after all, get "misplaced" often. "maybe i can help you find the missing? what is?"
kukutux felt a smile curving her lips despite the well of sensation inside herself. a sweet boy, and she was reminded of saviguk, who waited within moonspear for her. "it cannot be found. but maybe you will be able to help me find something to bring laughter." the duck gestured to the land before them. "lost? i too do not know this place. what here will bring joy?"
she did not mean to speak in riddles, but perhaps a trickster spirit guided her now. while she waited, the moondrop faced in the direction of the sea, surely cold and still thickened with ice at this time in the season.