i know we just finished one but...
hunters gathered.
he had watched @Chakliux tense for a moment and at once he thought of the things the man had said. how they both felt adrift as dead weight in a healing den.
meant for the world beyond.
seal 'unter.
YES
the hunters gathered.
chakliux was roused from his staring, lids fluttering.
"little brother," the seal hunter answered, voice clogged with sleep and anger.
to lie here was an affront. to be so weak was a humiliation.
little brother he was called.
teach me,
his words hoarse but with warmth. inclined to hear the man speak more of things bearcurse could never understand.
silence thrummed between them.
"what do you fear?" chakliux asked in a low voice, eyes fixed upon the arching of their wooden roof.
many days he had lain here. he would not allow it to be many more.
bear,
his nostrils flared.
but i be namin' myself after it. carryin' it.
his shoulders proved bony mountains, peeking through the prickly fire of his nape.
"and you carry his scars. i am seal hunter. you are bear searcher."
was that a man's revenge on the boy's voice? he thought of his own billowing hate for the sun man.
"so give blood to nanook, king of white bears. one of his kind cannot be hunted alone. chase them into the mountains, little brother. hold it high upon a peak. force it over."
he had seen it done once upon a glacier.
"a seal may grab a hunter and pull him far beneath the water until he drowns. a bear can crush a hunter with a single blow." he paused. "but he did not crush you. and i did not drown. so. you do not fear the bear. say it."
much was said and while bearcurse had asked to learn, it felt like too much.
nanook. mountains. forcing it over a peak.
to say he did not fear it. when he still did. when it still haunted him and his skin crawled with a raging fire at the thought of those dark beady eyes.
but seal hunter wove brotherhood through them once more.
"but he did not crush you. and i did not drown."
they had both survived a great thing. powerful and harsh. now the seal hunter turned this knowledge upon a boy still too young to use it in full it felt. even if his first year shined on the horizon grimly.
he went to speak, yet it felt like the air was gone from him. a stunned look upon his face.
chakliux shook his head.
"do not speak. take your strength and put into healing. nothing is accomplished only with words."
pain made men. men made bonds.
his sons would wear the mark of the seal hunter.
"where will you live, when you have healed?" he thought, considering.
and like that his mouth closed, tongue pinched between front teeth.
the soft taste of pain welled in his mouth again from it.
dunno.
and he meant it. you?
he seemed a man who could live among the mountain people. yet he had never known any seals to climb away from the sea.
"my hunting-brother builds a lodge for my wife while i heal. when i leave this place, i will join them and continue the building."
this did not cost him pride. if kannoyak were the one lying to heal, chakliux would have made the same for his mate.
"perhaps you come with me. be little brother at my clearing." he did not yet know that the boy shared blood with others in the village.
guilt swayed him in favor of a stranger.
terror froze him in the face of such a grand change. bearcurse could truly become such under the man. he could swaddle himself in new furs and be called little brother among seal hunters.
what is li'l brot'er to you?
he softly shifted so he could better look upon seal hunter now.
how could chakliux explain the old ways of kinship ties? he searched for the right words and the correct way to say them.
"a boy who has no people has many clearings open to him. here they will call them hearths." the pale wolf pondered the difference before continuing.
"all the families of the village share with him. one day he chooses where he will be. he becomes a son of the clearing, brother and son to the hunters there, brother to the wife of the lodge, brother to those born next."
chakliux had only ever seen it done. he had never extended the opportunity, let alone without a lodge of his own to yet barter.
he thought of meerkat and njord, waiting for his moment of healing to close. waiting for him to come live among them. he did not forget all the things they had both been there for. he did not forget the times they visited him here while he laid in a tired haze.
but he was grasping for straws in the dark, searching for the light in places he had never seen before.
found new things to fill the void of things lost.
i...could do it.
he thought he could. he wouldn't know, until he was up and moving again.
do li'l brot'ers be learnin' to seal 'unt too?
he did not forget the man's promise of teaching him to hunt.
"yes. i will teach you the words of the seal hunter village. you will be one of us."
a village inside a village, perhaps.
a new name, even.
chakliux was growing tired. his silence went on.
he wished that even he could ask for more words.
yet the tiredness was thick between the two of them.
quennell could hold these things in his dream, he felt. only a soft grunt of brotherhood was given between them.
and he allowed sleep to take him.