ava was reticent. the boys were growing stronger. dinah had made herself part of the land.
and heda was thoughtful, looking out to sea. in time she would rise, and as she often did, she would search out all eight of her children, as if in the very act of glancing upon their faces she might assure herself they still were.
and to god she called now, silently, asking for his help in dispelling the enmity she felt had crept onto their sacred island.
a long lope sent heda off in a patrol.
ava trundled after heda's loping form. nearly nine weeks since her birth, and six weeks since her induction to heda's brood.
and yet, still she was outsider. it was in a way intangible - the way one might look at a picture that by all accounts looked right, but something was off.
a deep sense of loneliness marauded ava. not even her siblings could fulfill that sense of something missing, for it came deep within; the treacherous pain of gradually becoming something whole.
it required parts of the self to fracture, first.
a chirrup sprung from within her chest as the distance between her and heda closed.
the long pale legs stilled, and heda turned to look at the small daughter who had come to her from across the sea. she had nursed this child, spoken into the tiny folded ears of god's love, embraced the girl as one of her own.
and yet, like ava, heda too felt the stirring of a difference to which she could put no words. "hello, my lamb," she clucked back, raising a paw to invite little amara closer, into an embrace. "i was going to the tidepools. do you wanna come with me?"
drawn to heda's slim arm, ava pressed against the warmth held between cloudlike fur.
she looked longingly upwards, where heda's fine face was framed in bright arrays of gold. her fur seemed to glitter, streaking away in her vision.
the tidepools. ava's ears pricked in interest and she began to jig lightly under heda's shadow.
heda wondered if the girl would ever speak. she would not question the will of god, but she knew the lack of a voice might affect little ava later, when they left the sanctum of the island to visit the mainland.
but that was something for another time.
"we're going to find clams, if we can," heda told ava as they strode down to the pools; water soon swished around her ankles and she looked at her daughter with an amused expression. "what do you think?"
not for the first time did ava look upon heda, and think her mother impossibly beautiful. there was something about heda and caracal both -- they were touched by a grace that bolted past ava like a misfired arrow.
her ears pressed forward as heda marched towards the pools, announcing they were to hunt clams among the flotsam. ava had no idea what clams were -- she made a quiet inquiring noise as she fell in step alongside her mother.
"tidepools have a lot of food," heda explained to ava. "clams, fish, oysters. shrimp. sometimes frogs." plunging a paw into the nearest pool, the island mother demonstrated how to wiggle one's claws about against the edge, searching for the textured surfaces different than the sandy soil.
emphatically, she pulled free a clam, cupping it in a muddy grasp as she held it out for ana to see. "now you try, baby lamb," heda encouraged, her golden eyes bright with enthusiasm.
some of these words were new to ava, but not frog! her eyes kindled with light as she leapt excitedly at her mother’s heels.
she settled, watchful and drinking every bit of knowledge she could. heda’s thin arms reached down through the sand, extracting the ugliest colored thing ava had ever seen!
her jaw hung as she excitedly nosed it; it smelled funny, its odor distinct from that of sea salt and kelp, but somehow married to its environment. ava nosed the wet sand impatiently, trying several times to extract her own hideous mollusk but each time resurfacing empty handed.
finally she felt something firm and nearly threw it from excitement. she held it aloft, beams of bright sun refracting its edges as she proudly held it before mama; look! she mimed in wonder — i got one!
little did ava know her first catch was a rock.
ava was quick, watchful. observant. heda watched the girl's efforts, offering an encouraging word or two.
ava at last pulled not a shell or organism from the tidepool, but a stone, a glittering seawater sort of quartz. heda made as if to wipe some of the muck away, revealing more scintillation.
"we can't eat this," she told the small girl, "but look what god's showed you. look how pretty it is." the stone reminded her, somehow, of air-bubbles along the perimeter of ice floes. "i think you're meant to keep it, ava."
what! this shape was not clam?
ava nearly flung it -- but mama gently guided her hands towards earth, brushing sand from its dark surface to reveal pock-marks millennia old. ava inspected this new surface curiously. she had no inkling of icefloes or the dark waters that housed them. to her, it was just a rock.
could god really speak to her through stones? she turned the thing around, studying it. each faceted edge told a story unknown to her. how had this rock split from its larger form, when, what powers moved it?
she looked to mama wide-eyed, suspended in a quiet disbelief she dare not utter. the rock was placed carefully aside -- she would remember its spot, but for now she wanted to show heda how good a hunter she could be.
ah! she found a spot where the sand was soft and easily pulled back. she dug and dug and dug -- her paws seizing a hard form and pulling it up to the surface.
a clam? she turned it over and nosed it -- rewarded instantly for her curiosity by an acrid beam of water aimed right at her face.
ava put the offering aside, and heda squealed a laugh as a clam defended itself from the questing teeth of her daughter! "they spit like that so you don't eat them!" she exclaimed, stepping over to scoop the offending animal from its burrow.
delivering it directly to ana, she would show the girl how to pry the shell, with effort.
if they worked well and if god saw fit, they would have a goodly store of snacks to bring up, to share with the others.
sweetharbor remained peaceful.
rebuffed by a harsh stream of water, ava shrieked. heda was quick to action, securing the clam in her hold.
she pried the hard shell open, revealing a string of meat anchored to each end of the shell. ava approached this cautiously, eyes squinting in anticipation of a second burst of saltwater.
before long, a game was made of it: who could collect the most clams, who could pry them open faster? mother and daughter worked together — ava securing, heda prying — until a small bounty was prepared for sweetharbor.