December 08, 2014, 06:37 PM
Read only.
Her time in Ouroboros Spine had been like a rollercoaster. Sialuk had come in successfully, made several impressive contributions to the pack's caches and begun to learn of those she'd be living with. But, like the cars climbing to the tippy top of the tracks, these things were short-lived, for soon Sialuk's hunting took a turn for the worst and she was on a downward stretch. She couldn't catch a thing, and even prayers to the northern gods did nothing to help. She became reclusive, ashamed of her failures, and in time grew homesick.
The shaman also knew that these were not coincidences. She was being summoned back to the north for one reason or another, and the spirits were ensuring that she heeded that summons. They planted thoughts of the aurora and hunting seals in her mind. They made her hunts fail by whispering to the wildlife of her impending arrival, so that they reacted as though they'd been tipped off. They even made Sialuk feel sluggish and unwilling to meet her comrades.
After having ignored the summons the other day for a gathering due to an inexplicable sense of foreboding, Sialuk knew she could not stay. There would be consequences to come, and though the shaman didn't wish to be remembered as a flake, she couldn't bring herself to look Mordecai in the eye and admit her faults. Instead, she slipped over the short mountain top in the wee hours of the morning on an early December day, with snow falling heavily over the Spine, and left it without a word, her destination the frozen north where her people waited.