it was a somber little procession which wound up the beaten path among the pines. the fourth lodge had only just been finished, water still glistening from where wet bark had been plastered against the frame to dry. a cache still needed to be dug beside the entrance, and there were no pelts for the small sleeping area at the back.
no lodge faced the other for the sake of privacy. he led @Red Leaf to this new place and set @Ghelan down at her feet.
for now, armfuls of soft and fragrant reeds would have to do for a bed, though chakliux also brought a generous heap of cormorant down for her to do as she pleased.
"rest," he said in seal, wishing to drop the ugly pidgin of mingled caribou words. "you are with us now."



quietly chakliux told the story of cen and red leaf, what he knew of it, to his wives and older sons. it had been on his knowledge of the abuses that rodyn and heph chose to move. and in the same vein, he felt responsible for how close she had come to death in that empty little den beside the sea. cen was not expected to ever return, facing a punishment in moonglow that chakliux did not know more about. he told them that her lingering cough was cen's work as well, not a contagion but a brutality of the sea he still had not asked to truly understand.

he would stay a handful of days to see that she did not die, but then, the seal hunter said quietly with his eyes now upon marina, they would go to the sea ice, his ailing wife and himself. red leaf could be hunted for by his grown sons, and she perhaps would not even choose to stay once the cough had ended.

he spent the next hours bringing materials for taggak's own lodge, making himself available to the children as he piled these things near raiyuk's home and went to hunt for marina again.