sialuk.

saviguk.

kausiut.

callyope.

ariadne.

stratos.

massaraq.

kassuq.

arrluk.

galana.

lómion.

inkalorë.

vairë.

wilwarin.

samani.

a small work-hardened paw pressed itself to the weatherbeaten edge of the closed death ulaq she had built too soon ago and too long ago for this daughter.

a humming, resonant in teeth and skull and bone.

and though she had thought no more existed, the outflowing of tears.

she carried all the years her daughters might have lived, and now too heavy they had grown.

agana’s closed face lived in her mind, scoured there to heart and to spirit. a great weariness lived in kuktux. she saw it also in @Aiolos, and presently she lay her pale muzzle across his fiery shoulder as they looked out across the sea.

”do you have the remembering of these ferns?” moonwoman asked at last, in her eyes a quiet affection as she shifted her paws against the viridian leaves. ”we shared words of those things that were old. and those that were new.”

such love, dancing in her eyes; so many children had been born to their hearth, raised at his side. sun and snow; kukutux caught his paw to her chest, crooked so that she was able to kiss his wrist with a soft flutter of her lashes.

he had adored her through the fall of moonspear.

he had not let her grief change his heart.

even now his eyes were steady, unchanging in their forever’s regard of her deepest being. he was her companion and closest-known, and aiolos knew every valley of her heart and all the deep planes of ice which his devotion had warmed to melting.

”i did not allow myself to say it. but my spirit knew your own then, aiolos.”

no matter the years between; moonwoman wended her arms close, brushing together their mouths, their cheekbones; she breathed in the good salt-sweet scent which he had always carried to her senses and shut her eyes.

when she came away, her face was haunted by so horrendous a sorrow that it seemed for a moment to transfix her love.

and by this aiolos would understand.

she could no longer be.

Sedna called.

”i can give no more. it is me She wants, aiolos. it has always been Her want.”

a curse traded. a curse bestowed. a curse inherited.

she would not let it. she would not let it.

”i can be no more if nuiruk is to go on.”

weeping now, for she knew its truth and her beloved must know it also.

pulled from alabastrine shoulders, the foxpelt. tucked softly against samani’s grave, it was a strip of red as sun man and snowdrop encircled one another, united in the gnawing of untold loss.

and from its darkness, she took the green which a trader of a far-off land had once offered. ”a spirit plant,” she told to his crimson earnestness, and her eyes searched deep behind the hidden places of his own.

these things must only be tastes.

she divided it into bitterest match and filled her mouth with its greedy lash.

coughing.

breathing;

a broken inhale.

oh!

oh

”aiolos,” kukutux said in wonder as emerald spear struck to all arteries and bloodvein. ”aiolos, see the dancing lights!”

a conflagration laid out overhead and underfoot, a burning path of stars lying purple waste to a vivid orange sky, and the duck caught to slow fire.

by which flame might be unbearable, there was only merciful joy, merciful joy and every one of her senses awake to aiolos.

until water lapped where once firestarter had danced between them.

it was only aiolos, aiolos, aiolos.

”uiga.”

the last! the last, glittering sea to illuminate love where it had always stood.