Ouroboros Spine wolf boy

Ever since Moonglow’s return from Hoshor Plains, Ipiktok fell into the routine of village life. Like any growing boy his age, he hunted and explored. No peak of Ouroborus Spine was too challenging to climb, and Ipiktok left no pebble or shrub unturned

The hand of time slowed for no wolf. At eight months old Ipiktok had transformed from a tubby pup into a strapping young lad. His tawny fur had grown long, longer than most, and soon his frame would fill in completely. It was as if he was cut from the same outline of his Saltshore father, Rhaegal: tall, rugged, and broad-shouldered.

Recently, his anaa had given birth. Ipiktok felt he should be more involved in their society, but a restlessness stirred within his spirit. Because of this, he sought out his grandmother, @Kukutux.

“Anaanatsiaq,” his changing voice asked as he stood outside the Moonwoman’s ulaq.

there was much of rhaegal in ipiktok.

and yet there was nothing of that wayward man in the hunter who her grandson had become.

his voice had deepened. "tutaaluga."

a curl of dried caribou meat offered now, alongside tart early berries.

her green eyes studied the boy. "what fills your mind?" did the presence of new children unsettle ipiktok? he knew the love of his anaa had not dimmed for him, surely.

Grandmother invited him in.

"Thank you." A small bit of scran was offered but Ipiktok felt no appetite. He looked at the curl of meat and the small berries thoughtfully. It was evident something was on his mind.

Kukutux knew this.

But what was Ipiktok to say?

“Have you ever felt a great spirit lives inside you, just waiting to fly from your heart?” he asked cryptically as he thought of how the morning sun touched the eastern rim of the spine first.

"i have felt this."

he did not eat, his eyes filled with a distant look. "i felt it first when i was girl, becoming woman."

a sigh, a roll of her shoulders as head tilted back, and gaze closed, and her own features remembered. "it felt as though lightning mother had promised me her own wings. sometimes when i dreamed, i flew high, as a snow-hawk or a skua."

Yes! The boy thinks as his bi-colored eyes light up; one the color the sunshine peoples’ namesake, the other thalassic green.

Guilt left him as Grandmother explained she, too, had felt this way. A spirit’s growth from chick to fledgling could not be helped.

He swallowed hard, as if hungry for something other than food.

Did this feeling have a remedy?

“What did you do?” Ipiktok asked, on the edge of his seat. “What did the dreams mean?”

"for a girl of siqniq, it meant i was ready to be a woman, to look toward becoming a wife. my mother and father chose a boy for me. that was my path, ipiktok," she said. "but for a boy, it means you are ready to be a man.  a hunter. that you are ready for your spirit journey."

"it is where i sent arrluk and massaraq and kassuq," the moonwoman explained. "do you remember?"

A man.

A hunter.

A journey.

Ipiktok became quiet as his mind turned inward.

The boy always felt he belonged in the beating heart of Moonglow… and so to heed this wild call created conflict within his spirit.

He was just a lad when Kukutux’s sons sought their own manhood. “No, grandmother,” he admitted. Yet, despite his reservations the tempestuous green of his sea-glass eye shone with excitement.

"But I want to know more," he asked of her.

"it is a journey you must take alone," kukutux declared, her voice adopting the sonorous quality of a long-practiced story-teller. "you must leave moonglow and walk far, far. i will give you a piece of spirit-plant to take with you. its flesh will bring you dreams, son of my daughter."

"you must make a journey until you find a place where the spirits tell you to stop, ipiktok. there you hunt. shed blood over that place. eat the spirit plant. a vision will come to you."

she studied him, waiting for him to understand, to ask more, to be silent. how young he still was to her eye! but how he had grown all the same. time did not wait.

Ipiktok’s brows knit as he considered Kukutux’s wise words carefully. Seriously.

She used the word must.

This meant he could not turn away from this path. He must listen to his eagle-dreams and walk it.

“How long… how long does the journey last?” he asked. “How will I hear the spirit’s words”

Would he be away from his beloved village for days? Weeks? Months?

"there is no number of days i can tell you, ipiktok. the spirits alone will know how long it will be before they tell you to stop. but you will know it."

she sat back, self-assured. "it is your first time to be away so far and so long. that is what helps you to cross over from boy to man."

There would be no timeline, no clear end to this journey. Yet Ipiktok’s belief in the Sunshine people’s spirits was so strong that he trusted Anaanatsiaq’s guidance.

“I will do this,” he committed, voice wise beyond his years. “I will let the spirits guide me and I will make our village proud.”