Ouroboros Spine I'm playing your game

back to the mountains.

she's forced herself here. back to the only place she's known. the only true home. 

but she cannot make herself step upon the village. 

it's a frail step forward, then another back.

a stumble on weak legs... 

...and again, forward. 

but no... she can't. 

she left them. left @Kukutux. 

for a man. a stupid man; he who was only a boy then. 

but she let it all happen. and now, she would pay for her sins. and it was only the moonwoman that she would allow to judge her for her failures. to condemn her, in all.

"nasamik."

her voice was surprised, but held welcome. the green eyes were suffused with worry. "it is good to see your face."

but the old superstition rose. "where did you go?" 

and who had she returned to be?

kukutux, but she is hardly seen, much less heard. 

I watched the water many days... she begins on a croak of a whisper. 

her eyes are distant, focused on nothing but an image of the children that never were. 

...but, they don't come. never to return.

they are beneath the water, and I cannot see them. no matter how long she willed it to be so. 

I failed him. I failed them. 

there were so many failures she could voice. 

bad wife... bad mother... that's all she felt like.

she did not know these words.

she had not known that nasamik lost children upon the mountain. had these spirits drawn her away?

"what water?" asked her gentle voice, affectionate despite her worry that this was not who showed its face.

water. 

had it even been water she'd been staring at for so long? she was sure it was, but maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her. maybe it hadn't been water at all; but only the tears that had stayed in her eyes until she'd had no more to shed.

he took them... she trembled now, both voice and body. 

...buried them... where, she didn't know. but still, her mind went to water. 

is it possible to bring death into the world? that's what it had felt like, anyway.

am I a curse to life? now she sees kukutux. her eyes never leave the woman she once considered a mother-figure. 

she'd given birth to one child. but the two she'd failed took priority in her mind.

a mother, grieving.

but did she only wear such a face?

"who, nasamik? evil can be brought into the world in many ways. who took them?"

her paw went out now to touch the shoulder of the one she had known.

who?

she knew a name. but they weren't who they had once been.

not to her. not anymore.

my... no. not that. chakliux.

a name she both hated and missed, all in one.

they came... not breathing... and he took them. buried them. hid them away so that she could never look upon their faces.

she was hysteric, almost. the sobs; they wouldn't slow, nor cease.

omens.

and too much shifting in the moonworld. kukutux stood and begin placing dried meat and fresh berries inside a small skin.

"nasamik." she offered the pack. "chakliux is not here. go to moonspear," she said softly, warmly, and with a woman's knowing pain. "their spirits call to you from there. go and hear them. come back after this. and then go to moontide, nasamik, for you must walk beside the living."

raiyuk was a man now. his mother had been gone for much time. but nasamik could not exist in a world of ghosts forever.

sobs became sniffles. 

she tried hard to focus on the words of kukutux. 

but what was she saying? to go back to moonspear, and then to moontide?

but why there? she voices her thoughts aloud, her body slowly coiling in on itself. they will not want to see me... raiyuk... chakliux.

she was dead to them now, surely.

"it will not be as it was before, nasamik. you cannot return to moontide as wife and mother." only to show that she had returned, that she could explain what had happened. it was what kukutux would have chosen. but chakliux had moved to marry again, and raiyuk; he did not speak of her.

but moonspear; "but first, you must speak to those small voices which have led you to return. it is the closing of that pain first; seek this first, nasamik. the next step of this journey will come to you."

a gesture to the pack; "eat. i will bring you to the healing ulax. sleep. let your mind rest before you choose anything."