Ouroboros Spine uluktuk ⧝

can be read only or one reply <3

moonwoman had brought them all to the grandfather stone.

it reared high above the grass and the wolves, a granite sentinel with sunwarmed surface. and kukutux knew it to be older than the sky itself.

they had felled a deer and consumed much of its flesh. now the duck sat with @Aiolos and @Ariadne, @Stratos, and @Callyope. surely one or all of them would soon run to join @Mojag as @Shikoba and @Inutsuk brought him up to their meeting. @Qadira she saw as guardian-woman, and her gaze meant to favor the woman today.

she had asked @Sialuk to come, but her heart would not be be heavy if her daughter chose to stay in the cool green of moonspear. her soul was tied to it. and @Samani, her heart filled with love for the daughter of the second year.

@Keyni and lótë next, sung from the village and the forest. @Wilwarin and (@Hermes) and inkalore, asked along to join their family once more. @Makan, a croon.

kukutux would look for each face in their gathering but soon she passed her words into the air.

"i want to tell you a story about love as the sun returns to his bed."

twilight sparkled in navystone over the village, starlight chasing the fading glow upon the horizon.

"there was once a hunter named seeking owl. they called him this for he was not a good hunter in the daytime, and he was never satisfied with what the village gave him." kukutux sighed exaggeratedly and rolled her eyes. it was the part of story-telling she loved the most.

"if a man offered that seeking owl might marry his daughter, and become settled owl — well, there was much laughing." her teeth glimmered in a wry grin at the teasing of the other hunters. "but seeking owl said no, and he went hunting again."

"he lived on one side of a great island. and on the other was another village, where goose down woman shared an ulaq with her family. seeking owl hunted farther and farther from his people, until at last he was lost in a storm of snow."

she grew somber.

"he was lost for many hands of time. his village did not believe that he lived after a while."

"one day, goose down woman was searching for kuajautik, but it was seeking owl that she found, covered in new snow. she helped him back to her ulaq, and her mother gave him medicine that forced his spirit back into his bones."

"of course he only saw goose down woman when he opened his eyes. and he loved her at once." another small grin. these parables of affection satisfied her greatly to give. "she saw in his eyes that his heart was set upon her, and she found in her own that she felt in the same way. they were married and their faces were full of light."

"such light can cause one not to see." she looked toward her near-grown children. soon they would seek their own ways, and in the following hand of moons, might begin a new iteration of the blood-kin in the village. "in the cold of the next new snow, goose down woman went out with her people and leapt into the sky and became kanuk, the snow-feather. and seeking owl could not follow. but it did not stop his love."

"that is why you hear him calling for her. you hear him ask many things in the darkness, which is where he is a great hunter, and where it was that goose down woman found him."

"if you find such love in your heart for the one that fills your eyes, it will be a lifting in your spirit. a marriage might have the need that you will answer hard things, but one of them should not be love."

"it is the time of ice being broken and the time of long rivers flowing. these hours are sacred. they are yours to choose."

Sialuk answered her mother's wish, sweeping herself up near the matriarch with pride. Anaa's stories were some of her favorite ways to pass the time, and the raindrop had always found they had many layers to them. Sometimes, it was not until she had heard a story for the seventh or eighth time that she uncovered its most hidden undercurrents.

She listened with rapt attention to each word, her ears latching onto each syllable, each sentence, with claws that could have belonged to a crow. It was a story of men and women, as many of her mother's stories were. Those stories were some of her favorites, weaving together two lives, tearing them apart, sometimes mending them back again.

When her mother rolled her eyes, Sialuk laughed lightly. When she spoke of the hunter refusing to settle, Sialuk tsk'd at him. When seeking owl was presumed dead, Sialuk frowned. And when he opened his eyes to see goose down woman, Sialuk felt a flutter in her chest. But it was the last part, when the two could not be together, that Sialuk found her heart grow weary for the pair.

In this tale—as all of her mother's tales—was a lesson to be learned. Sialuk knew the first layer, but it would take many more times before she could uncover the many more beneath it.

It was a lovely story, mother, she said, touching her cheek to Kukutux's.

The grandfather stone was often visited by he and now he comes again, at the side of his first wife. Once they arrived he would join her perch. He rest within the long grasses, the flowing river at his backside. He found happiness within the bounding bodies and whipping tails of children around him.

The Sunman listed to the tail of the hunter and his unsettling. How it was fate which brought the pair together only to show that they could not be together always. Aiolos did not know why Goose had jumped into the sky and left. Why Owl could not follow her... Kukutux stories were always a matter of interpretation.

I believe I've already chosen... He speaks with a little grin and a wave of his tail back and forth along the ground as he lay.

From the shaded glen, Lótë came -- with those members of their family and the new village who would come, surely a tradition in the making. It was a thought that gave the cloudberry a fond smile as she approached the stone and the wolves of Moonglow. She shared greetings with @Shikoba and the children scampering around, and directed a warm smile to her sister and moonwoman's hearth as the second wife settled in with the rest of Kukutux's audience. 

At first, Lótë believed the story to be a retelling of true events that the matchmaker had seen unfold but quickly came to the realization this was another story of her foremothers that had been passed down for the sake of learning. Her mind drifted to the beginnings of Moonglow and Raimo, thinking of the huntsman whose hunger could not be satisfied. 

It was with hope that Lótë clung to the pale duck's words, fervent in her wish to hear that Seeking Owl would find all that he looked for. But alas, not all stories ended happily -- as the cloudberry well knew. 

Even so, the painter tried to look beyond the poignant longing the tale inspired in her heart. It was a wise reminder not to be blinded by love, as the three-year had once been. Its culmination left her quietly pondering, wondering if ever Seeking Owl's cries in the night were answered -- if they were even meant to be answered. 

Stories were hard.

Often long and too many words he did not understand. He stayed on the outskirts of the gathering, content to glimpse around for clues as to how to respond.

The word love seemed repeated plenty. Owl and Goose, wolves he did not know, even as she spoke of them in great detail. Most seemed touched by the story. Faces alight with kindness and warmth. This was a look he could not mimic.

Too confused, too lost. Perplexed by the emotional speech he had been called for.

Only briefly did he look to @Lótë as if she might have the answers like so many times before.

Instead, he only felt a simmering of something he had still not figured out. There was a deep desire to slink away back to the glade, except he had come to learn that such a thing might be wrong.

So he only looked away, eyes upon the darkened sky.