Sunset Valley hunting hawk

caribou ivory broke beneath heavy teeth, cen's tongue following into its fractured recess for the taste of blood-rich marrow.

he and @Sulukinak had eaten well. when the rabbit-fur and the slathered herbs had been peeled from his face for the final time, the empty socket stood bleak, a cavern leading into his mind.

it was then that he had brought her on the long march, the one meant for ghelan and red leaf. they had traveled, killed, eaten. 

but cen was ready now to seek his messenger. he stalked down into the higher grasses, looking for the trail of any stranger.

she had proven herself a caribou hunter.

they had gone far and eaten well; and the man cen did not die after his eye was taken. his fever had broken and by now he could function enough to travel.

sulukinak paced between a following position directly behind, and occasionally cresting his blind side so that there was coverage in case of strangeness.

protective now, out of habit.

at last the caribou hunter stopped, and he seemed to tremble with a violent emotion.

"i can no longer be cen." that name; it belonged to a man who had been blinded, cursed, and exiled. the moonwomen had sung it out over the fleeing heads of himself and sulukinak. all from the wilderness to the mountain to the sea would know by now the name that had once been given to a stoic boy eager to heed tradition: cen. swampwater.

he sat down in their paths, the single eye burning out ahead of them as if he could scorch a path back to the moon wolves. back to his wife.

"i can no longer be cen," he said again, resignation filling a hard voice before silence poured between he and sulukinak for a long time.

killdeer swooped for the biting insects. ptarmigan settled in a fatted flock not far away. fieldmice climbed the stems of brilliant wildflowers, but cen saw none of these things.

"so. the name of cen is gone." he turned then, watching her starkly over a dark shoulder. "i will be yikaas." it occurred to him that she too should shift in a flicker of featherdown, become more, but he did not suggest it. yikaas: dawnlight. 

but it was no golden glow which followed him now, only the frothing mists of a cold and warlike morning which would one day bring war to the people of the moon.

yikaas — he turned it in his mind. "you and i must choose a new clan name. if the other caribou hunters come here, they still must not know that i came from bitterbrush." he was rambling now, trying to hold to a sense of identity even while cen lanzadoii leaked away as water from a broken basket.

A trail they'd find. The prophet, the lunatic, she'd wandered much of the taiga. The pines had a way off reassurance, their sweet sap scent. And in the valley, the deciduous trees were soon to change to autumn tones.

Noticing the duo in the distance, she approached, sly emerald eyes narrowing with interest.

he would not go further without words. what came from him drew a look from sulukinak, but not a sound. if he wished a different name he could carry one; but what use was a clan name? they were not a clan. she did not know what that might be - perhaps he meant conclave? but he was not that either, close as he was to being a father-figure; he was an uncle, and as she thought about it - perhaps that was enough.

he shed himself as a seal might shed its fat; he had given blood to the moon village, had it pulled from him with force. he became yikaas. the girl observes, breathing in his musky scent now clean of any trace of these moon people, and accepts his decree.

so name us, she suggests, not knowing exactly what he waited for, or what sort of implication might carry between them with this word he might give.

before sulukinak can say much else, she gets the feeling of being watched; and when she sharpens her attention again to the wilderness, she spots an approaching figure which is easy enough to focus on. her ears up and forward, her tail stiff, she weaves quickly along yikaas' blind side so that he is protected there, and stares.

yikaas faltered then, wondering if there was any purpose for this desire. pain and anger warred sharply within him, and for a moment he bent his head to look at the taiga between his roughened paws.

"we will be the saatsiine. the sun clan. i will be white raven moiety. and when you take a husband, you will be red raven moiety. two halves. same clan."

a muscle leapt in his jaw. "the sun people, who burn the water from the earth and the moon from the sky." the caribou man knew these words meant nothing to sulukinak, for they meant nothing to him. clans. moieties. he was a man without a name and without a son.

and yet the hate in the caribou hunter was growing, growing.

a stranger, drawing close. yikaas chose to keep a placid seat, for he wanted a singular thing from such a visitor. "greet her," he murmured to sulukinak. "you know more of these words than i."