Nocturne Summit ikuallaaktuk ⩛

her mother's voice had led kukutux through the misted snows. she awoke beneath a black tree, the land pulsing darkblood beneath her. my daughter, and the duck's eyes opened. accept what it is to come. the spirits bar you from the dancing lights. they send you

back

a hoarse, ragged inhale. ash scoring the back of her throat, singeing her eyelids; she ducked a paw to protect her face and found red there; droplets of it, leading in a wandering trail to where she had fallen halfway up the slope that bordered moonspear.

what had happened? where had she —

the sound of a child's tears; had she imagined it? agony, clutching suddenly at her legs until kukutux tumbled down again into a sodden heap of grey and found she could not stand again. streaming greenjade eyes turned toward moonspear; a horrible gasp emitting from her torn throat; the air choked with grey. 

the duck dragged herself upward, a shattering pulse of broken bone in her right fore-ankle. blood matted to the side of her head; she swam, searching for the memory of where she had been before — and suddenly kukutux began to scream.

he'd departed shortly after that first quake, the image of violent white light burned permanently in his mind. he told but the one -- @Wraen -- that he was leaving, and he was off into the bitter winter night in quickly departing footsteps.

as he drew closer to his birthplace stone-smoke and dust roiled out from the peaks, settling around his shoulders in ashy mist. along the pearly snow were blasts of grey and red and dirt -- lending the snowcover a surreal shade of redstone arcturus could scarcely reconcile.

his eyes were trained on the distant peaks still when a scream lifted into the air. arcturus froze, a chill sent down his spine -- his family was ahead but that noise could not be ignored. what if it was his brothers, or sisters?

with a hardened lump in his throat and his eyes burning from the fumes of sulfur and melted stone arcturus pressed on until he came across a shape in the dirt-covered snow. she looked to him like a revenant, some half-dead thing pulled from clay and resurrected -- and yet he knew instantly her identity.

"kukutux!" arcturus bellowed as he pulled towards her, eyes scouring her brow-beaten frame. the split along her cheeks, the blood on her paws -- the ash-ruined condition of her pelt. what had happened, why was she here, and where was the rest of the spear?

dissolving into a cough, kukutux spat blood from her irritated throat and inhaled another cursed breath. nothing more had returned to her. a shaking frame she turned toward the dark and familiar creature; "jarilo?" kukutux rasped hopefully, though even as she spoke she knew the word was incorrect.

it was not the studious gaze of her husband, only the worried strain of the mountainwolf's visage. arcturus. his name did not come to her aloud, and kukutux lay down heavily in the snow, tucking her injured leg close. 

and her gaze returned to moonspear. saviguk. sialuk. jarilo. her muscles tensed but would not respond to the attempted lift of her bruised frame. 

arcturus. 

kukutux breathed in again. "your sister no longer lives." whether it was her or hydra she meant was unsaid.

he rushed to her, fear settling coldly in his heart. kukutux was a far shade from the wolf he'd seen their last meeting; ash darkened her face and her eyes were clouded by trauma.

arcturus could not help the way his gaze trailed behind them, back to the mountain -- whatever cataclysmic event had transpired was hours behind them, but still dust and detritus fell like apocalyptic rain over their exhausted bodies.

jarilo? no, not him -- just his wayward and unconstant brother. arcturus' jaws clenched as he thought of his family. had they made it out, were they safe?

your sister no longer lives. arcturus felt a tic beneath his eye. swarms of dust caused his nose to trickle, like he was going to sneeze -- only he felt if he did so his brain might burst through his ears and seep down into the dusted snow. his sister. yama? yami? he had more sisters than brothers -- could she mean hydra, lyra, or alya instead?

throat tight, arcturus spoke and felt as if he were pushing gravel through a throat already raw from suffering. "which one?"

"hydra."

her voice silent as gaze trailed salt and lot's wife toward moonspear, toward the smoke that trailed darkly into the air and starkly against the snow; kukutux found herself reminded of falling stones and the cries cut off in the crushed ulax

"i was" — nauk? nauk? and arcturus' voice sounded like a clamshell knife cutting at the back of her skull, opening flesh and pulling it over until kukutux felt her nakedness fall away into grim ash.

"i was at the ulaq and i saw the light." and "hydra — i —" she had not seen but she had known, for the moonwoman knew now that it was mira she had heard weeping as her pale aunt stumbled away and away, one paw before another as body set itself in the traces to bring kukutux to safety when her mind could not.

she looked toward him now, tears crowding behind the hide walls of her throat, the curtain of her lashes. 

but they refused to fall.

bittersweet that in moonspear's final hour they might find an ally in arcturus. his gaze swept to kukutux in disbelief, then hurt -- and finally, grim realization that this new reality settling in around his shoulders like snowfall could not be erased.

hydra. his jaw clenched. there were many things about his family he didn't love, but death he loved even less. no use in asking how when he himself had witnessed the flare of white that had seized the world, witnessed even the smoldering backside of what had once been moonspear's proud spine.

and of lyra? dirge? jarilo? nikai, alya? of hydra's children both past and present? a pulsing drumbeat drowned most of his thoughts. arcturus felt tears lance his eyes as smoke and ash mingled with it, burning. he exhaled roughly, iceshards pressed against his throat. "where are the others?" it was always him, wasn't it -- the one to pick up the pieces while his family destroyed everything -- only now, it was his family that laid in the rubble.

she shook her head, hysteria beginning to break through the last of her control. "i do not know, arcturus. i do not know where my children are." she sensed the sudden sharp spear of his pain, breaking through the center of his chest, behind the sun-gaze that had by turns both warmed and chilled the duck.

faint sobbing in her ears. her shoulders convulsed with the force of her grief, how she made herself still and quiet as she could even in this moment. her mind refused to fathom that her son and daughter might have been crushed beneath the stones, a horrible circle of moons back to the thing that had driven their mother from her first home.

"i will wait for them," she breathed out with a determination even the throb of her ankle could not compromise. "the circle of mountains. it faces moonspear. it is close to the glen, where antares leads." it bordered the glacier where she had laid the grey ostrega brother's bones to rest. but in her grief she knew she must not intensify his own. "it will be a good place."

her words, monotone; she refused to think that jarilo, sialuk, and saviguk would not return to her. "i am sorry, arcturus." the light showed his face to her again; she leant closer, forgetting all that had gone on between them until this awful moment, seeking to comfort as well as glean his own.

of course, selfish of him to ask where the others where when she --

arcturus winced under the sting of communal grief, remembering then he was stupid; she had children, a mate -- she had lost a home, and her family and here he was asking her for a collected headcount of all her pack members... while meanwhile, a ring of smoke rose from the desolation above.

"i will help you find them." and take you there -- arcturus stepped forward to offer his shoulder to lead her to the glen. his long muzzle tipped back as a howl was loosened into the night sky for anyone within earshot -- for his brothers and sisters, for kukutux's children -- and even though he could not help it, for hydra as if she would ever be capable of throwing her voice to the skies again.

i will take you there.

and suddenly kukutux felt a great shame boring through her. the inner spirit clucked its tongue. you were cruel to wraen and now everything you threw before her has been taken.

too much to consider it now, but the truth singed kukutux from veins and onward. she was thankful that arcturus did not seek to take her back among them; she would not have gone, for the simple winding words of humiliation that had returned to her tenfold.

the mountainwolf smelled of wraen, of places that would be green. she steadied herself against him and slowly rose, lifting her smoke-cut voice to rise lowly with his own, a song to seek life and evade death. 

they would go. tears cut through the ash and blood that clung to her alabaster face.

karmic justice was the last thing on arcturus' mind as he helped kukutux stand. together their voices threaded to the sky -- he kept an ear turned to the icy wind, and heard no call in return.

silence and death rained down on the earth in answer.

arcturus moved in quiet shock, the way survivors often do. he lead kukutux along old pathways by default. he might have been pleased at how easily it all came back to him, were it not for the fact he was almost as shell-shocked as his companion. his legs took a mind of their own, while his mind drifted to scenes of his family.

one by one, they fell and their faces faded away.

and yet, the mountain still stood.