Ouroboros Spine ukijijuk ⏧

kukutux sat beneath the stone overhang. snow had come again but had not stayed; now clouds threatened more spring rain. the gentle wash of it would cleanse the world. she did not know why she could not release the feeling within her heart.

restless, despite the threat of being caught hobbled in a deluge, kukutux moved through the foliage, muzzle tilted and seeking the sight of the lake flickering in twilight glow through the trees. once along its bank, she followed the edge, unthinking.

raimo had gone away to yuelong. the duck did not know if he would return, or if when he did he would still be without; her mind pulled away the moment that wings fluttered beneath her idle paws and without thinking she closed jaws quickly. atsatâtâjuk, hanging in her teeth.

the taste of blood on her tongue, this gift anyone else might call blind luck but to the pious snowbird was a blessing: for the first time in many weeks, kukutux ate of something she herself had caught, and with the ironsalt taste, she felt a small measure of her self-faith return.

when she returned to the new ulaq, it was to wrap the cured lynx skin gently in evergreen boughs and place it within the shadows. in a short while any other scent including her own would be folded beneath the fragrance, and would be ready for sivullik when he came upon her. it was the young one who had joined them that came to mind now, and then, again, always, raimo.

The herdstalker wandered, dyed paws muddied nearly up to the knees from work in her gardens -- a task that had been stilled by the rainfall and the threat of snow. She'd meant her footfalls to lead her to one of the trickling mountain streams hidden in the blackpine of the Spine's upper ring, or maybe to the lake in its depths, to clean her fur but when she passed close to the Moon's den and smelt a fresh scent trail, the herbalist thought to stop and say hello. 

She was curious to learn more about the wisewoman who led them, and the culture she shared with her raindrop daughter -- for she felt that her own native tribe held similarities, that their peoples might have been cousins if not sisters. There had been interesting furs, far better than  Aiwëndil's crude workings, and other trinkets scattered amongst the shadows of the ulaq the first time she'd seen it, but the duo had been in mourning and it hadn't been appropriate to visit or compare methods of hide-working. 

Wandering closer, the mouse called out softly, with some hesitance -- hoping not to disturb Kukutux if she was busy. 

kukutux had fallen into a deep contemplation. she had meant to rouse herself from it and seek out scapulas to test and to chew, but instead it was the polite sound of the cloudberry woman upon her hearth. "najâtsuk," she purled out, and she gained ground, standing before the painter with the weight of her injury at last lifted.

"i was going to the water to search for stones at the side," moonwoman invited in the quiet old way. it was assumed that women went to perform their tasks together, and so those inside their circle made a point to ask, rather than to demand. "they must be small enough to carry, but large enough to ah," a quick gesture meaning how the jaw might be drawn down by the breadth of the rock.

"we bring four, here. they are to hold hides so that they are still while the blood and the skin is torn away." her companion was gentle and heard the words of kukutux. and so the duck had come to find a trust, her words arriving more easily.

Her head dipped as Kukutux approached, repeating the soft words on an untrained tongue that fumbled slightly -- though she did not grasp their meaning. That was alright; she felt she could almost sense the spirit of Kukutux's words even if she couldn't always translate them.  Her pale peridots followed the Moon's gesture and slid back to the pelts within her ulaq as the wisewoman explained, dipping her head in understanding as she fell back from the threshold and moved to walk alongside the pallid lady.

"Would you mind teaching me? We cured hides in my homeland but yours are much finer," the artisan praised in the soft-spoken way a woman might from her homeland -- appreciative and subtle. 

a smile was given. "it would bring me much happiness to show you, lótë." they would go and gather stones now. she set their pace to the water and set her muzzle toward the sandbar, searching for the stones she had indicated.

"here," the duck said softly, meaning to show what she intended to bear back. a slow scuff of claws around the edge began to pull the lake-wet surface free. "do you have the skills of one who helps babies to be born?" she inquired, for it was softly related to their current sharing.

The pale agouti smiled in return, tail wagging as she followed after the moonwife to the shores of the lake. Where Kukutux indicated, the aspiring Naturalist obediently obliged -- paws aligning aside the Alpha's to scrape at the soft loam. The wet grit of it rasping against her liver pawpads was soothing, as was the silence that momentarily filled the air between them. It was common for their conversations, for things to hit a lull and the words to die off for a moment. The doe did not mind; Kukutux was contemplative, wise. [size=small]Aiwëndil had yet to be disappointed in the matchmaker's company; when she did speak, it was usually something worthwhile to listen to. The silences weren't so bad either, often companionable.[/size]

[size=medium]"Some," [/size][size=small]Aiwë[/size][size=medium] [/size][size=small]shrugged her shoulders in a so-so gesture of having rudimentary knowledge on the subject, paws stilling for just a moment in the process of digging for stones. [/size][size=medium]"I never did have much knack for healing. But where I am from, the women often whelp in close cycles -- there were not  very many of us, only a handful of females." [/size][size=small]She would have joined them this year if not for her relocation to the Wilds. [/size][size=medium]"Birthing is a womens[/size][size=medium]' ritual. Men were not usually present but all the she-wolves of my native village would come together to help a woman bring forth her children." [/size]

[size=medium]"I helped in my youth -- at @Sialuk's (reference)[/size][size=medium] age, like you spoke of training her here in Moonglow,"[/size][size=small] the mouse confided with a slight bob of her fallowskin crown.[/size]

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apologies for the horrible size codes, i honestly dont know what happened and it wont let me fix it. T.T

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no worries! the tags have been difficult!

a nod, a gentle sound of assent in her throat. "it was the same in the village of my birth," the moon said softly. "there was always one who carried new life," she said softly. "my mother was irnisiksiiji. many went to her when it was time to dance their babies into the world. and men did not enter our circle."

a time for remembering. "it will be so here."

they would need to carry four rocks back to the ulaq; she lifted one and set their path back.

when they had arrived once more, kukutux set down her burden. "we have an allied one. village duskfire. wintersbane is their hunter. i have offered that he sends his healers to us, so we may teach them old medicines. we wil trade between us."

The two-year listened, as was her habit in any company, though the words of how things would be the same here gave the cloudberry a mental pause. Would Adrastus not be allowed near when she whelped then -- given that they did wed and she conceived? Lótë felt a fretful anxiety grip her for a moment, ears drifting back in a slow droop, but willed it away as she continued to help the moonwoman in her task. It was a problem for another day, one far into the future.

Twice, she followed the wisewoman from the lake to the ulaq, helping to move the stones until they had what was required of Kukutux's craft. The next string of words drew the dove's evergreen peridots and fawnskin auds alike towards the duck, interest glimmering in the pale jade gems. "Is their village close by?" She wondered idly, thinking she might go visit their allies sometime and trade stories like Raimo had spoken of in his homeland.

she shook her head. "three or four days. a hand of time if the rain is here or the snow is heavy." but not so far that they could not travel, if necessary. the cloudberry woman appeared to the taqqiq that she liked the feel of moonglow, and would not go so far.

kukutux herself wondered if wintersbane would send her word that they had become settled. she considered lane for a long turning moment, for she had not seen the woman in a long while.

"wintersbane is a good man. i knew him when we were together in the village moonspear. he wanted me to find him a wife," she recalled with a grin. "but he is handsome. he will have no trouble finding wives."

She felt a dive of crestfallen disappointment at the matchmaker's words. Too far for convenient travel, especially when there was so much to be done in their own village. Even now that the ulax was peppered with the dwellings of new faces and their caches were full with the efforts of her comrades, the deerstalker hunted and worked her hides as best she could. There were other things too: her ambitions to record the history of Moonglow, the cultivation of her herb garden, and the possibility of studying pregnancy and midwifery with Kukutux and Sialuk in the near future. Perhaps in the fall, if any children she brought to Adrastus' hearth were old enough for her to travel from them for a length of time, before the cold set in. 

"Such men rarely do," the two-year jested lightly in return, grinning mischievously as her thoughts turned to the brumal sivullik. Wintersbane appeared in her mind as another form of the man she admired: responsible, kind, nurturing. It didn't seem far fetched that the dove should come to respect their allies' leader, given that she found a chance to meet him someday.

kukutux brought a dripping hide from beside the ulaq, dragging it to where its wet surface could be held down with the four stones. she ran her bottom teeth along the underside, scraping tissue from the skin slowly. these strips she spat aside, then went over this space again and again, until all that could be removed had been.

it was long going, and her neck began to ache before she spoke again, rocking back onto her haunches. "do your people have songs, lótë?" kukutux asked with polite curiosity. surely they did, and perhaps the cloudberry-tea woman might share the words. such sounds made heavy work lighter.

The mouse felt she should be doing something, assisting in some way. But the moonwife's methods differed greatly from her own, she had never before used her jaws and teeth to scrape away the tissue of the fur's underside -- and there was truly no way to help without getting in Kukutux's way. Sometimes, it was more beneficial to simply stay out of the way. 

Her ears perked with the leader's question, a rueful expression overtaking her dimpled features. "Some, but I must admit that I don't remember the words." A lie, tumbling from her lips with no small measure of guilt. She could hear the words but they were sung in her mother's voice; this she was not quite ready to share.

"We had a few great poets though," she supplied, hoping this might suffice. There were many beautiful ballads and compositions from her native tribe, all that were surely safe enough to reveal.

she lifted her head. "i do not know the word of 'poet.' does it mean words as well, words like songs?" she rested now, beginning to grind the edges of the pelt between her teeth. a paw smoothed along the cleared underside, and in the next moment she had begun to scrape again.

such grinding eventually wore down the jaws of the women in her birth-place. but good men fed them, and if they had become mothers with many children, those kills too would be apportioned to the ageing she-wolves.

and so it was a cycle.

"Aya," the word fell from her lips naturally as she responded, evergreen orbs going wide as the soft sound died -- a hint of apology in the surprised peridots as they sought Kukutux's. She must've picked the word up from the moonwife but she hoped it wouldn't offend the Alpha to hear the cloudberry accidentally slipping into the matchmaker's mother tongue. "I mean, yes. But they are spoken rather than sung," she explained, her tones soft as the clover creeping along the forest floor.

"Many poems are about nature. Many more are about love," she smiled, gaze flitting to the process that Kukutux used to treat the fur -- committing it to memory so she might try it sometime. It would take longer and her jaw would surely be sore but it seemed worth it, her furs would be softer if she could remove more of the stiff rawhide. 

"My favorite ones are those that are sad...or the ones that speak to some piece of the soul," she tried to explain it but couldn't be quite sure she was successful. Those compositions that whispered to some poignantly lonely and aching corner of her heart -- the place where emotions resided mayhaps.

more than that; kukutux brightened, to hear that she and lótë also shared this, or that she had been teacher and unknowing of it. words that had the sound of a story, not a song. she imagined it must be like when grandfather tusk man grunted out his monologue from the cold beach, but far more beautiful. anything this sister of hers chose to do would be lovely.

the natural world. and love. lótë preferred the hearing of those words that touched the secret places of the spirit, and kukutux nodded knowingly, pausing to stretch her jaw and roll her shoulders, saving against the pull and grate of the long-wound hide. "in my village, we each had a spirit-name. our mothers whispered them to our ears, and then again before we became wives. perhaps it is like this: a word that wraps a part of you in a sacred way."

Elenwë's daughter listened, raptly so. The more she learned about Kukutux and the culture she'd been raised in, the more she wanted to know. It was beautiful, the things she spoke of -- not just this concept of hidden names. "Do you believe we all have those names or is it just wolves from your tribeland?"  Lótë asked curiously, silently wondering how she might find out what her own spirit name was if she had one. It was then that a thought struck her, with no small measure of surprise tinting it.

She had a secret name already. How easy it was to immerse herself in the woman she had become, cloudberry and greenpaw to the moonwife she had come to adore. So easy, too easy, to forget the girl she had been. "Do you share these names with others or is it something sacred?" 

Should she tell her friend, tell someone at least? Or would it be taboo of her to speak of the identity she'd once possessed?

kukutux was not at first sure of the answer. beneath her paw, the spring spirit thrummed as if it were a paw upon a stretched and hollow hide. to her now a memory came, a thought of the branch-rack she had once possessed in her ulaq upon moonspear.

so many fine things, lost.

is it shameful to think of them?

the inner spirit shook its head.

you were wife. it is not taboo to mourn for a wife's place.

it was not one she would have again, for she would be moonwoman now until the end of her days. no mere companion to a husband, and kukutux considered this only with a swift exhaustion.

"i do not know." voice soft, caught by a spinning inward mist. "i believe all things have a name that is not known to any other. but we do not say them out loud." gaze clearing to rest upon the curious cloudberry sister, enveloped a moment in lótë's beauty, reminded too harshly of agana, a spearthrust lodged between her breastbones. "the name is a sound to hold a piece of the spirit. it is who the gods know us to be. if we make a gift of this name to another who lives, we will be lost forever in the passing between this place and the throat of sedna."

Lótë drank the answer in, accepting it with a minute nod. Perhaps she had not been raised in Kukutux's culture and her spirits did not hear the voice of a foreigner. Maybe the dove's could not hear Kukutux's. But it was best to be safe and avoid mentioning the names of any departed loved ones, or her own former name -- her true name. 

Her mother's secret name came to her readily. Starbrow. Softpelt-singer. Her own spirit was not so easily captured beyond being  Aiwë, daughter to Elenwë, perhaps she would need to meditate on it further when she was alone. 

The herd-watcher wanted to ask who Sedna was but she could hear the exhaustion in the Moon's rainfall octaves. The aspiring ecologist figured she was fatigued, that her injury still tired her out easily. Instead, she fell into a companionable silence -- offering the murmured words of one of her favorite poems before the two parted ways. A glimpse into she had been before Lótë, even if she could not share it all with her tribe-sister.

Rummaging through winter borne woods,

a touch of spring somehow evades her,

the little ragwort-picker.