Ouroboros Spine sisuuk ⊹

backdated to ??? time isnt real

@Arcturus led. kukutux wandered. she walked where the kisuk walked. she moved where he directed. if they rested she did not. if her crying came and went she did not hear it. 

your spirit is untethering. the inner voice warned. 

let it be untied. i have lost them all.

finally pain cut through lack of reason; she sat down heavily and looked to his depthwater physique. "i will die here." her voice, dull.

for she did not know yet that sialuk lived.

they traveled, two bent backs against a soft flurry of ashy snow.

at the spine, kukutux sat. she turned her sorrowed gaze to the male, her voice shorn. a thousand yard stare lurked in her gaze.

"no you won't." arcturus answered, immediately sorry for the way it rolled off of his tongue dismissive. kukutux was in no condition to travel much further. arcturus' brow knitted. "if you were meant to die today, you would have died wi--" oh, that hurt -- "with them." he looked about them, grief knifing his heart. "tell me how to treat your wounds."

"aukkaa," kukutux muttered unthinkingly. a blink of haunted jade eyes before she answered, belatedly, "they die and take my soul with them. i do not want to live without a soul."

another blink, tears brushing slowly from them. "aukkaa —" aya, this ugly circle to be caught within, "melt the snow. the bone cannot be — only rest will mend it. the snow," kukutux whispered, staring at moonspear, voice trailing into a voidless shock.

much as arcturus loved kukutux, he could not wrap his mind around her belief of spirits -- particularly, her belief her soul had left her body. his gaze hardened, for he had borne his own grief his entire life and, was she to suggest he lived then without a soul?

did arcturus even believe in souls?

he did as he was instructed, pulling a shard of snow in his jaws and letting the warmth of his tongue trickle over her ugly wound, with her instruction, he'd make a mound -- but he watched her carefully for any signs of pain to break through her thousand yard stare.

she missed the way his eyes had hardened, but the brush of his care brought kukutux slowly back to herself. she watched, she felt, even as her spirit hovered just beyond reach and arcturus filled all of her senses. 

"i —" her voice wavering. kukutux slowly willed her words to rise from the limp palate that could barely form such. "the night that i came to moonspear, you did not choose me." but her tone was not bitter, only wondering; she looked upon the face of the man she had long and silently loved, as with the blackfox, as with the trader; all of them for their own reason, and arcturus had always been the one she had never quite known.

"if you had stayed with me you might still live within moonspear. and you would have also been chosen to go to the dancing lights. i am glad you were not there," voice shaking upon the end of a sob.

for a short while, kukutux's voice failed her. arcturus remained silent, having rather filled the void with his own turbulent thought than his blundering, useless words.

when at last she spoke he thought that at first she was reproachful; he waited for that final strike, the singular line that might pull to the present all the pain he had caused her. instead, the topic shifted -- and the blame, wherever it was put, was not solely saddled to his own shoulders.

arcturus pondered this: both the dancing lights, and how his own selfish heart had done more than simply cause kukutux heartbreak. had he stayed in moonspear, perhaps he might have seen that star from above coming. perhaps it might have been he reduced to ash, while his family lived on.

painful.

"i am sorry for the hurt i've caused you." arcturus felt his throat burn and his voice flicker as if a dying star. "i am not glad for that."

and just what if he had taken her as wife -- what if all that transpired, transpired anyway -- and he had ferried her off of the mountain, where she would never know so precise and painful a grief? if only --

the duck gave a sharp movement of her head, one she did not mean to be so fierce but it appeared in this way. "it is not time to speak of apologies. only to look forward. everything that is in the between of you and of i is forgotten." they would start anew, arcturus and kukutux, and this time, this time, she meant to keep her affections toward him only sisterly.

a difficult thing to do when the mountainwolf, fragranced with the deep waterbound scent of green lands, held himself so close. kukutux lay herself down, tasted soot within her mouth. "i will sing for them here. i will wait for them to come down from moonspear."

forgotten? arcturus wondered of what witchcraft kukutux spoke, where one could lay their pains down from their side and never think of them again. his own skin was thorn after thorn, every little scrape a hardened edge in which would forever remember its insult.

she spoke of howling -- arcturus stayed the impulse to say it would do no good. life had turned him bitter, he knew it. a singular nod was all he gave: he would join his voice with her own for a short time, weaving a tapestry of song that he hoped would lead any stragglers down from the ruins and prove him wrong.