Moonspear ⥉ silam inua ⥉

for @Massaraq, @Sialuk, and @Vairë <3 ceremony can be as deeply or as cameo-involved as u would like! <3 no posting order!

"your brother did not come back properly from his spirit-walk," she told only to the ears of her daughters. "this is a place of much power, as you know, sialuk. rebirth. we must take him to the world of spirits and walk with him back to this place."

moonwoman had brought her skin of lichen now, dried and ground by paw. she slung it over narrow shoulders and now moved upward, up, to where she as a young wife had kept her first altar. the duck knew all paths of moonspear and lingered only a moment beside the place where sialuk had been born, gathering the traces of power into herself.

first: purification of body in the hot springs.

flesh steaming, pelt warm, their family gathered into a small circle of stones.

blood from fresh-killed rabbit, dabbed to foreheads and wrists.

sedna.

tooteega.

lynx.

we ask for you.

we ask for you.

the son of the moon, massaraq, he must be guided again.

we must take him through.

we must take him through.

the heavens wheeled; the trees swam.

her eyes blurred.

three times would she chant this, circled around massaraq between she and his sisters, their voices overlapping, her own sharpening into ululation.

this man's name is massaraq, she breathed out, asserting him as whole and man before the attending spirits.

her breath; humming; thrummed between the stones and their bodies;

this man's spirit name is taliriktuq

ah! by this would sedna know him!

a spirit name was only for women to know, and so women would keep it from this night on.

lichen-powder, mixed with water, offered from her paw, so the dream would wake in them all and so they might lead brother and son from that empty plane of existence.

Massaraq had come back from his journey broken. If not broken, then certainly not whole. It was why he had come to Moonspear today, reminding Sialuk of the girl she was before she had departed village Moonglow. A cloud enveloped her younger brother's spirit, and it would be the duty of the women to make him whole again, to ask the spirits for their help in guiding him on his next journey. Sialuk's own voice joined that of her mother's and sister's. She felt the wet of the blood on her forehead and wrists, willing her own spirit to join with the others so that they could take him through.

Massaraq followed, ghostly and quiet to Moonspear. His first visit. He did not know what to think, he had imagined coming and yet seeing it he barely took in the towering stone as the wind whistled past him through each hair on his pelt cutting to the skin cold. The hot springs burned. And when they circled around him, the smell of blood thick and touched upon their fur he felt the beating of his heart rabbit ahead, fearful. He wanted to run, to break the circle and flee and never look back. The faces of his family he struggled to see as shadows and light moved across them.

He breathed and the pounding in his ears made his vision and thoughts hazy. He was seeing them but he was slip, slip, slipping and he did not know where he was falling. Darkness and light, vision and void, swam. Which? He tried to hold onto the words and yet their repetition droned across his skin making it impossible to distinguish fully one from the other the epicenter of the movement.

here not sure if I read it right but I think there might be a bit of a continuity shift here taliriktuq is Massaraq's spirit name, and I think tingenek is Kassuq's

breathe, brother.

breathe.

before kukutux, the expanse of light brightened, narrowed, curved.

her limbs were heavy, her mouth dry.

she looked for the shade of massaraq, looked for the black tendriling she felt held her son's essence rooted where he could not grow.

chanting to fill her throat; inside herself she searched for her son, and when she touched the edges of his awareness, kukutux grasped;

led.

come forward.

come through.

she was no spirit-talker. the duck did not roam the world of the dead.

but for her son she would dance between them. for her son, she would come through.

to any onlookers, they would only see a tight-knit trio of swaying wolves, for the battle was fought beyond all mortal sight.

shadow of mother pulled upon shadow of son at their tenuous connection, guided by the thrum of lichen; i am here.