Ouroboros Spine i am the one thing in life i can control

i know we have others but I wanted to get this ball rolling if you have the time for it @Kukutux <3

Doe walked a brisk path through the snow.

Beneath her breastbone, knowledge. Understanding. She tucked her head around the corner of one of the healing ulax, peering at the downy white coat of her little brother. At his tail, the scars marring the side of his face. Maybe one day, he would tell her about them.

She backed away to allow Kassuq to continue sleeping, and carried on. Up the path towards moonwoman. With every step, the lofty winds of destiny felt as though they stirred the hairs of her pawpads. As if this was correct. Ascension up the path, ascension towards moonwoman. She paused for only a moment, then stuck just the tip of her snout in.

Anaa? She spoke soft, well aware this was rather early. But the thought had kept her awake long past the sun’s descent, until it was the first thing she could even think to say this morning.

May we speak?

songs, lifted over her sons.

songs, lifted over her daughters.

kukutux sang for what she knew and what she did not know.

the jadestone eyes closed, opened, took in the moondoe.

"say your words to my ears, spring-snow," kukutux murmured, motioning her daughter closer.

Vairë ducked into the ulaq at the prompting, blinking a few times to get her eyes to adjust. Her own eyes, the soft colors of spring, found the jade eyes of her anaa. Wordlessly, she collected herself at her side, leaning to look at her after a moment of peace.

Have you received word from Moonsong? She decided to ask first, before she decided to bridge the subject she didn’t think she had the strength to before that day in the woods.

They had lost a sister, a daughter, but gained back three. What did it say about Vairë that she was more glad that her little siblings came back than angry that her sister was gone?

"i went to the ice mountain. i offered shikoba and ajei or chickadee and kivaluk, as sunshine people. he wished me to choose a leader from among them. it would be shikoba, surely, but —" a sigh.

"he said then that no moonglow ones should be sent. that he would seek his way alone. and that when the sun comes again, if moonsong stands, then i will teach them how to follow our ways."

She closed her eyes.

Her leaving, perhaps, hurt their people more than they showed. Vairë glanced at Kukutux out of the corner of her eye, wondering.

Would that make you happy? She asked a moment later, fully turning her head to look at her mother.

Travel. Teaching. Would it make you happy? Happier than here, happier than here where lies are buried in the soil, happier than here where the hurts are so close to the happiness they may as well be hand in hand?

mother's awareness, glimmering.

kukutux placed her small worn paws atop the younger softness of the moondoe's own.

"this would please me. i am ready to begin. but i must know one thing: will you be anaa when the sun's warmth returns?"

She knew. Vairë didn’t know if what else she expected. It often seemed as though her anaa knew everything when she was a child, and now as an adult in her own right, she had yet to feel disproven.

To her question, the doe mulled for only a moment. She thought of the bear-heart within their home, brought to her seemingly by the spirits themselves. She thought of warmth, distant but approaching by the day. Children, stirring the air with laughter.

Yes. There was no denying that.

pleasure in this.

"i am ready for you to join us now as leader."

kukutux had not been prepared to become moonwoman until she was to be mother a third time. but vairë was not her.

moonmother welcomed the lesson she had learned from ariadne's sadness over kigipigak.

"i will give you my knowledge and my wisdom. there will be much to learn for many years. but when your second children have stopped asking for milk, i think i will become only mother to the moonvillages."

it was sweetly bitter to think of this, her years as moonwoman coming to an end, though there was such glowing hope in the moondoe that kukutux could not be so disappointed.

And there it was.

Vairë bent until she could touch her nose to Kukutux’s forehead, a smile tugging at her face.

I will always welcome your words, your teachings. There will never be a time I won’t look to your words, your guidance. There was a lump in her throat, she named it love.

Thank you, anaa, for raising me. Even from those who had not, from those who had left her, Vairë managed to set aside some of the bitterness to scrawl the lesson across the raw meat and sinew of her heart.

In the end, she couldn’t control it. She could only control what she did.

the favored forehead, granted a kiss. "i would do it all over again, vairë."

breathless; joyed tears standing in her eyes; "and now i can be moonmother to all, and pass on the knowledge of healing."

but not all.

and she knew she did not have to say this to her daughter.

the sunshine secrets would remain so.

Vairë felt her breath hitch a few times, but she stayed tear free for the most part. She slung a leg up, pulling her mother into an embrace.

And I will lead our people. The burden wasn’t so heavy, not anymore. It settled across her shoulders like a well worn prey skin, comforting with its weight, but not stifling.

Ready, she told herself, the little her that lived in her chest.

Ready as we’ll ever be, the child with too sharp eyes answered.