Ouroboros Spine not today

@Kukutux and/or @Vairë?

she and @Panuk remained within the grove. she still wore the ramskin of white elk as a promise.

somehow time seemed stilled there, but it was not so different here in the birthlands. she walked with careful steps as if the land might try to grip her and cradle her like when she had been a babe.

it was the face of moonwomen that she sought out now.

for guidance, for permission, for life.

wow was just thinking we needed one :o

aiolos had gone to moonspear on the words of kukutux. fiercely she missed her sun man, but knew that for now their village only reminded him of ariadne's laughter and what had been lost.

callyope came gently up the path. her mother saw the gleaming pelt, the soft vital beauty of her daughter, and she feared that sedna too would see the love she bore her child — and take her as well.

tears pressed. she opened her arms and held callyope with a long sigh.

<333
vaire still welcome at any point!!

it was good to be held, so much so often.

still she wished it did not come with grief and sadness. cherished all the same, she placed a kiss to her mother's cheek. ignored the signs of age that had perhaps been accelerated by so many loses in so few moons!

panuk stays with me. i see much of samani, but she could not say it. the grove feels lighter with him there.

the grove.

she had not been back.

she did not want to go back.

images of callyope beneath that water struck her mind as if it were a dry tree.

kukutux let out her breath in a long breath. always, always, she had held to the ideals of her daughters as their own, as only needing her mother's support.

now! now — "i feel that you and panuk should come back to this village. white elk too. yes. that place," and she patted her daughter's paw with a trembling touch, "that place."

her eyes stared at nothing.

it hurt her because she knew it might hurt panuk and she knew it hurt her mother.

she held little worries on her dear elkman, who might settle wherever she wished with good hunting and company.

i think panuk is tied to the land. she whispered, not with fear but with heartache. knowing these things might hurt worse. to know that blood might still remain in that grove, living or not.

i will go and speak to him, but i am dedicated to being his ajâtsuk too, anaa.

silently she begged her mother to understand.

soon the boy would be upon his first year, but he was still young with much to learn. of himself, of the world.

kukutux wished to argue.

instead she nodded; "i only — i am afraid, callyope. i am afraid."

she did not need to say why. "do not speak to panuk. if he is bound to the forest, then i would not call him from it. fjall, too, he comes back. he makes his path to the place where he was born."

rambling. she looked up at callyope, her eyes blurred. "you are a good ajâtsuk. i see it. "

the duck did not allow herself to weep, not even for the young woman who must now be present for the children of two dead sisters.

"i have the want to tell you your spirit name, callyope." now. now, before it was too — now.

do not say it.

but her mother was afraid, scared. callyope wanted to soothe and tell her there was no need to be! only it would be too heavy a lie to tell. there were so many reasons to be in fear and she saw now how it shook her mother to a core unseen by any.

the praise felt more like scorn, even if her mother spoke with love.

perhaps she should pry the boy the from the forest, from the lake. bring white elk here and settle among her family. callyope walked between two worlds but it was not the sunshine and the spirit. it was a world of safety and a world of danger.

and a spirit name!

i am not mother yet — but maybe her mother was afraid of this too. that callyope might not become mother or that she would be another lost daughter before it could be heard.

she nodded her head softly. it did not matter as long as her mother thought the time was right.

"no. you are not."

reflexively her paw closed again atop that of callyope; "i waited and samani did not know her own. i waited and ariadne did not give spirit names to her children."

little fox! they had sung for him, but in her heart of hearts did the duck believe he was gone into the twisting grey worlds beyond the reach of sedna.

"if i wait for you to be anaa, then you — maybe you will do this before you are ready. no, no. you must know now."

before sedna makes her choice. she has turned her eye against us, my daughter.

does she see how much i love you?

"it is tattilgat. crane bird woman. i named you here," she murmured, looking up at the familiar old darkness of the ulaq. i named your brother here. and your sister.

"crane bird woman takes a soft form, but her wings are ready to go high, to carry her through a storm of ice." to fly. to flee. to see far, to carry the weight of the things seen but not yet understood.

she felt her mother clutch and she wondered if that might be it, a door closed until she was ready.

but her mother spoke and callyope felt her heart frantically beat within. samani did not know her own — is that why she saw so much of her in panuk? araidne did not give spirit names to her children — is that why her sister's spirit seemed to sing to the young boy?

were there spirits around them now that shifted and watched the two of them?

what she listened with now was more than just her ears. it was her heart, her own spirit that unfurled hearing its name spoken aloud.

tattilgat.

her eyes went to the ulaq. where she had seen the ice first. where her mother had sung many songs and told many stories. where she had first known the sisters who were now gone.

she cried, soft light tears. the last few weeks had felt like a storm of ice and she knew it was not still over.

she moved to hold her mother tight and close. incapable of words in this moment, only able to feel everything deeply and newly all over again.

they held one another, and kukutux this time did not weep, but remained strong for callyope.

she had lost ariadne. stratos wandered the wilds. she was alone in her birth year, facing a time alone without the company of sisters.

tattilgat stirred as her own had, and kukutux let out her breath.

"it is a woman's secret. not even your father knows these names, callyope. they were handed from the first mother to us, and mothers keep them."

"even mothers who did not bear their young first from their bodies." 

moondoe inherited moonglow. if callyope stood as anaa to panuk, she would inherit the names of the twins.

the duck waited.

I am not a mother yet —

she wished to say again but did not. her eyes squeezed shut and she listened to her heart for a moment.

"even mothers who did not bear their young first from their bodies."

her eyes open and she knew, in a way, what her mother meant to say. callyope loved a nephew like a son. perhaps in a way it was good she had not brought children from herself this year. she instead had devoted herself to him, to teaching him their ways so that he might grow as she had, as his mother had.

samani had never known her spirit name.

her heart ached all over again, to think her sister would never feel this spiritual tendril.

i will carry things as mothers do.

for herself, for panuk. for sisters lost.

her mouth ran dry.

she patted callyope's paw. a good daughter. dutiful. willing to carry the great burden of such an expansive lineage.

"samani was born twins. her sister kausiut lives."

her heart raced, raced, young ducks hiding in a soft drift.

"you must know that among my people, twins were an omen of evil. we lay one out for sedna," and she closed her eyes to think of that girlhood memory, turning her back on those thin cries in the cold air.

"but i knew i could not. i named kausiut quamaniq, light over sun and water. i named samani unnujaktuk, traveler who walks out onto the sea ice. and i named them both; i gave them the twin-name nakitâgutik, sealskin which binds tightly together."

a breath; she shivered at the power hanging in the air.

"panuk must know all three names, now. they are his to hold. he will be the first man of our line to know this secret." she stared at callyope. "make sure he gives these names to his first daughter, ice-flying woman."

far-seeing. far-knowing.

she felt something like a shame for how much she did not know.

then felt a soft brush of gratefulness to know it now, to be trusted to carry her family along her own spine.

she wanted to ask how twins could be an omen! but she knew better than to question and spit in the vengeful eye of senda now. sedna who had already strong-armed and proven she could take whatever she pleased whenever she pleased.

quamaniq.

her heart expanded like lungs, breathing it in.

unnujaktuk.

her heart filled with ice and water, heavy and drowning.

nakitâgutik.

she could not contain it and there was a low sound in her throat. quickly stifled with a bite of her tongue. her chest hurt, it ached, it heaved. there was a heaviness there and she wondered if it was new or if she had ignored it for too long.

he is a good man to be the first one. he...he knows so much, sometimes i think i learn from him even when i am meant to teach him. she rambled and found her voice hovered in heavy air. he will know and i will be there to see them bestowed.

to make a circle to protect him, to protect whatever love he took and the lives not yet even a twinkle in the sky.

a slow nod. "yes. panuk is good already. i see the light in him. i know you will be a good anaa, as you have been a good sister to his mother. there is much to learn and to know in that forest."

voice hovering; kukutux was suddenly afraid she would never go back.

"summer hunting, this year. or perhaps fall hunting, daughter. we will sing. we will feel delight again. and panuk will see the full spirit of the moon clan."

an epitaph. a vow.

fade? ;;

once she dreamed of glacier home. of ice and stone to soothe her in the hot months and chill her in the wintertime.

now she knew home must be where her blood was, past or present.

now her blood was in the forest, dark and haunted, but a shining paradise in the eyes of those unafraid.

we will be there. he will want for nothing as long as he is with us. she reached to kiss a mother's cheek.

let them spend time thinking of the great hunts to come, of the joy of moonclans instead of the grief that seemed to pile.