Ouroboros Spine [m] agnisuk ∄

Mature Content Warning

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: use of ritual self-harm, child death, & hallucinogens referenced

"You only ever saw me as a girl to take your place."

kukutux was wounded, filled with a frustration that had its roots not in yuralria, but in herself.

in the silent darkness of their ulaq, moonwoman rose from the sleeping place long shared with aiolos. in the self-same quiet, a kiss decorated his cheek. she had told him of what had gone on, yes, and now she sought her own council.

ipiktok was traveling once more, and she had ceased such begging within herself, that a new generation be born to moonglow.

moonwoman was not traced through men.

it was a direly feminine failure, then, kukutux breathed out into the night, sliding from beneath her foxfur wrap a thing she had all but forgotten: a pouch of green. in the half-glow of a sacred winter moon, she thought the skin which held such things had burnished in the warm depths of the ulaq.

moonwoman carried it to the high-flung altar, pausing many times as the twist of icy paths strained aching joints to their limit. there were no furs here, no skins to cover herself; she arrived breathless and chilled, though shaking palms moved into place those old items: disks of ivory, seal teeth, flakes of old, old blood.

she had not brought a sacrifice, and so she opened her own hand with a nip of teeth, bathing the upturned faces of the wolf-carvings in her very life.

"Sedna, i come to ask —" breath shuddering.

"Sedna. i come to ask why you have taken nuiruk from — me."

the duck must walk in honesty.

"have i not kept your ways? have i not turned all my descendants to your ear?" her tones broke; "even those who followed you are gone." her daughters. her grandchildren. there would be no moon to rise in the night one day, and one day soon, she felt.

"the last has turned away."

it is her right, Lynx reminded, stepping to warm the duck's mind with a low purr.

do you see how all the women of nuiruk have their own minds? this is also you, added Tooteega with a low smile, having approached also as kukutux attempted with all her might to invoke the goddess' heart.

she was drained by it, and cold from the breath of winter; she forced herself to sit upright before the altar.

"Sedna. i will come to speak with you."

it was on belief in the green that she shook a pawful and did not allow herself to be fearful before she took it onto her tongue.

it seemed the wind howled more loudly around the stone teeth, rattling kukutux, tearing at the foxfur.

"Sedna! tell me what i must do to restore your favor!"

she was falling through a thousand branches backward into a storm of terrifying proportion, and as kukutux whirled, she saw each flake of snow gleaming with a soft aura of light.

she plunged into the sea!

creatures of darkness and shadow plunged around her in the saltwater echoeing, and she struggled for breath as a great blackness filled the sea. teeth shone around her, kukutux crying out in fear as she was swallowed into utter desolation.

nothing.

nothing.

chanting;

chanting;

and kukutux knew it was the death song, the song sung for nine days of vigilance to guide the spirit. but muffled; it could not be for her.

no.

she traveled quickly, and as the singing grew stronger so did the light, until breath and dazzlement captured kukutux. flung high into the ribbons of aurora;

it was impossible to comprehend what kukutux saw. shimmering gold traced the racing forms of spirit-beasts she knew, and those she did not, creatures from a world far more ancient than her own. and through this loomed the gentle face of a woman, and kukutux realized she had come to Sedna.

flesh cried! blizzarding cold over spine-stone carried off her laments. but here in this liminality she felt neither ice nor fear, only a deep and wrenching pain.

daughter of Sedna. but also daughter of a people dead. and here kukutux saw a vision of herself, so painfully young to be smeared in blood and earth. a girl who had not been in her village when the falling stones came, a girl who had buried them all alone in a death ulaq and left the siqniq islands forever.

you have carried a death curse for your entire life. you were spared by the far-seeing of your grandfather, who sent you out that day to forage. but you do not know that he told only you to go.

another image, one kukutux had never seen: her grandfather pleading with a darker god, holding to him the crushed body of a boy.

i gave back the spirit of his son, Sedna went on softly. i heard his cries. there was a trade. he gained my mercy, and i would claim the first grandchild for the dancing lights.

a shimmering image of a whitefurred cub, rolling in a nest of fur and down. kukutux knew it to be herself.

he loved you even more, your grandfather. he could not give you up. you were meant to be on the shoreline.

kukutux was becoming ill, suspended there before the unblinking eyes, surrounded by swirling light which pulsed too grandly in red now as the story went on.

he knew that i wanted your spirit before you bound it to the seal hunter gods by your marriage to their son. he had promised. but his love for you spoke against me, and he sent you inland. his lie was why the wrath of Sedna was visited upon his entire village.

"but you let me live! you let me come here!"

should i have taken you too? all dead, and you sang the death songs for how many? why would you serve me then?

kukutux was bitterly hollow, for it was such a deception as — "my daughters? my grandchildren?"

a curse comes to the second and the third generations.

the evil of it struck the woman, she who had kept all ways, all traditions, all taboos; to have her grandfather's denial of Sedna pierce again and again the family she had only ever loved.

look what you have become in spite of the punishment i must give.

her belief; shaken; kukutux glared upon the goddess. "when i die, will you pursue the children of nuiruk still?"

i will have no reason.

a breath; the duck opened her mouth to speak, but the divine only shook a saddened head. you cannot do it. i know the moment and the hour. one who is not yet born holds a piece of your spirit, and you must wait first for them.

then you will give yourself to me.

through a misting she remembered her grandfather, what little remained of his laughter or his face. those names had all died within her; she reached grimly for the memory of that day, trying to rediscover if he had calmly told her to go out, or if he had sent her in a furor;

he sent you for medicine.

a choking sob came from kukutux then, a nod; acceptance;

"i will wait. i will prepare myself." hatred and longing, horror and sorrow; they eddied and nauseated the duck with a lurching gasp. "Sedna. Sedna, please tell to me that the child called little fox has come to your lights."

the great eyes closed, and kukutux plunged again, falling from gilt to indigo to the azure of the ocean, backwards through the breath-held depths of the salt and upwards again to brilliant snow and exquisite searing agony;

she gasped for breath and realized she had begun to freeze here, her enfrailed flesh reconnected with the anguish of spirit. snow had piled onto her body, and in desperation she began to clench and unclasp her paws, hoping to restore the sluggish blood.

but she did not leave the pouch; she took more dire moments to ensure it was hidden in her wrap, and, snowblinded, needles of pain stabbing through her limbs, she began to hobble down the spine weighted even now by the horrendous story of truth and a goddess' vengeance.

spared in childhood. spared in childbirth. spared by falling stones. spared again and again, to build and to create, to birth, to be moonwoman and mother and matchmaker; gifted Sedna's blessing only to repay it with agony, over and again, and again, a cruel game!

blackness was creeping into her vision by the time anik lake came into view, and there on the path kukutux collapsed, too weakened and laid low by the vision to take a single step more.