Ouroboros Spine Fun Time's Over, Kiddies

As his warm tongue came against her nose she mirrored the action without thought, head turning when she heard something in the distance. Her attention fell onto him again as he asked her a question... and the female licked her chops. If he wanted words from her, this question was the best way to get them.

"They are my family," she begins, and pauses to amend herself. "Our family." For now, in being with her, it had been something he would inadvertently become. He, now, was Tartok too. She drew in a deep breath, thinking of the stories she had been told as a cub.

"Some years ago, my mother wished to begin her family. She lived beneath her sisters rule. Her sister did not agree with her desire, and so my mother cast out on her own." It was only the lead pair who mated and had cubs, after all. "My mothers name is Siku," she thinks to add, pausing to continue. "And it was not only this that caused her to go." There were plenty of reasons her mother had left. For a time her mother suffered Nanuq's punishment of bearing a rank of shame in leaving and returning, but when her mother remained for many months and fought out of the position, her sister was unfair in her judgment. When it came to light that Siku would never lead, she went on her way, as any dispersal wolf would when it was their time.

Another thing occurred to her. "Koios was the mate of my mothers sister. My mother had found him dead, killed by a bear. And she was blamed for his death." Siku could not protect herself against her sisters words in her leaving; but she did not ever think they would come, those words, those emotions. The other was weak for it. The other that, in all of these tales, was never even given a name to honor her by. Although the sisters had forgiven one another by this point, it did not change the trials that Siku had gone through. "Her sister caused the Valley they lived in to turn against them. My mother managed to gather a good number to her side... but the odds were against them. There was a day where the battle would be had. But all realized that Siku was not wrong, and no murderer, and so none fought." Her mother had somehow gotten the others to see her sisters error.

"Tartok came to be from that. And my mother would have none but the strong. The Valley had accepted her, then, but not her sister. So Tartok came to be of warriors and soldiers, and it only ever grew, until wolves dispersed, taking the name with them." Tartok became a breed as much as it did a name. The place still stood in the Valley, among other locations. "A male named Sevendeath led the legion in Seahawk, where she was born and raised, when she left to conquer elsewhere." He had been old, and now his own cubs likely led in his stead.

That was the tumultuous story of their origin.

"My mother and her sister are fine, have amended ways. But I know nothing but the last name they once shared. Kesuk," she hums. "My mother took the name Tartok." Both her grandparents dead, Tonravik would never meet them, Nauja and Nutaaq. So Kesuk was nothing for her to be no part of. 

She lay on her side. "Tartok's creed is the strong survive. We can, we will." Even when the odds are against us. "We were made in the shadows, but now, others are cast in the dark of it. Tartok. Dark," she translates. As a cub, she was born in a time where even she needed to learn to protect herself lest the aggrieved, nameless sister come for her. It was why she knew all that she did, and only that.