Silvertip Mountain pikpaksriruk ∅

aya, the truth of her arrow fletched and striking true into the other's breast. and as wraen shifted into the way of a fighter, kukutux answered. there was a budding guilt in her for all she had said, but she pushed aside the stirrings of it, pale ears folding back at the gritted sound of whore. again a word she had did not know, but its implication was clear.

for a long moment she was silent, allowing the quiet to fill the space between she and wraen. anger now, spilling through her for how cruelly arcturus had treated her until he left moonspear; bitterness welling in her hardened heart for how without kindness revui had always been. and her spirit, unable to unhinge from either of them. even when they had left, even when they had come back, even when they had left again, always, always chipping a part of the duck away, carrying it off as a bride might be drawn.

taiguk filling her eyes, at last — not for the word wraen had spat, but for the pain in kukutux that had brought them to this place. and yet it was too late to retract it, and all of it true beneath her aching feet and stubborn heart. the agonies goaded her tongue again; kukutux scarcely felt the tracery of a warm trailing along her cheek.

"whores have no dowry. like you do not." tonguetip drying to the salt left behind by a receding tide. "men must think they are like moon-woman; men must believe they have control over the years of their wife." but they did not, for a daughter was given secret knowledge and the blessing of sedna before she left her mother's ulaq. tether a man to a cloud and he will follow so long as the rain arrives.

a breath, shuddering in the first-snow column of her throat. "it is not my expectation. it is his. you are foolish, stupid woman, wraen, to have shared with a man that you are a dry flower." with love, arcturus might have turned his gaze away for a time, but if his chosen wife had nothing to grant him in the end, why would he remain? the twisted expression of anger on wraen's face sated some darkening place within herself. "and if you do not enjoy when he takes you to his bed, maybe your heart is not full of him as you say."

a step back, small paws digging into the cold mountain stone. "go to him now. and do not let me see your face near to moonspear. or i will gather your blood debt." hardened jadestone softening into something anguished as she turned away, ear flicked to listen for wraen if at last the she-witch came for the duck's flesh.