Moonsong Glacier kinunguur'uk ›‹

when the blackbear arrived, it was with the voidswept nature of thunder. kukutux faltered in her song, allowed the last word before her eyes fell to keres, then to the cold dirt, and lastly the stricken features of her sister. lips parted, reformed, slimmed into a line that twisted and twisted until her gaze was forced back to the land where she had clawed furrows.

"i could not save him this time." the weight of a thousand tears pulling at her throat. "i —" wraen and arcturus and wraen and her own voice cracking as if it were spring-fractured ice, wrought with anger and hatred for a woman she had never known "i found him here, and i — he —"

fighting the sickening maw of grief. "his death was swift, hydra. i would not have allowed him to suffer." and then kukutux turned her face away for already her eyes hurt from the tight rein upon her anguish; away, away, away, for she did not think she could bear to see hydra's expression change.