Moonspear alianiilik ≡

keres in her devotion had earned one of the duck's secret names. nataak, she who sees all in the night with her great sight. one day she would muster herself to speak it aloud to her sister. though she would not sleep here, the idea held a great temptation for her. the streamwater with its breath of ice licking at her limbs, pouring into the empty place inside her soul.

kukutux lay her head back against the edge of the bank, but the sound of legs churning within water wakened her again. "sialuk," and the darkened world brightened at its ends to see her raindrop again. somehow taller than the last time kukutux had set her eyes upon the girl, but that was the way of time, even a short while. it had felt an eternity, however; she lifted a dripping foreleg to press her sugar-snow closer.

and then the warm press of jarilo; kukutux felt the breath inside her throat gather a long moment. had hydra told him? or had he only existed her with no knowledge of why she had been away. "uiga." she chanced a look into his handsome face with its verdant expression; she traced the lines of him with her gaze —

— haunted by how the trader's own had been gathered solemly by the ravens 

— returning to herself and to keres and to sialuk and jarilo to to saviguk, she hoped, glancing beyond for her ice crystal. "i am sorry i was away for many days," the duck whispered in the hoarsened fatigue of a voice given to the death-keen. and then no words could come, for what must she say next? shifting against her raindrop, expecting to feel the damning pull of jarilo's question in the next moment; her heart at once both filled with love and smote with pain.