Ouroboros Spine I was three days on a drunken sin

she was stung. it showed in the defeated curve of her shoulders as she bent to gather the torn ptarmigan to herself. "i thank you for answering," kukutux said aloud, though it hurt to speak the spiked words. he was tall even against the ground, dark and sleekly built, like the tigiapak who hunted the edges of the streams in winter.

she lay down in the snow, unwilling to grant him the exact location of the ulaq until she had come to know what sort of man he was. or he until he found it himself, she supposed, though there was nothing to be found inside except bones and a hardpacked floor. 

kukutux soothed her ankle with a brush of her tongue.