Moonstone Quarry kajurujuk ≉

A shadow of a smile ghosted the man's face. "Indeed," he said, with a fondness he did not conceal. Hydra was a force unto herself, and someone he feared and aspired to be like. Few men had ever managed to reach such a place in his life, and Merrit wondered how strange it must feel to Kukutox to operate beneath a woman of such valour as Hydra, yet remain consigned in mind and spirit to the perception of women as something else, something... well, not lesser, nor weaker, but different. And yet, he also thought she must be quite strong to keep such beliefs about her in a culture that so slapped against them, and Merrit found he admired that.

"Unikkautte."  He tried to repeat, and no doubt butchered. He had never grasped the Northern tongue as well as Nanook or Clary had. But then, mother had never spoken it much around him.

These words Kukutux shared, they resonated with him, and Merrit found that her gentle spirit blossomed a sense of willing vulnerability within himself. "I have found that a great many tragedies seem to have shaped the wolves of these Wilds," he said. She reminded him of his aunt in some ways, of his mother in others. By all of heaven, how he missed them both. "My mother passed, some weeks ago," his voice softened; he had not shared this with many others outside of Legion, and his own. "I have been working on a ballad for her." And this, he had shared with no one.