Ouroboros Spine chaguthil

Kigipigak did not know how long he lay there in the ulaq. He did not know if he slept or if he sat awake and in agony, waiting for the burning in his skin to stop. Kukutux had tended to him on the cliffside and then again once he was placed in this safe spot; she came and she went, and sometimes he was visited by others, though he did not know them.

The bleeding had been tended to. The wounds to his ribs now lay with poultices and dressing, the same with his haunch, and over everything a haze fell. Kigipigak knew pain well and sat uncomfortably with it; he trusted it would end eventually, this buzzing, this burning — while the deeper trauma had been the blow to his own pride.

His crying had stopped, at the very least. Something he could not bare to do before his caretakers. Kukutux was the rare exception and even then, Kigipigak felt wrong to let himself feel, and quake, and be a weak boy again. He was lost to the in-between nature of his own immaturity; he was no man, no matter the name he carried.