Dawnlark Plains "you will burn and burn out;

Imaq shook her head, a tiny wrinkle forming between her oceanic orbs as she felt a stab of frustration -- directed at herself rather than Lane. It wasn't the medic's fault that her grasp on the common tongue was still tenuous. "Father wolf curse Imaq. Make leave Nunaat. Imaq dirty," she did her best to elaborate but it seemed that her story would have to wait to be heard in any depth -- at least until she commandeered the language of Teekon more adroitly. 

The pale beige agouti's next point was made vehemently, so insistent that the dove did not argue. In some place of her heart, she agreed with the mother-to-be. Even her sons, her precious lost boys, had been adored. Cherished. Imaq had never blamed those innocent faces for what their sire had done to her, though some sick part of her had wanted to hate them at first. It would have made it easier. She might've just abandoned them where they landed at birth but she'd been damned from the moment she first saw Ikila's face in the light of day. She'd loved them, fiercely so, until the day the last of the triplets was snatched from her useless fingers -- and even after.

But Lane was not raised to hear the spirits, nor was she borne of Sedna's waters. She could not understand the fear that plagued the shepherd: that she was in fact cursed, that she had cursed her first litter with her ruin of a womb, that these babes would be as doomed as her first sons.

The comfort and kind words were appreciated but their meaning was lost on the dove at first. The change in Lane's demeanor distracted her from admitting her long-kept secret just yet, pulling her attention away from children and to the man that had created her own. 

"I-is Rye...?" Tupilak asked, hesitantly, as she wasn't sure whether it was an appropriate thing to ask.