Ouroboros Spine tusaaruuk ⟭

a smile, as their newest spoke. "you are welcomed, shikoba."

to them all now, kukutux spoke. "i tell you now the story of mother sedna. she is who formed us. she is mother-who-sends-meat-to-hunters. even they must thank her for the life that she gives."

"sedna was a woman of much beauty. she was daughter of a powerful chieftain, who wanted to make a good marriage for her. but this match was only good for her father, not for the spirit of sedna. she knew this truth, and so she refused all bride-prices offered by the young hunters who came to their ulaq."

kukutux paused, gaze solemn to convey the impossibility that sedna had once found around herself.

"sedna loved another. his family had little, and could not offer the bride-price, set high by her father. they wished to run away to another village. 'we will go to the land of the ravens, he said. there, we will live among them. no one has ever lived among the raven people, for it is too high to climb. but we will find a path up to the night sky.'

the duck took a breath, a small and wan smile for the hopefulness held in her expression.

"the father of sedna decided that he would give her to be married anyway, and took her to a high place to wait for her husband. he would come and take her to his village, and sedna would be made to go with him. but the boy who she loved followed them, and showed his hiding-self finally: he was tulugak, raven, and he carried sedna away."

"her father followed, running after them. he shouted with anger! lightning mother heard his plea and struck raven down, and sedna fell and fell until she plunged into the sea."

"sedna! i will pull you from the water! her father called, for she was his only daughter. he stood on high rocks, and sedna climbed up to her father."

"but when she came to the top of this place, her father grew angry, and remembered what he had lost when sedna did not accept a marriage with the man he had chosen. and so he cast her down into the sea again. but this time, she did not return."

a sorrowful lapse in speaking, ears fluting backward.

"sedna sank down below the water. she was no longer alive. the seal people came to her. and the walrus people, and those from other villages we cannot see, who live far under the long salt, and who are not seen by us. they carried her anirniit to the spirit world, and when sedna woke, they told her she was one of them now, and that she was very powerful. that they would heed her. that they would listen. she was given the way of the ocean."

"and now it is sedna who tells the sea people to swim to the top of the water, where they might be eaten. it is she who gives seal fat to hunters; it is she who drowns the unwise and gives much to the wise. and it was from her that we came. sedna says that we must hear the word of our own heart, and that in the end of things, it is a woman's path forward that brings the most strength to a village."

"that is the first of the secrets this circle must hold."