Ouroboros Spine Those lights

She was not angry and she was not afraid. 

When at last, Adrastus finally returned to their village, Löté was dreaming, curled around the tiny forms of her slumbering children. She dreamt of winter: frozen air tearing the cries from her lungs, white whirling around her and obscuring her vision uselessly in a torrent of white, of the wind howling in her ears as she smothered beneath red fur and blood. 

The wind was screaming, whipping against her ears with the pressure of an avalanche as words formed and whispered from within. 

She woke with a wrenching breath and if wolves could sweat, she would have been. But the ghostly voice did not belong to sleep, its message echoing through the pines and stopping her heart in its tracks -- only to fire it up again in an irregular rythm borne of a different terror. 

Did she still dream? Was he tupilak come back to wile her down the mountain, confuse her into risking the precious lives at her underbelly? 

Kukutux's response affirmed reality and Adrastus' was all the convincing she needed. Had she been able to, Lótë would've run to him. As it was, she could not leave the babes who murmured against her in their sleep -- they needed her warmth and instinct would not let her abandon them, not even for the spiritbear. 

Heart pounding as if against time itself, her own desperate plea broke against the press of silence that followed -- begging unto any who would listen.

The death songs go unsung. He is Adrastus and he is my heart; sivullik to our village.