Ouroboros Spine lv. i'm trying to find all the love that you lost

Kigipigak busied himself most days with the usual antics of a man about the village, though on this day, in this moment, he was crossing near the ulax with something heavy hanging from his teeth. It looked a bit like a ground hog or muskrat but far larger, with enough excess weight to strain his neck in a visible way. He did not see Lote; he was so focused on keeping himself aligned with the mountain trail that Kigipigak did not see much going on around any particular ulaq or any person really, waddling in a wide stance around the thick leather tail that fwup fwup fwup'd against the earth with each stride.

He came to a stop and let the giant rodent sag against the dirt. His forelimbs kept it from rolling anywhere, not that it was at all likely to happen, while he stretched out his back and proceeded to shake the tension from his shoulders and neck. The fur that once grew thick across his body had not returned in the places the cougar had mauled him - thus his scars were thick and pink, networked by his ribs on one side, his groin on the other, and made more obvious if one studied him long enough. Kigipigak was not the kind of person to hide his scars and he had not yet learned of how ugly and twisted they made him. The light was just right, however, to make those marks incredibly obvious - he looked vaguely unhealthy for all that missing space.