Ouroboros Spine malitjuagak ▱

before dawn, kukutux had woken @Wilwarin and her mother. "i take her now for the healing," she murmured, touching her sister's shoulder and looking encouragingly toward the daughter they shared.

where inkalorë more and more wore the parka of their mother, wilwarin was the child who looked like the one to whose hearth she had been born. kukutux did not speak his name. to her he had died when he spoke in such ugly words and then desecrated the place of lótë. she believed truly that a spirit had taken his place.

it did not escape her that out of all the children, wilwarin had suffered the most. and it did not escape kukutux that it might be the evil of the former sivullik, attempting to take his child.

but she was not his. she belonged to her mother and to moonglow.

kukutux led wilwarin high above the spine, to where her altar waited. here was blood from the cut throat of a rabbit, cooling rapidly. she daubed it to her paw, then forehead and chest, and reached to do the same for wilwarin. "when we come before the spirits, when we speak to them, we must wear this so that they see us through the veil of the dancing lights," she explained.

moonwoman settled herself across the limp body from wilwarin. ukpikivikak. she closed her eyes and began to sing into the air.

mother spirits, we call you now.

we bring you a daughter who has been wounded.

aya, we cannot see her pain with our eyes.

we ask that you lift this from her.