Ouroboros Spine vii. and scrub between the cracks.

lótë's soft voice tugged weakly at kukutux, but moonwoman's eyes were fixed with a sharp intake of breath upon the face that appeared beside the strained shoulder of her sister.

kukutux was still.

silent.

and in her leapt and churned a hundred words, a thousand things.

first, anger; anger that her sister should speak a name she had forbidden herself for many years. fear to hear it uttered aloud —

"i sang for him!" came the shatter of her voice, dropping laceweave and fearsome into the odd silent. "now you wear his face, and you come to my village."

the jadestone eyes darkened; her breathing quickened, tears racing in crazed quietude along her face. "you come here, you deceive a woman of nuiruk clan to bring you?"

an inhale, jagged with horrible pain; his sinew, his bone, his flesh, his blood; the pine-pith of him, burned away with the great fire upon the mountain!

wait, daughter. tooteega's voice as she sank down before the tupilak which wore the face of her first husband —

second. do not forget the seal hunter boy

the graveyard of unsaid names which had found their night sleeping in his spirit.

the moon-hunter boy, pulling death from his marrow in the year his sister wakened the mountain again.

kukutux could not touch him, only stare down into the ostrega-eyes as her heart galloped with caribou fleetness. he was not him, she told herself in fierce resolution.

moonwoman straightened. she called for @Kivaluk, bidding him bring @Sialuk at once. for @Aiolos, that lótë had returned. "vairë seeks a new home with her husband," at last she told her sister. "my daughter brought @Fjall back here. i do not know where he has gone, but the star hunter of this village will know. rest at my ulaq."

her voice was empty. she turned back to again stare at the spirit who was not her son.

"you will be asked for again. do not come into the village or i will tear the skin you wear off your ghost bones."

there was no hope her son had returned. and yet kukutux felt hope simmering violent and violet inside her. she turned away, meaning to address her sister. "if this is — if it is he, then the sister borne beside him will know. she is the only other of us who has seen this face."