Moonspear [m] fear, itself

a text wall! <3

that day had been scorched into his mind.
"my father and his brother came to find me early that morning. they said, 'chakliux, you have gone with us many times to the ice. you have watched as a boy. now you will hunt as a man.'"
"it was my ninth hunt but it was also my first." chakliux leant into the story, raising his own paw to caress the strong line of her shoulder as the rainstar curled close. "and so i went. we broke the ice upon the edge of the sea and we went down inside. your eyes do not work at first. and your body is so cold, you cannot stay for long at first. but i had been beneath eight times. and so i helped them trap the seal against the ice."
"this is where men drown. the seal grows strong in its panic; its hard tail can break a limb or a neck. but on this day, we brought the seal up, and we wounded him until his blood was all upon the ice. and then i killed him, and we called out to oil father in thanks, and danced until we could not."
chakliux grinned; he remembered his mouth full of blood, his teeth full of good seal fat.
"we called others from the village to cut the seal into many pieces and carry some to each lodge. and when we had finished that, i was so tired i could not walk. but my father, he laughed, he gave me a strong drink that the women had made. and then i was taken to the shaman, who then was my mother, k'os."
"i lay upon my back, and my brother lay across me, and my cousin held my head. and my mother made the long marks. 'do not cry, chakliux.' it was agony, but not once did i cry, not even when she rubbed crush-shell into the wounds, to darken them."
and from that day forward, he had been a full man of the seal hunters.