Duck Lake cousin elk

Dutch stepped into the shallow water and watched blood and grit flake away from his toes. Bounty hunting didn't appeal to him now in the way it had in his youth. It would be a cold and lonely journey without Chakliux beside him, and with only the grim task of slaying the monster at the end. He hoped still that they would find him before the snow, and Chakliux would be able to dispense justice rather than Dutch performing pest control weeks after the fact — but it was not looking good.

"Well — children, maybe. If I can count Krait and Catamaran. But the sisterhood only acknowledges mothers. Aside from the necessary contribution — " he flashed a sideways grin at the seal hunter — "Fathers are obsolete. My connection to them is immaterial."

A flock of geese called to each other across the lake. Their cries were unearthly by the time they reached his ears in the cold, wet air.

"I wish sometimes that I hadn't laid with Auk," he admitted, his ears slicking back against his skull. "I was allowed to visit, but I could not be a father to them. They turned the males out when they reached their majority, but they did not wait for me. They had already gone south when I arrived at the turn of the season, as I did every season while they grew. I left a message for them with their mother, but I do not expect they will seek me. What use am I to two grown men who already have each other?"

It was a rhetorical question. Dutch turned back to Chakliux, his expression pensive.

"I spoke to moonwoman," he said, appropos of nothing. It seemed for a moment that he might say more, but his thoughts outran his mouth, and he found himself at a loss for words.