Ouroboros Spine touch

"i do not know all of what your mother has seen, but it is more than you realize. speak with her. ask these things."

maggak was eager for the story of adrastus.

"he was once a kind man. he hunted a lynx. he paid a bride-price to marry the woman who became second wife to aiolos, your aataq. in all ways i thought much of him."

"one day he went out and he did not come back for a long time. she grew with his children by the turning of each moon. he was not here when they were born."

"the man returned. i stopped him. i called him spirit. we had not sung his death songs, but i knew he was not — right. yet she cried out for him, asked him to come to their ulaq."

a hard light gleamed for a moment along her jawline; "in one moment he was pleased to be a father. in the next moment he had grown harsh and wicked. he said horrible things about the ways in which they had been born, their differences. she called to me and to aiolos, and we brought her to our ulaq, where she stayed. the man destroyed their home and the things he had gathered for her. he abandoned moonglow and the four children, and the wife who wept for him. he was not himself. he had been changed. beneath his wolfskin was no longer a wolf, but a monster."