Ouroboros Spine Cinders in the Hearth and Fire in the Home

There was the smell of something in the air an animal that he had never hunted before and that he did not know and yet it was rich on the winds and permeated the hearth. He walked, silent and on steps that had seen many miles and did not falter even when he was unsure. And when he felt his gut swirl and twist around his throat stealing any words he might have said she rushed forward to hug him and he had dreamed of returning home to his family for so long and yet he did not run and greet her could only stand still and feel her arms around him as they were real. But her summer green eyes felt out of place in the winter and he could meet them for only a moment.

A yawning pit, and he did not know what he felt a flash of whites around his eyes in fear at what she might see there - either through her spirit or a mother's intuition. "Anaa I'm back." Somehow the word home lodged impossibly in this throat and did not pass, something unfamiliar had crept beneath his skin. His voice had lost some of its exuberant spirit, was quieter, more even, steady for all he might have shook when he said it. She might have noted the slash on his side but it was a distant memory to him. A moment he stood stock still in his arms before his own returned the embrace, tentative and unsure, a memory of a movement that hollowed out his bones as he did it now.

He looked around and it was like water flowing down and down and down into nowhere, a bottomless abyss. So much that he had missed so much that he had loved and did still. And yet it did not feel like he was standing there, not unreal like a dream, but distant like a bird or the wind constantly rushing over never seen. Was it him? Was it this place? He stared helplessly back at this woman who he knew was his mother, his anaa, and for the first time he was not sure quite what he was seeing at all, a white pelt, green eyes, a scar upon her shoulder, smelling of herbs. A glimmer of what felt like clarity but blinded like sunbeams through leaves, as if he were a stranger.