Hoshor Plains pavva ≖

backdated to ~jan 9

it was time to be gone from this place.

kukutux had not gone after ariadne once the women's circle had dispersed, nor had she departed the camp beneath the willows. herbs were rolled into strips of leather; she wound bison sinew into circlets and pulled drying meat from their makeshift racks.

her mind was alit with a thousand thoughts, but not all of them were for speaking.

those that were; she crouched near to @Vairë now, carefully gathering chips of bone from the golden plain into a square of deerskin she had brought from the village; "your sister holds herself as a woman but has a girl's tears when questions are given to her." ariadne was a leader; she had proven that this was her choice. that he was another. it had been her own wolf who had asked anything of her. it was a moment to be firm, to say she should not be questioned. 

"it is in my mind that she is pregnant." there was much to be hurt over with the lack of acceptance for her husband, but such a quick and tearful exclamation was the work of other energies, kukutux believed.

"she did not stay to listen to our way of spirit names." ariadne had not stayed to learn her own, and to the duck this was a far deeper loss for her own journey than it was for the sunshine people who lived by these taboos. "it is time that your children had their own, deerwoman. and we must give them to panuk and rolayne as well, so that they are bound always to the spirit of their mother."

there was a great urge within kukutux now to rise, to go to the camp of moonsong, to demand if ariadne understood what she meant to give up in her youthful anger over a man who had already been granted his time and failed with it.

but she did not. her daughter was a woman and would be a mother. women did not question the words of one another where men could see.

"i am ready to go home."