Ocean's Breath Plateau dentalium

it came out in lurching words, and chakliux saw it then, the way that the woman's soul had been shredded by the same tongue cen had borne to the deepwood. "you are not a bad wife," the seal hunter denied at once with a hard shake of his scarred muzzle. it did not matter if he was still a stranger; he meant it. "he does not appear to be a man who will be satisfied by anything."
red leaf pointed out that cen was with another woman. sulukinak was claimed as cousin to the man, but chakliux had no reason to believe the stranger. and so he did not correct the caribou wife. "you have given him all the things a wife could give, red leaf. there is no more to give. do not torment yourself."
he watched the sea, his white ears tipping forward to listen for the footsteps of the man who had taken a crueler and more ugly form than he had thought before.
the berrybright eyes alighted to her achingly beautiful face, this perhaps-cousin of his who had been strained and wrung like sinew by the wants of an angry man. he felt responsible for her, for some part of this; he felt as if he should intervene.
"if you want to leave him, then moontide will not make you stay. i will not make you stay. you are free here, both of you."
but he did not know what to say at the caribou woman's implication she was not ready to be mother. there were others in moontide who might take the boy, but yet there was no belief in him that red leaf wanted this either, not with the way she gazed down at akiak as if he were the entire center of her very existence.