Ocean's Breath Plateau dentalium

it felt as though she had been jailed a long while, captured behind lashings of wood and sinew, her thin fingers fluttering through the bars as she talked and talked, a quick cascade of terrified words in accented pidgin.
lanzadoii, she had called cen. chakliux had never bothered to learn the factions of those caribou tribes, but now wished that he had.
the root of her husband's wrath was bleak. a dead son, a home abandoned to protect a wife. red leaf's paw was warm against his own, but the seal hunter felt his mind straying again and against to the possibility that this brief contact might well be a death sentence for the wife of such a creature.
the woman's voice had grown tiny, the whisper of a frightened spirit. his jaw tensed at the notion that she deserved beatings for what sounded like an accident; chakliux was able to clearly see that red leaf still carried the agony of that loss in her own chest. 
he wanted to disagree. his eyes showed firmly that he did. but his mouth did not argue. it resolved him more, that the caribou spirits were cruel and that she should leave them. but this was the seal hunter heart speaking; all he knew now was that somehow he must disconnect her from cen. 
"if your spirits demand a payment, then i believe you have already given it, red leaf."
the knowledge of her plight sat rank within him, and he no longer knew if she would work to avoid her marriage, or stand against those who wanted to free her. "but that time upon the river, with the boy — it was not your fault. oil father does not share his ways. nor do your caribou spirits. cen striking you will not bring back the son you shared."