Ouroboros Spine atvaktaktuk

"then i will ask your issumatar to tell me when i may come." 

the chin of kukutux proudly lifted as she gave the man's ways back to him.

how could he claim his people for children who were clearly not protected by those spirits? tartok had failed a child of her blood. he had failed that child. 

and i see you did not sing for your son. 

more insult. more offense. he distanced himself from them. he made the choice for the children of a sunshine mother. had it been a man's pain which kept his mouth shut or pride? and if it was pride, did he think it was unseen now? and if it had been pain, why did he now stand above her as if he offered threat to the grandchildren she had seen perhaps once since their arrival?

tooteega, leaning; but that is not all.

no. that was not all.

the abandonment. sakhmet. kivaluk. the kinship ties. the courtship of ariadne. the way in which moonglow gave to the boar-man and kigipigak gave nothing back.

the insult of that remembered first meeting, the mingled scents upon him. deliberate. he had meant to flaunt his dalliance in the sleeping-place of her daughter. kukutux did not yet know that he truly had done it over kivaluk's place as moonglow hunter and not warrior of tartok; she had only believed that the deliberateness of his actions had been malicious.

like the snowcats, she had waited long and now he blundered into her blind as if he were a rut-maddened elk.