Ouroboros Spine and i, the star-- burn low

quietly kukutux kissed the silent silvered face. tears were a cascade of sweet salt upon her face, for there was no bitterness in her that shikoba had been called to sedna. there was only the striking pain of holding her sister close as the breath of life slowly departed with the warmth of shikoba's soul.

"your daughter is as my own. your sons will not forget your love," she had answered with a voice which cracked as if it were sea-ice beneath a thaw. 

the whispers of mother and daughter; the gentle breath as it slowed and slowed; kukutux wept with soft sounds, and it seemed there was a moment in which she felt the spirit of her sister ascend.

she held too ajei as the girl wept aloud, her cries echoing through the beauty of the fading light over the spine, the purpled shadows falling back from the gold of sunset to illuminate shikoba's still and peaceful features.

shikoba.

shikoba.

tooteega, silent. 

mojag's strong voice poured with the emerald pain of a man into the foothills of the spine.

lynx, speaking; break the taboo for the star hunter. for your people.

"you will always make her proud, ajei," kukutux said in hoarsened tone when at last her eyes met the teary look of her embraced daughter. "she asked three things: that we bury her in aumauttak grove with the things she owned in life. that we sing for her in the ways of the moon clans. and that you run the kinaalda, ajei."

she wiped a tear from the young face. "your mother's spirit and her ways live now in you. we will keep them for the girls of the moon packs from this moment and forward. and," she said with a firmness, a fierceness, looking between the son of her sister and the husband of her daughter;

"we will not forget her name. we will say it. listen to me. i say now that we must speak their names." a shuddering breath passed through the duck, and tears fell, and she looked down upon shikoba. "when the death songs are finished, we will wait for six turns of the moon to pass. then we will speak the names of the dead again."

and her heart was filled with a soothing warmth, and she kissed ajei and reached a paw to rodyn.

it was the right path to take. longing for @Aiolos, kukutux exhaled.

the night would soon come. for now they remained in communion with their star hunter, sharing soft tears and stories of how her love had fulfilled something in each of them.