Sunset Valley hunting hawk

at last the caribou hunter stopped, and he seemed to tremble with a violent emotion.

"i can no longer be cen." that name; it belonged to a man who had been blinded, cursed, and exiled. the moonwomen had sung it out over the fleeing heads of himself and sulukinak. all from the wilderness to the mountain to the sea would know by now the name that had once been given to a stoic boy eager to heed tradition: cen. swampwater.

he sat down in their paths, the single eye burning out ahead of them as if he could scorch a path back to the moon wolves. back to his wife.

"i can no longer be cen," he said again, resignation filling a hard voice before silence poured between he and sulukinak for a long time.

killdeer swooped for the biting insects. ptarmigan settled in a fatted flock not far away. fieldmice climbed the stems of brilliant wildflowers, but cen saw none of these things.

"so. the name of cen is gone." he turned then, watching her starkly over a dark shoulder. "i will be yikaas." it occurred to him that she too should shift in a flicker of featherdown, become more, but he did not suggest it. yikaas: dawnlight. 

but it was no golden glow which followed him now, only the frothing mists of a cold and warlike morning which would one day bring war to the people of the moon.

yikaas — he turned it in his mind. "you and i must choose a new clan name. if the other caribou hunters come here, they still must not know that i came from bitterbrush." he was rambling now, trying to hold to a sense of identity even while cen lanzadoii leaked away as water from a broken basket.