Ouroboros Spine healing

grandmother sang. her cousins bonded over their sick mother. tautukpik kept to the far trails. new uncles returned to the place of their birth.

aunt callyope arrived now. she held a skin smeared with dust and travel. akmaaksi knew it would be carried to the lake where others laughed even now. their voices would hold sunshine, and their tones would arrange into the great songs for which moonglow was known.

firegirl sank down into the thorn-thicket filled with twittering finches. at first they had all flown; the second time, one brave bird had pecked her paw quite harshly. 

but on the third, the birds neither stirred nor fled nor attacked, and by the fourth they took her gifts of scraped deer-fat and tissue.

the sharp vines guarded akmaaksi from many things — from the golden ghosting of her mother's remembered laughter, which lurked around the ulax and beside the lake. from her grandmother's talk of a future which only filled firegirl with dread. from tautukpik's eternal boast that he would go, he would find nutuyikruk. that they might be together again.

today the briars guarded firegirl from forest-kith and the knowing eyes that had looked through to her soul's pain.