Sequoia Coast oil tears

seal hunt! vague on timeline and participants: @Raiyuk @Chagak @Sirmiq @Sea Hunter <3 can be single post/reference as well

once more did the seal hunter come again to the place of sea ice.
this time his heart was moved with heaviness, having once more pursued birdflesh along the cliffline and sought out their nests. he was reminded anew of what had been and what had been lost, and in more silence he made camp.
whispering aloud stories in the vein given down by his father, the seal hunter faced the heavens and murmured a quiet prayer that if sirmiq choose the sunshine girl nantahala, that they make their own way among their peoples; that they stand apart from what moon woman desired.
seal spirits; chakliux sang to them as the nights grew rimed with ice and the sea itself seemed to exhale the death-cold, which lodges into bone and marrow.
lemmings, hunted in mouthfuls to tauten bellies with warmth. at one point the tall man was forced to slow, skirting sapphique into a storm which devoured time and sent his paws sore along a frozen terrace, snow flying into his eyes.
there was a little amusement then, that he should almost go the way he had come! again chakliux found a font of energies long listing; he ran along the now-familiar ridges until they had come to the crossing of the five rivers.
there he made notice of sapphique and its nearness; he carefully forded along floes and between twisting chunks of glittered ice, leading on.
at last the frozen shore lay ahead of them, lay before; chakliux faced into its vastness with a peace in his heart not tasted in a place without sea ice.
camp, made again; snow shelters dug into archways, but soon he left his work behind to trot along the vastness of the frozen salt, heart a marvel that beneath it lay the finishing-stone of a seal hunter man.