Shadowwyn Moor Hydrurga

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Mentions of blood, ritual behavior, parental abuse.

I know of these things.

Everything clicked in to place. Suliya spoke the names of these gods her mother favored, she knew of the conclave between mother and child, and when she spoke of harvest Sulukinak could not keep her focus upon the moment any longer. Her eyes dropped; she felt her shoulders raise and tighten, her breath hitch.

What had her mother given her? It wasn't knowledge. It wasn't safety or food or warmth, all things that would have shaped Sulukinak in to a better person, a more capable person.

She tried to take us to the water. The voice that came from her now was so small and unfamiliar. She had found a hole in the ice, for seal fishing we thought. There were words spoken I did not know. There were strange magics that she used. We ate as a family—and I remember— These were things she had not spoken of to anyone. Secret things she was told never to share; things Sulukinak had kept well buried.

Conclave is for mother and child. It is not for children. That was what Nukilik had always told them. She had prepared them for the harvest as best she knew how; and so the children had not been afraid when they were cut, bled, and given to the water. These things were gruesome—but Sulukinak recalled as much as she could now, the information flowing from her without her own control.

Details of the symbols cut in to her brothers; words spoken in both languages familiar and unfamiliar; the way the sea went red with their offerings and then so black! And the sleepiness of her brothers as they grew weak. But how she stayed awake through it all, she, alone. And when they began to fade and Nukilik moved to have them dropped through the ice, how Sulukinak had rallied and fought for their sake.

The running. The hiding. Escaping the everdark and leaving her mother there alone upon the ice.

Sharply she comes back to the present, looking wide-eyed to Suliya.

What did she give me, then, Suliya? If you know so much of this. What did she give when all I remember is what she tried to take? Incensed by the memories and the telling, Sulukinak's usual aloof demeanor had long since faded for this panicked, frightened girl.

She had not run far enough.