Larksong Grotto Quånitǐge

for @Tikigak!

Late in the afternoon her maw brims with sacred things;  yarrow and ginger and rose-pink valerian. The others have no names, nor uses she knew of. They are gathered for medicine, experimentation, and to appease those spirit-beings of the long forgotten in their emptied dens.
It is among the thickest brakes of the grotto where she finds him.
Ayovi has known for some time there are wild boar in the highlands. She’d heard them grunting and cantering in the brush, trampling meadows of blue wildflowers. But this is the first she’s ever seen.
—and he is unimaginably massive, with a steep ridgeline and shoulders threshed with the scars of old fights. He stamps his hooves and foams his aggravation, lowering tusks to rut the earth.
Many koostin had she hunted, but those were long, precise coursings, where the Ashēeran had positioned themselves for victory. Here the lone ivory is unready, staggering astern in horrified surprise.