Larksong Grotto what gods win, what you lose

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No one in the wood would know them, nor the names they had been given. Elowen’s pups, no longer children. In the dirt, they are part of earth. Never to draw breath. Never to be remembered. Mother was not to look too long; not to become attached.  Grief sometimes works this way, not asking too much in a world that had never been properly theirs.
But in dreams, someone calls her name. Ayovi.
Dove.
Around their neck, wrapped like a rosary, a slick pink cord. Upon awakening, Ayovi knows; the dark spirits of her days want them all.

* * *

Before midnight she’d bathed her ivory in the silver creek, splashed ice upon her face. Sang lullabies beneath the half-cut moon and lied to the man who’d given her everything. A breath of air was all that she required; Ayovi would soon be back.
Her furtive stash is cleared, packed between hides. Ayovi left the mountain.

* * *

Katydids sing their insistent spring urge. An illiterate owl interrogates her from the light of a cavalier moon. The night grows slender and dark when mother’s paw sets inside the witch’s hut. The fetid scent has immediate effect, causing the woman to roll her chin aside. A sour gaze tears between soothsayer and the nameless man built like stone— a second witch, or otherwise a strange witness of the ceremony. To Aspa she stares now with eyes that make their blunt confession: she would choose her death; obey any pain the spirits gave her if it meant her children’s survival.
Two stoats, a fawn and a falcon are removed from her back and set upon the ground.  “For mine unger.”
The last, a juvenile silver lynx is pulled from the huntress' shoulders, landing with a heavier thud upon the heap of offered kills. A fifth beast not asked for.
"Og min mand."
This was Ayovi's condition.