Nova Peak Niende Dag

she watched as green light bathed them and turned the slick pool of oxblood at their feet black.

the thrum of an ancient culture she had never known before pulsed deep underground, inspiring her lifeblood. and she a witness to it! a mere grain of sand held up to something immense and beyond her understanding -- the knowledge of this climbed down her spine and lodged coldly within her gut.

her eyes roved over the totems and sacrifices, hungry to learn more; above them, the shapes of old gods and hunters and killers moved in the dancing lights of green and blue and sharp, fleeting pinks.

to taste this primordial freedom, sense the sulfur and salt on her lips, the matte of blood seeping through fur; the wind and the cold and the scouring, ever-distant torrent of love.

tantalus, this moment -- she reached for a love that had only ever been evasive, and she saw it reflected first in skorpa's mistrustful eyes as he drew peltskin over the small bodies, and then in the soft, glacier-blues of his wife.

is this what motherhood feels like?

how many generations had this ritual played out? the energy of it exponential, shivering as it lit the joyous faces of each gathered. sobeille was moved by presence susurrating throughout them.

and in the epicenter, the very life they celebrated moved with the rhythms of birth and blood and suffering and joy; behind her soft eyelids, eyes that had yet to behold the world moved.

and when they opened it was as if peering into a glacier's heart: the cosmos entire held in the single skull of a nine-day old pup.