Nova Peak [nd] while you damn the dead i'm trying to survive

She had settled herself, ears alert and angled toward her new interlocutor, observing with her one good eye while the other remained shut, heavy with fatigue. The woman in the coat, perfumed with brine and sea-salt, spoke with an accent as thick as the witch’s own. When she had grown curious about the bag, Aspa had simply smiled. The stranger had brought delicacies from the sea; Aspa, in contrast, bore horrors born of the taiga.

With a flick of her paw, she unveiled the satchel's contents—a revelation accompanied by a stench so foul it barely hid beneath floral traces. The head of a young lynx, its skin dried and mummified by cold, stared blindly with sockets now filled with an assortment of dried herbs.

A totem. A fetish, promised by the sorceress to the delighted mother.

Have you ever seen something like this? she asked, lips curled in an amused smile. Aspa had traveled, yes, but she had never truly mingled with other cultures. She was a soothsayer, a humble servant of her northern gods, and had little concern for those who lived unafraid of her deities—for such people were mere beasts, in her eyes…

Do your people have gods to please? Women who speak with them, who hear them? she asked, her tail gently sweeping the earth. After all, the woman had brought with her something that resembled an offering as well—a mystic tableau. Perhaps it was merely art? A particular sensitivity to the aesthetics of mystery. A seal.