Ouroboros Spine ᐊ ukkuq

ippiksaut worked beside him, her movements precise and unhurried, the rhythm of her scraping slow as breath through winter grass. she did not look at him at first; only listened, letting his story settle like silt in still water.

when he spoke of grief, of sons gone to the world’s hungers, of women who slipped from his life like tide withdrawing from stone, her ears angled toward him at last. not pity— she had no taste for that— but recognition. the kind that comes from carrying her own losses in the quiet muscle of the heart.

she pressed her paw along the hide’s edge, smoothing a stubborn wrinkle, then finally turned her mismatched gaze upon him. one eye the color of deep ice, the other warm as late-summer honey.

darkness does not gather where tenderness walks, she said, voice low and steady. you speak of your dead with love. that is not a shadow’s tongue.

another pull of the hide. the fibers sang beneath them.

the moon takes many things, she went on, softer now. she took from me too. and still i learned— loss is not wicked. only heavy.

her tail brushed once across the earth, a small gesture of assurance.

you are not the darkness, rodyn ardeth. her gaze lingered, unwavering. darkness leaves nothing growing behind it. and you… she nodded toward the work they shared, toward the glen beyond, toward the life he tended without fanfare. you feed whole villages.