Nocturne Summit ikuallaaktuk ⩛

"hydra."

her voice silent as gaze trailed salt and lot's wife toward moonspear, toward the smoke that trailed darkly into the air and starkly against the snow; kukutux found herself reminded of falling stones and the cries cut off in the crushed ulax

"i was" — nauk? nauk? and arcturus' voice sounded like a clamshell knife cutting at the back of her skull, opening flesh and pulling it over until kukutux felt her nakedness fall away into grim ash.

"i was at the ulaq and i saw the light." and "hydra — i —" she had not seen but she had known, for the moonwoman knew now that it was mira she had heard weeping as her pale aunt stumbled away and away, one paw before another as body set itself in the traces to bring kukutux to safety when her mind could not.

she looked toward him now, tears crowding behind the hide walls of her throat, the curtain of her lashes. 

but they refused to fall.