Ouroboros Spine naluruk

The village blazed in autumn golds and browns, with the louder days of summer's cicadas having died out in the coming cold. Kigipigak enjoyed the shift from chlorophyll-scented paths to the more earthy, musty scents as the fallen leaves mulched under heel. He ran his patrols all the same; in the next month or so the cold would really come to claim the earth, but for now Kigipigak stood out starkly against the transitioning forest.

He had looped back along his patrol and now came to the core of the territory where he knew a cache or two sat, well kept. The man had yet to eat that day and thought to find something there, enough to tide him over until the evening. His mind was on his work, as always; the goings-on of the village over the course of the past few weeks didn't fully register with Kigipigak, who was ignorant to the absence of a first hunter among them, or the dispersal of the captive boy, or much of anything.