Firefly Glen everything is(n't) going to be okay

Maybe someone from a nearby pack or someone going after caregiver?

Everything had been one giant accident.

That's all it was.

Accident after accident.

He had wandered too far in a rain storm. When the thunder and lightening had started, he had found a cave to hunker down in. Swore he would trek right back once the path home was safe. Except it had never been safe to begin with. The rocky mountain was unforgiving to the willow built man.

A few tumbles had been expected and had happened. Each one pushed him a little further away until one eventually did harsh damage to his left hind ankle. He could not tell whether it was a sprain or a break, but there was a tenderness to it that slowly became unbearable to walk on. So he gave up on the mountain path home. Foolish from the start and foolish to the end, it seemed.

He hid away in a glen, the swelling of his an ankle a more prominent sign of its injured state. He had no clue how long it would take to heal. Especially when he had no clue the severity of it.

The thoughts of his injured state and the things he had lost due to his wanderlust driven travel weighed heavy upon him that night. On his back on a bed of smashed ferns and mosses, eyes trained upwards at the canopy that thickly covered the night sky from him. No light to be shined down on him or his situation.

Yet slowly....so slowly, the air around him came to life. Small twinkles of light in the form of fireflies. They all worked together to provide him with a whimsically serene setting.

A distraction from his disasters.

kukutux could not have explained why she came to the glen.

antares had gone and had not come back. her never-departed sense of ostrega-blood had sent her out to look for him. but his scent was not here, and she feared that he had gone farther than she had wanted. that he did not intend to return. it would fall to her, then, and to sialuk, to remember their family through stories and recollections.

she came also to see if the boy had traipsed through, and as she walked, the duck's voice lifted in a lilting song. its words would not translate well to the common tongue; it was a working song, something to while through the hours and greet the spirits that walked alongside travellers.

night mother came and put her arms around kukutux. fireflies, they had been called, these bobbing dots of light in the air. the voice of the blackfox in her head, his smile haunting the place behind her eyes.

when she returned to herself, moonwoman found she was not alone. a man lay near, clothed in a loamy parka, eyes trained toward the sky. kukutux lifted her own head, watching the velveteen spread of obsidian exist above them. 

she said nothing.

His chest squeeze at the soft footsteps, his lungs refused to take in more oxygen until...nothing. Nothing was said to him. Not the smooth voice of Kynraeth of the tease of the warrior women. Not even teeth grazing his exposed underside.

There was nothing to acknowledge his (or her) presence.

So he let it sit and stew for a moment. Until finally his lungs came back to life with a breathy exhale, wispy and wary.

Am I intruding?

she started when he spoke, suddenly caribou-fawn shy for a fraught moment. and then her ears came forward and her countenance stilled. "this place is not lived inside," the clip of her nascent syllables. 

something off about the man, about how he breathed and still lay crooked on the ground. kukutux set the light wonder of polite jade eyes upon him for only a moment. "this woman wonders if this hunter is well."

No one but him.

It was a soft sort of irony, wasn’t it?

He had left in a wanderlust from his own loneliness only to be wounded and stranded in an even lonelier place. If there were higher beings, he would take this as a sign. He shouldn’t have let him get the best of himself.

He is not, He breathed back to her in tired response. There was some relief in speaking of himself in a distant way like he could remove himself from it all.

I think...something broke.

Now he was exposed for how weak he was.

broken. 

kukutux, turning toward him, dropping the veil of a demure woman and taking up the look of a healer. "then the spirits have made us a meeting here." of course they had made this place a holy ground: another sacred death-site in the face of so many. for a moment it seemed as though grief might steal her, and then the duck was stepping forward.

"i will look. i am a healer." a slight curve to her lips, meaning to reassure. if allowed, in the next, she would stoop to probe gently the leg with a slow knowing touch.

Then everything seemed to soften.

This encounter was far different than all the others he had had in these still new lands. She was not akin to the wolves back home, she was different in a wonderful way. Almost a reminder of home.

This one. He gestured timidly to his hind left leg, the swell of the injured sight telling his truths.

He shouldn’t have, but he still felt embarrassed.

"my own leg had the breaking, through the last snow and to the first sun," kukutux said softly. the man's limb was swollen to the point where she could not aptly say whether or not the bone had cracked. 

no matter; he would need rest and care. "i have the name of kukutux," she told the injured hunter. "i am wisewoman of village moonglow, that way," a gesture toward the spine.

for the first time she saw the burnished gold of his eyes. sikrinaktok despite his state. "i will need to make the leg straight. it will bring pain."

He would have pinned her for a mystic, had she not declared her own title.

Kukutux, wisewoman of the village moonglow.

He supposed such still fit the theme of a mystic. He dared not question her ways or her information of what she needed to do with his leg. She knew better — or so he believed.

Okay... Breathy and cautious.

He had forgotten to introduce himself. Had that been on purpose? Maybe scared to declare his own name for the shame it might bring upon him or upon what his home had once been.

How?

kukutux rocked back on her haunches. she had not expected him to ask, only to trust her word. but that was because she had grown accustomed to the confidence of her people. she was strange to him, and he to her, this sungold man who had not yet given his name.

"we will pull it this way, out," she gestured. "i will put it between two sticks of wood. if it is broken, it must be put in a straighter way, or it will heal badly." voice soft, eyes curious. the duck wondered how many years the hunter had.

There was some panic that swelled in his chest at her explanation. A whole leg bound by wood.

What would he even do with that? Where would he even go? A lame sitting duck is what he would become. It was what he already was.

I...I— His breathing hitched and despite being laid upon his back, he felt awfully unstable.

What will I do? It is soft but hoarse with the straining sensation in his throat. And he felt awfully terrible as a rim of tears collected along his eyes.

a blink of jadestone eyes, suffusing with a worried affection as the saltwater began. "then i will call to my village for help, and we will make the path to my ulaq." 

it had not occured to the woman to leave him. again, a misstep. she had forgotten how to speak to those not tucked into the soft belly of moonglow.

reaching forward, a tonguecluck sounding. "what is the name you have?"

Her ulaq. He had not a clue what that was or where exactly it might be. Close, he hoped and had feeling.

His mind felt like nothing in that moment. His collective worries had ate away at his ability to just think. So perhaps it was for the best that she had asked him a question forewarned by her tongueclick.

Patroclus.

Although he deeply wished he wasn't.

patroclus. her mouth did not enjoy the sharp edges of the name, and she swallowed part of it in her repetition. "did you know those who lived here first?"

perhaps he had come too after the remnants of the glen. not for the first time did kukutux consider the good sense and whispering that had brought her back. suppose she had not come?

"i will look now for the wood," she murmured apologetically. "we are not so far, but it will be a better thing to make your leg still until you must stand."

His head swayed back and forth softly. No, I've never been here. It had been the easiest place for him to rest after his fall and the strain that travel had become.

Then she had to go search for the wood.

He could not decide if that would be good or bad. It would be a moment alone again, in silence and with no one but himself and the spotty fireflies. Except he loathed the idea of being alone for long now that someone had found him.

Be back soon, He whispered weakly to her as he trained yellow eyes back upon the dark canopy above.

a sound deep in her throat, and then the pale woman was moving off into the darkness. kukutux allowed the gentle glow of the fireflies to guide her path, breathing a prayer of relief when she found one such stake quickly.

the location of the next took her more minutes, but kukutux returned as swiftly as she was able. "patroclus," the duck said softly when she had come back, painstakingly bearing one stick at a single time. "when we have taken you to moonglow, i will give you a medicine for pain."

she settled near the swelled leg, looking to the man for his last agreement before she began to draw it straight.

It was silent and it was lonely. He had thought he would focus on everything but instead he spaced out and lost the minutes that she had been gone. Focused once more on the pain that radiated in his leg. Momentarily wondered how much worse it would hurt when she straightened it.

Then she was back with stakes. His stomach would flip at the knowingness of more pain arriving soon. Yet she informed him that when they arrived he would be given something for all this pain.

Thank you, Kukutux. Spoken before he sucked in a breath. Sharp but steady.

He awaited her next moves.

will powerplay sialuk in my next post (w permission)

taking his heel gently in her jaws, kukutux slowly stretched the injured limb against the ground. it would take some formless sense of time, but eventually she sat back again, having nudged the wood into place.

"it is finished." the duck stepped aside, sending up a low cry toward moonglow for aid. bring my medicines, she added in an aside for @Sialuk.

sinking down beside patroclus, kukutux would move closer, offering the warmth of her presence, willing him only to breathe and to exist.

He wobbled cries the whole time, unable to hold back. He had not once ever become accustomed to pain and so to suddenly be so overburdened by it was something new entirely.

He could not speak, even when she summoned someone and even when she settled beside him. There was some sort of childish feeling in him. To reach out to her like a cub to a mother and seek some form of comfort as he tried to soothe his own cries.

she remembered her own pain, after that flight from moonspear. after arcturus had found her. kukutux sang a child's song as she pressed closer, a new haunted prayer in her throat.

her raindrop came in some hours, as swiftly as she had been bidden. "the spirits led me here, to this place, to him," the duck said in their tongue.  "see, daughter, his leg is hurt. perhaps it is broken as mine was." 

together the moonglow women moved the heavy sticks. sialuk had brought with her the rabbitfur of dried herbs, and kukutux found the small purple petals. she chewed them, offered them to patroclus upon the edge of her lip.

"we are taking him to the village. he cannot be alone here." kukutux hoped what she had given the man would remove some agonies from him, though she could not grant enough to bring sleep. not now. "patroclus, we lift you now. you must stand."

He cried some more, she sang some more and soon enough he didn’t remember much beyond those details. He drifted in and out of this state like the oceans beckoned him. Everything blurred when his eyes grew too heavy. A brief sleep before he’d stir himself into a painful waking state again.

Although this time he was presented with color upon Kukutux’s lips, an offering to him. One he did not refuse in the slightest. Far too eager to be rid of this moment in time and see relief in whatever form it came. Yet she beckoned him to stand, somebody had come to help her with him.

Just for you. Tired, heavy humor in his voice. An attempt to distract himself.

It would not be pretty or graceful, but he would try as many times as it took for him to rise.

can start us a new one <3

it was a sad smile that came to her, but kukutux stepped forward to place her shoulder against that of the man.

until he rose fully, she would stay beside him, and through the surely endless time it would take to travel to moonglow, the duck would stay in her position.

patroclus. he would sleep in her ulaq until he was well, and she spoke to him softly as the three journeyed, alternately singing a walking song, reassuring the injured man, or speaking quietly with sialuk in their own words.