Ouroboros Spine pharmaka

The boy ranged further up the cliffside each day. His belly was full of fresh meat and so his energy levels were vastly improved, garnering from him a strong curiosity he would otherwise have ignored, being too desperately hungry or anxiety-riddled to allow for extraneous feeling.

Wielding this, as he had never before expressed such a thing within the realm of Ursus, he felt compelled to challenge himself with further climbs each day. So it was that he climbed the spine; whether he knew it was inhabited or not by the end of his journey, the boy went about his business without obvious care.

He was careful and slow in his ascent. The thinning of the air helped embolden him, yet it was after a few near-death miss steps that he learned to be more cautious, prowling his way along rather than running to inspect different scents, plants, or views as before.

When he came upon a patch of disturbed earth he stopped to sniff at it, then the surrounding trees. As he probed the darkness of the underwood he stopped, turned, and began to investigate the pollen-heavy ferns just off the path.

Something here smelled good — like the fish he had taken from the woman — but the memory of that moment brought along a sense of urgency, as if the hills were watching and judging him.

the duck had become sure-footed upon the guardian slopes of moonglow.

her face these days was rarely turned toward the ruined mountain. the blackfox and their young moon-hunter walked in her day-visions, but less often now, and the remembrance of their faces did not hold the same sting.

her village prepared quietly for a marriage ceremony. her thoughts turned to the redsun. he must choose her formally before the eyes of sivullik.

kukutux, shoulders swaddled in the dark pelt of a goat, turned her path up and up and up — her small pale paws flashed against the earth, drawing to a staggered halt as a stone-made shape appeared before her. 

the trader!

dread choked her lips. how had he returned? a sweeping blink, and she saw it was not the angry man buried upon the glacier, only the large hungry boy she had once fed. "hello, nuak," kukutux said softly, not approaching again, for she recalled how he had drawn back in fear. her own heart thudded dully as she took up the reins of herself, seeking control. "have you come to this village to hear another story?"

His face half buried in the dirt, it sprang up when her voice issued forth an unexpected greeting. Up, with eyes bright and ears at a swivel, then down to a hunch of the shoulders as the slate-dark furs of his spine began to spike. A glower on his face; he stole glances at the pale shape of the woman and otherwise stood petrified, like a gargoyle.

The last time he had seen her, she had given him food. It had not occurred like that in his mind; that she had discarded a skin and inside of it, he had found the fish, then pilfered it for himself. The successful scavenge had left him feeling a sense of elation for his rare success. The vague superiority of any child who gets away with stealing a fresh cookie from the jar.

This time he is wary too — a hard habit to break, all things considered. He does wonder if she has somehow cast a spell on him. That or communed with spirits he does not know, in the way Averna would. His nostrils flared as he tried to gather her scent; he probed the air while brown grit fell from atop his snout, but he could not find anything beyond the aroma of wet soil due to his truffling.

At any rate, he had not run yet.

pitsâtailik, her mind whispered, but it seemed the boy thought the same. tensely, in the air of a yearling bear, he explored her scent. she saw the rich earth fall from him, and clucked her tongue. "aya. the young hunter has found moonglow's secret." a gentle jest.

kukutux, as before, sat down in her path and regarded him. this time she had brought no hidden sticks of meat. it did not occur to the woman to cast the large youth from their borders, or that he was a possible threat with his size against her own. the age of him reminded the duck of her own lost son.

"i will feed you again," she told him softly, studying the tight lines of his stone-mountain figure.

Aya, the woman called out with a cluck of her tongue, both sounds startling the boy immensely. He lifted his lip so that his front teeth were exposed to light then thought better of it, and snaked his tongue across his nose after. It had the sense of someone being bashful over their own timidity. Her voice wasn't barbed like the red girl's, as incongruent as the ghost woman's, or even as unnerving as the king of the bears himself; something new floated here that did not make sense to the boy.

I will feed you again, she offered — promised? — and as much as the boy wanted to believe her, he couldn't, not entirely. His guard was up. He was well fortified against tricks, he thought, and strong enough now to take on one woman if she were to come after him — kindness, though, had no place in the schema of his being.

A part of him wanted to ask why. That ultimately did not matter to him, though. She could have offered him anything, said anything, promised him the world, and he would still be as unwilling to trust her as he was of anyone. The fact he had taken food from her and not been harmed was a plus; he saw her as someone to use, and as she wasn't attacking him outright for his presence here, the boy thought that this was an opportunity for an easy meal.

That and, she could not be trusted. Someone must have been waiting in the wings. The longer he lingered there with her the more the boy could discern of the scents around himself and he knew now, this woman was not alone at all. Her scent was everywhere. To show he would not be leaving, he sank to his haunches; his tattered ears began to pivot like radar dishes to every sound upon the mountain — but his shrewd dark eyes lingered upon her - nervously defiant.

he did not accept, ears catching each sound with moonglow. she wondered if his voice was existent, and if so, if it was boyish. or if it would hold the same as the look of him, a thousand tiny stones tossed against a pawful of sand. his own haunches lowered, and so they remained this way, looking at one another with a good distance between them, but both seated.

"it would be better to let me give you food, nuak,'" kukutux said softly. "better to come to my ulaq. sivullik patrols the spine of stone. he would not like to find you here if you are not one who visits moonglow." an arch of her pale brow, a silence to follow. she inclined her muzzle toward the earth in noiseless request, for she was not a hunter, and would not interfere with the way of a hunter if one was to come upon them now.

but she would not see this boy harmed. her heart and its odd pull would not allow this.

Further words came to coax him in to submission. It was a tactic the boy did not have a defense for; when others wanted something they would always use violence as encouragement. This woman only spoke and waited. The terms she used were not ones he understood but they were not malicious sounds. The woman kept calling him Nuak and he wondered briefly if that was worth adopting.

Food was hard for him to come by currently, despite the full belly he now sported. The boy could return to that carcass if he could find it back down the mountain. What use was this woman then? Offering him food he need not hunt for, better than what he would eventually scavenge. He wondered what her angle was; what repayment she might desire or threat she might pose.

In the end he had to make a choice. Continue to live
the life of a loner, struggle, and likely die - or, adapt. He curled his lip as visible frustration formed on his face, but he stood up, then drew across the divide towards the woman. He paused and ducked back a step, bashful as he turned his eyes away. While he was tense all over he held the curl of something pitiful.

someone had hurt him.

kukutux was reminded of how open the children of her birth-island had been, how they played without fear and came to any ulaq for food. this boy did not wear their carelessness, nor did he wear the unpolished delight of a young hunter. 

when he drew closer on hesitant steps, a conflicted expression crossing his face, kukutux was still. she watched him thrumming with corded wariness, but still again she saw her son in his youth, in the boyish aspect of his figure below the rest of it.

"come," kukutux said gently, standing slowly to her own paws. the line of her back turned to him now; if the wild going hunter meant to attack, it would be in this moment.

the duck found a path toward her ulaq, holding the fur before her as she went, ear tipped backward to hear the boy's step.

As violence was an ever-present facet of his life, to say the boy did not fantasize about directing his energy in to an assault against the woman, especially so as her back was turned, would be wrong.

He did envision striking her down with a lunge; he wondered if she would fall limp like the deer with his teeth at her throat, or fight back the way he often fought against the threat of the other children. Would it feel like a game? What would her blood taste like on his tongue? How soft was her skin?

These came and went while she led him along. As he did not know what an ulaq was, the boy did not look away from the woman as she moved and trained his eyes upon her pale figure; those ripped ears of his pivoting to every sound. From time to time his gait would slow or quicken, bothered by something or other - or catching up to the womans path.

At any point someone could strike at him. He was primed to run if that transpired, keeping himself apprised of possible routes of egress as they went.

the boy did not relax as they moved. the sound of his steps were not consistent. kukutux did not turn as they walked, only filled herself with the strength of moonglow and the awareness that her wolves were close.

but more than that, her curiosity about the boy grew and grew, until the forested paths gave way to the soft spring grass, emerald and yellowvine. the stone face of her ulaq, draped over with slices of dried fish and strips of venison. a small heap of berries, fragrantly vibrant.

kukutux turned to face the young hunter, and then set herself to serving him, keeping the desired space between them both as she found the best-kept fats and sweetmeats from her cache.

setting it all upon a strip of paperbirch, the woman settled herself near the den-mouth, motioning that he should take the food. the birds trilling nearby did not move her gaze from him. "you do not have to stay if it is not your want," she told him. "only give to me the name that you have, so i will tell it to the others, and you may be given a free path when you come back."

would he speak now to her? or had his voice been taken? or did he only guard it, as he did the rest of himself?

Eventually they came to a thing made of stone, which he glanced over quickly in his study of the area. It dis not look cobbled together in any way and instead reminded him of some stone structures he had found once in the valley, except there were more trees to surround it. The smell of various meats in stages of dryness touched his nose and made him salivate.

The woman stopped and looked to him as she spoke, at which point the boy also stopped and hesitated, shoulders rising together tightly. As she prepared things he finally grew disinterested in her antics.

At her request for a name he appeared to ignore her completely, ducking towards the food she had laid out. After sniffling at the morsels he began to swipe them away with hasty tugs, chewing rapidly, almost choking as he hurried. He did not need to eat as desperately as before but was afraid all the same - she could have a trap laid out here.

When nobody else emerged he grew more complacent and tugged the last bits of the meal away some distance, then lay with them protectively. This he did not eat immediately; he watched the woman a moment and lowly explained, Don't got a name. Then, licking the fat and salt from his lips left by some meat, tucked in to the rest of the meal.

and so he spoke. kukutux found she had not prepared for the sound of it: unused and youthful, redrust at the edge of the tone. as if he did not speak often. he had not needed to make a word so far.

she watched him eat more slowly, a mother's pleasure lighting her jadestone eyes in spite of the situation. there it was again: the passing sensation of familiarity. perhaps his spirit had walked this earth before. perhaps it had come back to be born into this child's body.

"i will call you nuak until you have chosen your name. it means you are the son of my brother. it means i will feed you as kin."

the duck did not know how true the word was; she said it with no perception of the blood that ran in the wildman's being.

"i am kukutux. this is moonglow." she could not remember if she had said her name before, and turned to rummage within the ulaq. reemerging with a worn russet foxfur, she dropped it lightly into the expanse between she and her newfound nephew. 

"use this, when you make your sleeping place." the duck studied him a span of heartbeats, then dropped her eyes and moved back until she felt he would experience safety once more, or something that resembled it.

The boy had been right to assume the term was for himself, and thought of correcting her with the name he had chosen for himself - but something was deeply wrong with that, and as he did not feel comfortable with sharing something so dear to himself with a stranger, he held his tongue. Nuak would serve well enough for now.

The slightest movement from the woman garnered a slight glare from his dark, grim features. She vanished in to the hollow and soon after came away with a gift; one she spread out before withdrawing. The red-brown of the skin was the most vibrant thing he had ever seen; he stared at it dumbly, an ear pivoting to Kukutux' voice.

When he felt her presence move away from it he looked after her, then rose and took a stride towards the rufous layer of fur. He watched strands tremble and inspected the surface with cursory sniffs, then climbed upon an edge. Unable to stop himself the boy dropped to his chest and scrubbed himself against the skin, feeling the rough furs drag against his own ragged coat.

When he exhausts himself enough he spins on his heel and becomes a puddle against the red fur, pulling his legs in close to his core, with his chin on his forelimbs.

More of the boy is against the dirt versus the pelt. It is clear by the way his eyelids begin to droop that he is falling asleep - fighting against the sensation - until finally his wary ears stop twisting; the speedy beat of his anxiety-riddled pulse slowly seeps away, leaving the boy to a much needed nap.

kukutux watched with a billowing sort of quiet joy as the boy accepted her gift. she sensed a desperation in him all the same; she wanted to ask how long he had been alone, but he did not use his voice. so she would keep hers quiet as well. 

folding paws beneath her chest, she took her eyes from him as not to stare, and set her mind upon the tasks she had yet to do. a yawn split her jaws impolitely, and she glanced to see if he watched.

but he did not. the boy lay half-upon the fur and even now put his strength toward sleep, in the manner of a baby who has become drowsy with milk but refuses to slumber. yet he fell beneath it all the same, and kukutux felt warmth upon her cheek and salt upon her lip. her son had not left her heart.

the duck kept watch over the forest-child as he slept.