Bearclaw Valley [TW] My summer tan has begun to fade

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: TW self harm!

Stillrift, or the area where the girl had been kept for the passed month or so, had grown cramped.

The stonework hadn't changed composition in any way. The narrowed passages between boulders remained a constant. The altar the girl had scraped in to the soil was abandoned by now, yet remained the only change from her initial arrival. The only true difference was Indra herself.

Her puppy fat was completely stripped from a stilt-legged, sharply tucked figure. Her eyes looked sunken but not dull. As she paced her gait fluctuated as she overcompensated for her injured leg, but more and more she forced herself to walk despite the pain. Treatments were somewhat regular - to the point that the tear to the flesh was almost mended.

She should have been pleased by this development. Instead, as she followed the familiar curve of the shadows among the stone spires, she was distracted. Being healed meant the woman would not see her as frequently; it meant she would be alone again, and Indra could not abide this.

Her pacing stopped sporadically. Her attention would drift to shafts of discarded bone, or sharp pieces of rock, and nothing really felt right for what she desired; but she had teeth, too, and knew just how deep to cut.

the valley was silent. too silent.
merrick felt a great sense of anticipation.
the children were growing into servants of the bear, and the bruinwitch made quiet plans to induct them. they would be scraped from laurel's bloodline so far as he was concerned, and she from theirs. 
they belonged to ursus;
he sought his mother's young clone with a snort of his muzzle, meandering paws taking him to stillrift. she had given blood as a sacrifice. he heard the mismatched sound of her footsteps.
merrick chuffed to indra, bidding her climb the narrow footpath up to the light and himself.

She had been sprawled in the dark, chewing incessantly upon her wounded limb or her other one, whichever was closest and not stinging too greatly; but his call made her pause, pull her limb from between her teeth, and then rise to answer the summons. Indra was slow to approach. Her freshest wounds were obvious, so too was the dampening of the fur of her forelegs, and the wobble to her gait.

The light caught her eye and made her squint at first, as she found it. The travel up the edge of stillrift was not so harrowing now that she was used to it, even with her wounds. Indra watched the man with shy focus, not speaking, all ears; he had to have come for some good reason, and she would be attentive to it.

she came up.
merrick stared at her for a raw and searching moment.
he flared his gaze over her wounds.
"you look like my mother." merrick's voice was grave.
"she did a bad thing. so i had to kill her." merrick's voice was crooning;
he blinked;
and his scarred face flushed with a maddened, boyish light;
"you're a part of her. you wear her face. like my daughter."
blood flower
"but she is better than my mother was. and you —"
"— you were sent her to be better again. to be — new. reborn."
merrick turned away abruptly, slashing his tail for the girl to follow.
he led her to the pelvic bone, the skull of evien, the headpiece of astara.

The man spoke of things that Indra couldn't fully comprehend. For weeks now she had been told that mothers did not exist. Now, she had the face of his mother - and his daughter? And they were dead.

She was focused on his face until he looked away, then she was perplexed. This was a confusing revelation that did not link up with what she had been taught to think.

Maybe he had lost his daughter. Maybe she was a replacement - to be better. New.

Indra didn't know how to feel and felt comfort in the emptiness his words brought her. As she followed she was silent, sullen; letting the flare of pain in her legs be her guide now.

She saw the bones and thought absently, that they were very clean, and out of place where they were kept, apart from the altar.

Are those.. for the bear?

"they were servants of the bear. except this one." he pointed to the pelvic bone. "my mate carried this all her life."
merrick turned toward evien second; to his single eye the skull seemed wreathed in green and frothed with knowingness. "he was our bruin-leaf. the bear took his life as a blessing."
next, astara — "my mate." the skull was fresher than the other, though tending toward ivory now.
"we keep our holy ones with us. it is the way of ursus. the bear is our home, and where it leads we follow, bringing these bones to rest."
merrick was silent for a good long while and then he turned toward indra. "do they speak to you?"

Servants of the bear.

Holy ones.

What did it mean to be holy? Indra didn't know how to ask that, and remained quiet. The man was so fixated upon each of the bones and so she tried her best to study them, to understand. Maybe in doing so she would be met with praise.

Do they speak to you? He asked.

She didn't understand the question.

The... the bones...? It sounded all at once, so silly to Indra. The one-eyed man looked so serious when he asked the question that Indra had to take it seriously. She stared down at the collection - one fragment to the next - and willed something to come of it.

What did bones sound like? There was nothing. Nervously her head gave a little shake and her eyes became downcast, staring at the dirt.

"they will, the longer you visit this place." he grunted and moved away from the altar. "blood speaks. bones speak. the bear speaks. you will know all of these things, indra."
merrick stepped off. 
"when you sleep, do you dream?" the question was as abrupt as merrick ever was and demanded an answer.

This place with the bones felt wrong; or she felt wrong to be near them, unworthy of it, worried about their importance and the inherent lack of her own value in relation.

His question gave Indra whiplash.

I don't remember, the girl started to say, but as the words flowed, she knew she was lying. Quickly she blundered through a correction: Sometimes. The -- cave, I, I'm running... Sometimes I am not alone.

the cave,
merrick's flame-stare guttered with knowingness. "and who is with you at those times, indra?"
but his voice commanded her not to say the name;
nor the title.
mothers were not real and laurel had not existed.