Moonspear a connection to the Light

i didn't wanna bog down the join thread but i DID want a thread <3 if this isn't ok, lemme know!

a man had come to join him in the den.

the rasping voice of shardik had brought it to him in his sleep.

@Chakliux.

the space felt tight, warm, smelling of herbs and meat. it unnerved him in a way, the man so close. the man wounded also. yet quennell had not been awake long enough to find out what had done this wolf in.

only that somebody healed alongside him now.

a soft smacking of a dry mouth, the only sign he had awoken.

:D me too!

his wound had been cleansed. whatever medicine he had been given put the seal hunter into a long, dark sleep. it was the best slumber he had been granted in many days, since leaving moonglow.
chakliux heard the boy awaken. he lay still. "what did this to you, little brother?" he grunted, eyes moving over the wall of the healing ulaq.

little brother.

his sunken features turned to look over his shoulder at the pale man. a dull ache as the muscles stretched. so far from use these days.

or rather overuse and then a halt entirely.

shardik, his voice drawled dryly. bear.

bear.
"you are alive. you spit in its eyes." this was said with pride. chakliux rolled until he was on his spine, facing upward. only the slightest hiss of pain escaped his teeth.
"shardik is not a thing i know. where do you come from?"

it was like a masculine sialuk.

perhaps it was that reason alone that softened him some. even if he still acted a bit gruff. less inclined to give long winded answers like he might have before.

de coast.

he eyed the male warily for a moment. wondering what had happened to him. why he laid here in the place of hilling among the foothills of moonspear.

you?

for every question already asked.

"the coast."
"my people are seal hunters. we live far on the ice." homesickness rose in chakliux. but he was here now, and he could bring with him the ways of his village.
the accent was unfamiliar, and they shared this between them, the hunter's syllables clipped, guttural, those of the boy a saltwater cadence.

he only answered one question.

the boy regarded him with a long silent look. as if appraising the man before him. seal hunter. it too inspired some unease of homesickness in him. when had he last felt the salt curling his coat? when had he last seen or heard the lapping of waves?

why 'ere? whatcha 'ealing?

he let his head slump down over his paws.

chakliux blew a rueful breath from his nostrils. "the man who i followed last said i was disgraceful for i had — found a wife. without asking." that was not nearly the sum of it, but the seal hunter wanted to obscure his time in moonglow. it must be done if he was to move forward.
"it was he who tore my body here," his right shoulder, new scarring over the manhood marks, "and broke something inside me," his right side, swollen still.
"so you see, little brother," came the hunter's hard voice, "not all wolves should have your trust."

it all...sounded so foreign to him.

why did he have to ask for a wife? why did he have to ask the man about a wife? if the wife was happy, where was the problem?

he snorted softly. shifted with a low groan of aching as he regarded the supposed wisdom given to him.

dey don't.

his eyes crinkled at the corners to squint at the man. as if to prove his point.

the look was feral, humorless.
chakliux grinned a fanged smile that held no mirth in it, an answer to the boy. 
"good. when i am healed, i will take you hunting. you will not be caught this way again."

oh, would he now?

dunno. and he meant it. the poor state of him would take more time to heal than what he could fathom right now in this poor state.

maybe not able to.

or maybe he was building a wall, prepared to be a disappointment or danger once more.

"we are the same in this," chakliux muttered, lifting his currently-useless leg with a wince. "i relied on the care of others to journey here. i have not hunted my own meat in many days." it was unbecoming for a man.
the seal hunter was silent now. he wished to ask the boy his name but he also wished to dwell only in his pain and quiet anger.

don't trust every wolf.

and yet here he felt a thread, winding and weaving. a shared misery among them.

no way to live. this he meant in earnest to. useless, dead weight. not even useful to the woman who had given him a life — truly gave him life. he would have died without sialuk in those woods.

now he looked to the man and wondered just how much they shared.

the boy spoke like a man in this moment.
chakliux nodded once, a half-movement of his chin upward. "my people worship oil father. aipaloovik. he gives flesh. he gives fat. he gives life. but he is not merciful. some say he is evil. i am not one of those men."
chakliux stared at the ceiling of the hollowed tree. "a hunter knows there is pain in life. he gives this pain to oil father. and with his pain he lets go of his fear."

oil father.

it continued to be a bit absurd to the boy who had only known women as things to worship, to respect. the sea had been a woman entity. he missed her now, in the warm space between two healing boymen.

ya givin'?

the once seadweller held onto his fear with an iron grip.

chakliux gave that same cold smile once more. "do you see these marks? on my face. and the ones here, on my shoulders?" shifting to look now at the healing young wolf more clearly. "these were put on me by the spirit-talker of my village, after i killed my first seal. the pain is great. but if you show no weakness in the making, what other pain can touch you then?"
his eyes were alight in the semi-gloom. "i do not fear death. it will take me to the summer-grounds of my ancestors. i will live this life and enjoy the next."

he saw them.

he figured they may have come from other men things. not that the sea boy knew much of what things men did. he was a boy and he had learned from women. the men around him, too, had learned from women.

whatcha do when yer 'ealed?

did the man plan to go back to seal hunting?

the boy could not say why he cared.

"i will stay to repay my debt to sialuk, and to my hunting-brother kannoyak. settle here and wait to become a father."
that last clenched him with something unknown and unknowable.
"you?" chakliux said at last, adopting the few syllables of his denmate as the conversation began to tire him.

father.

that unsettled and agitated feeling reared in his gut again. he shifted, to turn himself away from the man some now.

dunno, and he meant to leave them at that.

last for me! what a great thread :D

chakliux grunted, the acceptant sound of a man.
the boy closed. 
the seal hunter fell into sleep and dreamed of the long white storm which had forced him to this land.