Stone Circle how we love is what will last

Someone had come upon Stone Circle. Someone who knew, or so she surmised from the shocks of flowers and plants which lay carefully placed at the base of each pillar.

But who? Was it dad? Kallik? One of her cousins? Each option seemed outlandish in its own right, yet her heart had quickened any way, alongside her hope, and she had set off around the perimeter of the circle to inspect each stone. But only scents of Kvarsheim and new recruits reached her, until she returned to the centre of the circle with all her questions still intact, and no answers to quell them.

If not her family, then who?

Taktuq lay near the base of the Pilgrim Stone as the sunlight poured through the circle in warm yet broken lines, and considered the tiger lilies that now marked the spot where her mother’s bones lay resting.

Her line of view is cropped by the horizon of the little hill upon which she flattens herself. An investigator is here to scrutinize what’s been done.

Tauris does not reveal herself. She watches with a low chin upon her paws as the lady dances between the cairns. Of the pack, she must be. And so it is reasonable to assume there is no common language between them. Or maybe, and more likely, she fears a scolding for desecrating the sacred site.

Finally the lady in silver rests. Tauris shifts her weight back, attempting to slip undetected from this place.

As the sunlight struck the lilies, her heart stirred with a sense of familiarity. Though she had never seen her mother’s eyes, Valette had shared the memory of them with her. Brandished copper, like hearth fire. Perhaps she had added words over the years, but nonetheless, the flowers bore a striking resemblance to how she had imagined them.

She leaned forward as of to touch one, but movement in her periphery had her swinging her head round to catch the retreat of someone beyond the hillside —

Wait, her abrupt voice carried over the stillness of the world. Was this the one who had done this? Taktuq hadn’t been able to see the face of the other before they’d sunk into their retreat, and hoped they would show themselves. She began to rise.

She freezes.

Like a pup awaiting reprove she turns slowly to face the keeper of cairns. Her spine curls in customary habit, her tail hangs low.

She does not know the significance of such a place. Does not understand how one is meant to treat the stones. She knows only that she’d felt compelled to acknowledge them, in some way.

“I’ve meant no offense by it,” She explains lamely, eyeing the silver girl from afar.

Her first impression of the stranger is of who has been caught doing things they must not do, but Taktuq’s gaze is soft — if not a little confused. Who is this girl, and where is she from? And how did she know the weight of this place? Her earthy fur reminds her of Valette, and the grays, of Nanook.

Could this be a cousin? A daughter of her aunt?

The idea thrills her but she pushes her high hopes down… even if they linger.

Offence? Taktuq repeats, and turns her gaze to the tiger lilies once more. A gentle breeze trembles through their vibrant petals, and she lingers in a long moment’s thought before she looks to the stranger again. Did you know the ones who are buried here?

There’s not anger in the girl’s stance, she gives her an inquisitive cast and Tauris does the same, she lifts her head up but remains stagnant as a puddle.

“No,” she admits a bit breathlessly. No, she’s never stepped foot here before this day. 

“Is this… your family?” Her voice is soft, careful. There is great emotion on the silver girl’s face, but nothing she can impart clearly from this distance.

The other girl neither flees nor moves to cover the space between them, and Taktuq allows her this distance. Perhaps she is still wary that she has offended her… so Taktuq gives her a soft smile in hopes to reassure her.

Her own hope falters when the stranger admits to being a stranger even to the wolves who are buried here, and she considers again how odd it is that she would think to honour this place. Unless she has a place like this in her own homeland. Taktuq rests in this, and is stirred again by her gesture.

The breeze continues to play at her fur, and she turns towards the stones again. Yes, this is her family, even those she had never met. She knows now, too, that her aunt lay buried here as well. She had understood the sorrow in Merrit’s eyes even before he had told her. My mother, here… she falls quiet, uneasy. Surely it is wrong to speak of these things with such a divide between them! She looks to Tauris, and brushes her tail against the grass. Why don’t you come closer?

A soft invitation.

She scuttles forward with encouragement, only then truly taking stock of the Kvarsheim girl. She has decidedly kind hazel eyes, but they are glazed with sadness.

“My name is Tauris... I'm sorry about your mother,” Her ears sink. The ancient monuments seem to whistle in response as a little breeze weaves through them. “What a beautiful way to memorialize her.” Her voice is soft, apologetic.

“Would you show me…where?”

Tauris. There is something wild in the looks of the earth spun girl, but there is a kindness there, too. Wild, but not feral, as though tossed by the world and wind.

They are, she murmured in agreement. It’s okay, she wished to say. From all her aunt and cousins had told her, she did not think her mother was sorry she had died. It meant that she and her brothers had lived.

This one, Taktuq sought to guide Tauris’ eyes with a gesture to the twin stones the tiger lily lay beneath, this is the Pilgrim Stone. My auntie named it in honour of my mother, Nanook. She died protecting me and my brothers. They told me she was fierce, and overcame much. So Auntie Val gave her this stone to remember her journey. To remember and take wisdom from her growth, from birth to redemption to death.

It was like she could hear auntie Val speaking the words behind her, as if she might look down and see the grass clawed away where they had dug the grave. As if they had only just laid Nanook down to her eternal rest.

Taktuq raised a paw to her cheek and turned her face away when she felt her lips begin to tremble. I’m sorry, she said softly to Tauris.

She shifts beside Taktuq to eye the Pilgrim Stone and it seems to stare back, its northern span crowned in lichen, its cracked silver face having endured many winters. There is no one buried here that she has known. Her paws upon hallowed ground are a visitor’s steps. For Taktuq, this is mother. Death clings to the breath of the ancients, but there is a life in the progression of passed souls back to the earth. A life that stands beside her.

“Don’t be. She must have really loved you.” She closes her eyes, to try and envision a silver woman there, she who gave her life for her children. “A mother like that is worth remembering. We will never forget Nanook.” She stands in stillness until the waft of fiery petal draws an eye.

“Back home, we believe red is the color of life,” She smiles, turning to look at Taktuq, “How fitting for a mother who gave life twice to her children.”

‘She must have really loved you.’

The words have an odd comfort to them, one that aches and soothes her all the same. Valette had told her many things of her mother, and her love for them was never a question. It carried on in the life she lived — she, and Selamuit, and Kallik, and Iqiaq, wherever they might be. She did, is all Taktuq says, and lets Tauris’ words sweep through her. A mother worth remembering.

Yes. She is.

Their attention is back on the flowers, and Taktuq returns the other girl’s smile. Fitting, too, in ways you didn’t know! My auntie says she had eyes of this colour, of copper and the fiercest fire, and she gives a little laugh, soft and thoughtful, I wonder if she knew she carried this meaning with her, too. Life, twice given. Perhaps Nanook had always known she would give her life for her children. Perhaps it had never been a choice she needed to think on. Perhaps she had simply known it when she had chosen to love them.

She wondered if, perhaps, she would ever carry so great a love.

Would you tell me of the other flowers? she looked behind them at the colours that decorated the ground, these must have meanings, too?

There are some souls that will never hear goodbye- the fragments of who they were living on in the beings they knew in life. Given away to children, friends, and strangers in the lit flames that pass between affectionate looks, in the closeness of an embrace. In a meal shared. A body dies but their love lives on.

Nanook knew she carried this meaning. She knew because Taktuq knows, because they are one in the same.

Tauris remains quiet. There’s a calm to Taktuq’s voice, and in her smiles, too, given both to the Pilgrim Stone and the dark girl. For Taktuq she searches her memory to grasp at wisps of interpretation.

“There’s white,” she indicates towards the bundle of trilliums, “it signifies peace, honesty, and also the spirit realm. My native pack believes the deceased move on to a land free of pain and suffering,” she smiles shyly. She is not sure what she believes, independent of her family's religion. But she likes to imagine it could be true, anyway.

“Green is harmony- at one with the natural world. There wasn’t much of this where I come from,” She gives a little laugh and shifts along the stones. “These yellow ones, the primroses, they symbolize youth, and the purple: determination. Blue is for confidence, like the persistence of the sky.”

“Mostly, they’re just pretty,” She admits. “But they have meaning, if you believe they do.”

All her words are beautiful, filled with hope and things Taktuq wants to be true. To know her mother is free of suffering. To know she is in peace, perhaps even with father, now. The thought that Siarut might be gone too pains her, but she has not seen him since she left Easthollow with Takiyok - and she knows too much about the world to hold to the childish belief that he is, for certain, alive and well. She will think it, but she will not be surprised if she learns he has died, just like she will not be surprised if she hears the same about Selamuit, Kallik, or Ikiaq.

She will mourn, but she will not weep like a daughter, or a sister, unprepared.

Merrit once told her about a similar belief he had begun to hold onto after Auntie Valette - his own mother - had died. He would have gotten along with Tauris, and she decides that if he ever follows the Lost Stones home, she will introduce them.

Taktuq smiled, and offered a gentle laugh, for Tauris gave her those, too, how can things so beautiful mean nothing? If we are given meaning, surely even these things so small must have meaning, too, even without she or Tauris here to assign them such. They had meaning simply because they were.

These flowers, she turns attention back towards the green ones Tauris had drawn her to, you do not have much of this, you say. Nature and plants? Or harmony among your people?

“Neither,” she answers and finds humor in that.

Taktuq’s laughter must multiply wherever it goes, Tauris feels it bubble up in her own chest. It’s not an intervention of grief, but a companion to it. They could hold onto a little life by laughing with the dead. And by being present, standing with the paws of a hundred generations before the stones who had seen the life and death of five thousand years.

Her eyes trail the plait of emerald ferns before lifting to Taktuq’s face, tail shifting with wonder.

“Do they all have names?”  She asks of the seer stones.