Ouroboros Spine Oh, this glorious sadness that brings me to my knees.

Towhee decided to make another stop before continuing on to Moonspear. She didn’t have to walk far. The evergreen trees of Neverwinter Forest thinned and she found herself at the borders of Moonglow. She stood there with a heavy heart for several moments. She wanted to see @Kukutux and offer her empathy, though Towhee didn’t want the “moon woman” to feel obligated to answer social calls in her own time of mourning…

life moved.

it moved without her long-salt girl.

kukutux helped vaire to raise the little grandchildren, and it was from them she was parted in order to take a walk of her own.

wrapping her shoulders in redfox fur, moonwoman went out. the coloration reminded her of @Stratos, and she hoped in all her mind he was well.

her sons would journey this year.

it was in prayers to sedna that kukutux found towhee, and somehow in the other's bearing, she understood. 

perhaps it was the truth now they were grandmothers.

the duck made her way to the other's side, offering a small smile as she looked to see the familiar face and its expression.

Before she could make up her mind about calling, the “moon woman” appeared like her namesake, a welcome light in the dark of night. The wrap around her shoulders immediately made Towhee think of her beloved skin from Jack. She suddenly yearned to dig it up from where she’d stashed it in The Heartwood and bury her face in it.

Pleasantries seemed absurd so Towhee croaked, I heard about Samani. I’m really sorry for your loss. She didn’t mention Caracal just yet, although her own grief was likely written all over her face. I was just on my way back to Moonspear. Seal told me Sialuk and Elentari are helping with the little ones. How are they all doing?

hearing the name of her daughter co-mingled grief and fear within kukutux. but towhee did not know their customs.

her face smoothed. "they are well. i must see them soon. my daughter, vaire, she has brought her three small ones to live in moonglow. it is good to have children around."

the jadestone eyes were searching. "what has happened, towhee?"

She saw the pain her departed daughter’s name evoked on Kukutux’s face, taking it at face value. The pale woman’s expression cleared as she reported that her grandchildren thrived under their aunt’s and wet nurse’s care. Then she mentioned another branch of her family, a living daughter with three grandchildren in tow.

The comment about children earned a grimace from Towhee, not because it wasn’t true—pups were a salve, especially during times of grief—but because it made her think of Caracal’s pups. Half were missing and the other half were heartbroken. And those former were, however indirectly and innocently, the cause of their father’s death.

I just lost a child too, she replied to her friend’s question, face contorting again, and he’d lost so much. This isn’t my first rodeo, not that it gets any easier. But it’s knowing how much he must’ve suffered… oh, fuck, Towhee said right before sinking to the ground.

loss.

the loss of a child.

suffering.

kukutux tasted her own tears; if allowed, moonwoman would pull the fur from her shoulders and drape it loosely along towhee's own. she had done this once before, and found herself intimate in the immediacy of their shared grief.

"i know my daughter suffered because it is great pain to bring children into their first breath. i will not tell you it is easier to know this. it is more easy to hold blame because you were not there."

but the world walked on. they would leave a piece of them in two graves. but they too must walk on.

She felt warm weight over her shoulders and looked up through suddenly wet eyes to regard Kukutux. It was hard to catch her words through the shimmer of tears but Towhee caught enough of them to piece together the context.

Blame wasn’t something she had attributed to anybody, at least not yet. She could’ve blamed Heda for her rash decisions or her son for his idiotic coping method. But Towhee just didn’t.

I was there, she mumbled brokenly, reliving Caracal’s last moments, when he actually passed away. He looked so… Towhee couldn’t continue.

She breathed harshly, cried and shook for a few moments. Towhee felt a tiny bit humiliated but mostly she just felt like she was in the presence of someone who not only wouldn’t hold her display of emotions against her but someone who understood.

What have you done, to help you cope? Towhee asked shakily once she found her voice again, looking blearily into a pale face also damp with saltwater.

"i go on," kukutux said softly, the tears truly beginning now.

"if she cannot be here, i must, for rodyn, for rolayne, for panuk. if she cannot be here, then i must hold her family together. if she cannot be here, then i must carry the grief so that others might live their lives only in good rememberings of her face."

as it had been, not as it was in the end. 

"each day i think of her. i speak to her, in my mind. sometimes it feels as if she is still there, walking beside me."

With her eyes, Towhee listened to Kukutux’s gentle words of grief. It was all sage advice, nothing she didn’t already know. But it still helped hearing it and knowing she wasn’t alone in this misery.

I wish I believed in something, Towhee found herself saying. I wish I believed Caracal went somewhere like heaven. But, she didn’t.

And she was pretty sure she’d seen Heda lose her faith entirely upon losing Caracal, so perhaps such ideals were cold comfort in the face of such horrible pain and suffering. Still, Towhee yearned.

I guess he’s not suffering anymore, one way or the other, she sniffled, hiccuping into silence for a beat before asking, Do you ever wish you could have taken her place, Kukutux?

kukutux might have spoken of the dancing lights, had not towhee revealed she did not believe in such things.

heaven was unfamiliar to the duck. but for spirits to be sung through to their new home; this was another thing.

towhee asked a question which kukutux understood. "i wish that i could have been there in the first hours of her labor-time. i am — i know things. and if i was not able to stop these things, then i would have asked tooteega to take me in her place. i am old," lips curving in spite of her pain, "i have lived. she did not even have a chance to be anaa."

she swallowed. "he does not suffer. she does not suffer. their pain is left behind, for us to hold. so what will you do with it, towhee," kukutux asked, though it was not a question, only a whisper for the wind to lift.

When Kukutux spoke of how she might have been able to intervene and save Samani’s life had she only been there, a lump formed in Towhee's throat. If she’d gotten to Caracal sooner, could he have been pulled back from the precipice? She quickly banished that line of thinking, as it would only make her agonize more.

I told Heda—his wife, his widow now—and the kids they should come to the Moon villages. I knew they would find support here. But, they didn’t.

Tears still fell freely and her breathing remained uneasy. But with the weight of the fur on her shoulder and her friend's compassionate presence, Towhee slowly recovered from her brief fit of crying.

Who—what—who is Tortega? she wondered, voice hoarse but steady.

but they had not come. kukutux looked away from towhee in thought, wondering if she should make a prayer for them.

she would.

"tooteega is an old woman spirit," the duck said softly. "she guides women. mothers, daughters, the elders. she guides a woman at each part of her life. and she is there when one of us lose our breath forever."

her chin trembled, but she did not weep again.

"we sing the death songs for nine nights. tooteega watches. we sing so that a spirit can be guided into the heart of the dark sea, to the goddess sedna. she swallows the spirit. we sing so that it knows it must always walk forward. that the spirit must go to the dancing lights."

Although it was just a story to Towhee, she drank in every word Kukutux shared about the spirit called Tootega. She wished she could make herself believe, because the thought of being looked after by a benevolent old lady was kind of nice (if a tiny bit creepy).

It was really the mention of songs that caught Towhee’s attention. It was so hard for her to conceptualize such things, though after living nearly seven years, she had a decent grasp on what singing meant. It was like howling, only more of an emotional display than a method of passing information.

Being swallowed didn’t sound like much fun to Towhee, though she supposed the dancing lights were similar to heaven. Did the dead still exist on some other plane? Was there some sort of afterlife? Would she be reunited with all her lost loved ones after death? It was a pretty thought, though Towhee sighed, remaining dismally secular.

Then again, on days like this, Towhee thought there was merit to the idea of total oblivion. Nonexistence sounded pretty great in comparison to the constant strife of existence. But she would never forget that even during the hardest times, there was always something worth living for, things she wouldn’t want to miss unless she had no choice.

For now, she did have a choice. “I go on.”

Thank you, Kukutux, Towhee said on a quiet exhale.

<3

for a long while the two grandmothers would sit and nurse the loss of a child inside hearts that ached together.

it was not an anguish one should experience; the duck would not have wished it even for a soul she loathed.

and so they remained in this silent communion until each turned for their own home.

kukutux would look back upon this time over the days that came to pass, remembering that towhee understood in a way no one else did. they had that if nothing else.