Neverwinter Forest you don't wanna be seen rollin' in my bar

looking for @Kilgitsuk ; tags for reference <3

kivaluk offers @Chickadee a soft kiss before he slips out of their shared den before the rise of the sun to track a small herd through the neverwinter forest he'd seen heading that way earlier in the week.

the first hunter keeps a closer eye on them now, with winter creeping ever closer.

the herd hasn't yet risen from where they nest among a cloister of pines, bedding of fallen needles warm against the hardening ground.

he keeps a distance, looping 'round their small clearing like a phantom, determined not to wake them. it is during a wide sweep that a scent, old but very there all the same, catches his attention while punching him in the gut.

his guard hairs prickle along the nape of his neck. herd blocked from his mind, kivaluk follows the scent trail, unsure what he'd find ... if anything ... when he reached it's end.

He's caught himself a pair of rabbits for his breakfast. He won't be eating them both despite his hunger, as one was plump and in almost perfect condition when felled, and Kilgitsuk saw that the pelt could be useful to those that knew how to prepare it. The meat could be a gift as well, should he find the right person to trade with.

The other, now headless, he continues to clean with his head craned over it. Kilgitsuk is aware of another presence in the forest but he doesn't know for certain who it is, or where they are, or their intentions. The air is thick with the rabbit's ichor, and for now that is all the man can taste.

a miasma of emotions battle it out within kivaluk, using his heart and lungs and throat as a battle ground. it can't be real, he thinks over and over like a mantra trying to beat back the strange monstrosity of things stirring to live.

but it smelled more real the closer kivaluk came and —

there he was, like a ghost of kivaluk's past!

solid and real and devouring a rabbit.

papa? it wrenches itself from his lips; quieted and pitiful. kivaluk hates how it sounds: as if he is the small boy he was when kigipigak left. instead of a man nearly two years old.

He raises his head when there comes a sound like steps through the wood, hearing something heavy-set. He licks the blood from his muzzle and his nostrils flare, eyes ablaze. It is at this moment he spies his son! Not the small creature he had left behind, but a man standing tall; the familiar angles of his body reminding Kilgitsuk immediately of his distant wife, but otherwise Kivaluk looks lean and strong, and almost unrecognizable for the changes of maturation.

Kilgitsuk abandons the rabbits he had been cleaning and steps towards his son, and then again, and comes close enough to really look upon the wild cut of him.

Kivaluk, he sounds incredulous at first. Then proud, as he says: You have grown! Look at you. This is overshadowed by a sharp feeling in his chest, a familiar sense of shame that confines his emotions, and as Kilgitsuk swallows this down he becomes a little more measured.

You — fare well?

everything, all at once, comes crashing down like a wave let loose upon the shore, grabbing him and pulling him under until he feels like he cannot breathe.

anger and betrayal and aching and, and, and!

it's almost an overload, overwhelming kivaluk so that he can only stand there and stare at his father.

dumbfounded as he is greeted with enthusiasm as if months — maybe even a year! — hadn't passed.

as if he hadn't left without word.

why even bother coming back? the question comes out knife sharp and cutting like barbed wire; ignoring the pride in his father's words that makes his heart ache and the want to accept it mixed poisonously with the want of wishing it didn't affect him so.

ignoring, even, the measured question left to hang, limply, in the air between them.

The boy reared like a blazing fire being fed a fresh log, and for a moment Kilgitsuk saw him through the veneer of maturation, and felt a sting from the tone of Kivaluk's voice. He knew he deserved some of that. He knew it was inevitable that a boy should grow distant of his father, perhaps even to loathing of him; he had with his own father. I killed my own father, he reminded himself; and so he was not surprised by the reception, only a touch wounded by the attitude.

He took a slow, measured breath.

I go where I please, he explained after gaining a moment of peace.

The loss of our village weighed on me. The loss of your mother and brother too. I needed space, so I took a trader's name and lived that life. I come back now for more trades. It was easy enough to say it aloud, but that didn't explain anything really. It certainly did not answer Kivaluk's question — why now?

He felt he did not owe his son that answer, if he held one at all.

It is good to see you thriving, Kivaluk. The man's voice was controlled, not betraying any of his thoughts or emotions.

they are too different, now.

perhaps they always have been.

but kigipigak's answer does not satisfy kivaluk. instead, it rings like a smarting slap across his face: lacking sorely in the answers that kivaluk, as his son, deserved.

and is that your answer for why you left? because you go where you please? his words twist; biting and ugly. anger. anger was good. anger was fuel. it was keeping him afloat, even if it did little to cease the ringing in his ears.

so, i wasn't good enough to stay for then? it was unfair to put those words in kigipigak's mouth, but it was what kivaluk was taking from them. that he was hearing that kigipigak suffered and abandoned his son because of it. as if i wasn't missing them, too?

his stomach twists; roiling.

don't give me those bullshit false platitudes. he scowls as if he were made of marble and it was etched into his face. she came back. mama did. she remarried. gave birth to my sister ... and then she left. me and my sister. kivaluk's motives for sharing this was purely ill intended; wanting to see kigipak hurt, like kivaluk had hurt.

an eye for an eye, even if he knows it's not right.

A part of him feels the urge to raise his voice to the boy, to let his dominance show in the volume and tenacity hidden there, and he begins to - drawing a breath, readying some words to cut through the attitude that Kivaluk displays before his own father. The lack of respect.

Kigipigak is cut down by the knowledge flowing forth instead. He knew Sakhmet had returned; he knew that much at least, and that was when he'd felt confident in his choice to leave. It was the rest of it: that she remarried, that she had children not of his hearth! These were lances through his heart; a heart he thought he had walled off with ice sufficiently enough. No, those truths wounded him.

He did not have words for many moments. For once Kigipigak was struck by silence. Pained, aching, working so hard to bury this fresh insult and injury which Kivaluk had thrust upon him.

Out of that stillness came Kigipigak's voice, finally.

Your mother left. She left and it hurt me deeply. I did not know how deeply until she returned and... we were not united, after that. I remember her return. I knew she was there, and Kukutux, and all of the village. Swallowing; more than words or thoughts but feelings too, unwilling to be weak here. Unwilling to let his son see it. I trusted you would be cared for by our kin, Kivaluk. And you were. You did not need me there. You had your mother and the village.

But she was gone, again. Kigipigak could not have foreseen that happening. He could not fathom Sakhmet marrying again, dissolving whatever connection they'd once had, permanently. If a new marriage made your mother happier, then I am glad. Although his voice now is low, like the shifting of glacial ice.

I am sorry that you feel slighted and abandoned. You were not, as far as I knew. You've always had the village and your kin, Kukutux, and all that she holds. In his mind this was more than enough. Kivaluk's anger now and his distrust, his complaints and his attitude, amounted to a childish tantrum so far as his father was concerned.

What could he do? He had become a trader. He held no claims, to land or family, and even now was being denounced by his blood.

Kivaluk's been carrying the burden of this grudge for so long that he isn't sure if he knows how to put it down. still, the thought that their kin were a replacement for his father stings. it is wrong. though he adored kukutux and thinks of her as second mother, and thought of the sunking as something of a father figure he has never thought of him as 'father'.

but kivaluk can feel his heart harden, ice creeping into it's chambers as if carried thru his veins like his blood. he considers sharing the truth, for a moment and then realizes it will not matter. what was done, was done and kigipigak only appeared to have a plethora of excuses as to why.

he wars with himself for a moment, scowl forming on his face.

they did not make up for the fact that i missed you. that i needed you. that i needed your guidance. it is an impulse decision, to share this; after being so resolved that he wouldn't. but, he draws in a breath, it doesn't matter. not anymore.

i hope you find happiness, on your travels. in lieu of sounding like a broken record and re-digging up a grave that he suddenly wants nothing more than to remain buried, kivaluk surmises that he has nothing left to say to his father.

Trying to explain himself netted him no favor. It appeared as though the words from Kilgitsuk would not remedy the situation but only cause more suffering; he saw this in the hard set of his sons eyes, in the dismissive and cruel way he reacted to those words. Disquiet at first, then words flowed with a chilled finality that he could only listen to.

But he was no pushover. Kilgitsuk had always held such fire for life in his heart, and when he had taken a wife he had burned for her alone, until his sons. He would not take the disrespect of Kivaluk well. To have him here, listening but not listening, refusing to even try, was what truly pained Kilgitsuk and forced his hand.

Kivaluk, I am trying to apologize for my wrongs. Clearly leaving was not the right choice - but that is what happened. What would you have me do different? I cannot reach back in time and alter events! His voice raised, booming but not with anger, only loud because that is how Kilgitsuk has always been. I am here, now.

A pause. One of moonwoman's daughters is building a village, to be called Moonsong, at the glacier. I am there, working with her. I will be close if - if you wish to talk, to work this out. He did not expect much from this admission; maybe Kivaluk would turn away forever, or maybe he would show up at the glacier to seek a pound of flesh in the old way, the Tartok way. Kilgitsuk would take what he could get.

My travels are done. I am here, I am trying.

it hadn't sounded like an apology at all, to kivaluk. he almost says it but wars with the swell of defensiveness that rises in his chest and creeps up his throat. it is borne of old, reopened wounds from his cubhood. seeing his father, here and now, rehashing the past as if it would make any difference ( though both men are aware it did not ), raises a lot of emotions in kivaluk and all of them feel childish.

he was not a child, anymore.

he takes a deep breath, steeling his shoulders.

he needed time to think, to mull over this. all of it.

he needed to seek @Chickadee's council, see what she thought. her perspective might offer him one that he cannot consider.

fine. it wasn't an answer. wasn't accepting or entirely dismissive. it was a placeholder; a 'maybe' placed on a knife's edge. balancing precariously but able to fall either way. i should return to moonglow. a neutral goodbye offered.

Kilgitsuk did not know if his farewell would be welcome. It was clear the rest of him wasn't, except now there was a glimmer of hope between the two of them. At least, that's what the man felt towards his son. A crack in the ice, if he was careful.

He gave the boy — no, the young man — space, now. A nod of understanding, watching him depart. After some heavy ruminations Kilgitsuk would go, too.