Ouroboros Spine i loved you like the sun

Anaa?

Vairë’s voice was a tired croak for @Kukutux , her eyes searching for the older woman’s white fur among the trees.

She was tired. So tired, tired of waiting, tired of being alone with three children and no husband. Winter was nipping at their heels, and no husband was with her at her hearth. Vairë was alone.

Even with her family around her, even with her excitement to see Inkalorë again, even with all of that. She had lived as a married woman for so short a time, something she had so desperately not wanted. She had left her home for him, had moved to the sea, had dealt with her fair share of dramatic horrors, and after all that.

She was alone.

She never wanted to be alone again.

"daughter."

she had come back from the glacier; her pelt was filled with the scent of thick green trees and ancient ice.

her arms opened for the doe-woman.

somehow the stars aligned them in thought tonight.

"what will you do when the spring comes?"

I do not know.

She was mother, anaa herself, but Vairë swept into Kukutux’s arms like she was nothing more than a child.

Rhaegal is gone. My sisters scatter to new villages. Come spring, Vairë did not know what they would see in the village of her birth, how many children.

I will not leave Moonglow. Not again. The village was home, but it was also armor. A multi-generational support net, threading over her wounded heart.

she smoothed the young woman's forehead with a kiss.

rhaegal would not return. and if he somehow did, it had been far too long. her doe-girl's heart had soured.

she cradled vairë closer and then breathed out a breath that she had held for many years.

"your sisters have left. you remain. i have no one else to inherit moonwoman when i am gone, kunnik," kukutux murmured. it was the first time she had spoken of this, her mortality.

now was the moment.

slowly she told the deer-woman of dutch and @Valiant, of the brother she had met and the one she had not. northerners were not who they were. but perhaps one could be a man of the spine.

When I am gone.

Vairë’s breath hitched. The reminder of her mother’s mortality, the ever creeping affects of old age. She didn’t want to look at see it, see how joints may grow stiff, how her anaa’s smooth gait could crumple into a hobble while she wasn’t looking.

She swallowed spittle and bile, and listened.

If I am to wed again, I want to be courted properly. Not rushed, but over months. She knew it was stubborn, and perhaps not what was meant for her, but what could she do? Rhaegal had been a whirlwind, there one minute and gone the next. She shook off the thought.

I will meet them. Vairë promised.

And I will stay, in Moonglow. If you wish to teach me. An inhale, stuttered.

I will become moonwoman when you are no longer here. If you want me to.

her face was wet with salt.

"i wish this. i will teach you all i have learned."

it felt that sun and moon looked down upon them.

kukutux felt a deep and slashing loss; one of daughter who had not been given this moment with mother. her own had been head of women's circle, influential to every male leader.

she had perished.

tooteega raised her head. old woman. old woman.

you are not yet an old woman, daughter.

but i feel that i am.

but you are not. there is life still in you to be born.

fear; welling.

tooteega nodded in solemn knowingness.

ten children you have borne. fourteen you have suckled. moonwoman stands before you.

a breath;

kukutux returned to vairë.

and her mind gave one thought: kilgitsuk. and she did not like it, but held it uncomfortably in her mind.

"your dowry is moonglow. no man could hope to pay it." small worn teeth glittering, teeth that often ached more now.

"instead you seek a companion, as i have in sun man. you will have all the time you want, moondoe."

Helpless, breathless, her head spun as though on an axis. She reeled beneath the weight of it all, to know that this was how it was meant.

A lesson, perhaps. To understand suffering so she could stand here and accept this, accept the mantle placed upon her shoulders, help carry the weight. Once upon a time, she would have buckled beneath it.

Now, she held it steady.

Moondoe looked to moonwoman with a smile, a wavering one with salt streaking her cheeks, but one all the same.

I will look, but I will not hunt. Came the choked agreement, before Vairë ducked her head to hide in Kukutux’s chest. Solemn, muffled, she spoke once more.

I will learn everything you wish to teach me. I will make you proud of me. Leading Moonglow would be the greatest task she ever undertook, but it was as anaa said.

Moondoe had plenty of time to seek out Sunstag. It was only a matter of time.

the first lesson was this: history.

the seal hunter boy.

the ways of the island, the ways of hunters and women. the ways in which kukutux had been reared, and those things she had left behind.

the falling rocks. grandfather tusk. the death ulax built entirely by a grieving girl.

courtfall. 

moonspear. the blackbear. the blackfox. the name ostrega. the brothers who warred over it.

the man mauruk, silent brother to sialuk and one who now could not be named again.

how his return had marked the death of their sister and daughter.

how those who had passed on must not return.

kukutux spoke on and on, though these were not lessons that could be imparted in one time.

only the first; a history.

And through it all, Vairë listened.

And listened.

A history spoken for her ears, threading the life of a woman together in a way that felt incomplete at its end. Were this a story, a young Vairë may have booed. There was so much bad!, she might have said, where’s the happy ending! Every story has that!

But this was life, not a story, and life rarely gave happy endings.

So the doe listened to the duck, writing the history of their people, of her, into the walls of her heart. Where it would rest forever in its illuminated manuscript upon the shelf. Chapter after chapter.

it was good to say these things.

it was good to give them.

the happiness still lived, in moonwoman, in sun man.

there were more chapters to be written, and more to which more could be added.

but the heft of it, the importance of guarding such responsibilities, "this is the task of women."

Vairë listened.

Happiness could be found, she knew. Perhaps Rhaegal had not been right for sunstag, but he was saltstag. The sea was for him, the spine for her.

She was not alright, but she would find a sense of peace in the thinking.

I will help you carry it. Until such a time as Kukutux did not wish to carry it anymore, then Vairë would carry it alone.

a touch of paw to paw.

kukutux relaxed.

she kissed the gentle cheek and her eyes were unguarded. "you carry much pain for rhaegal. tell me of it, moondoe."

daughter's head in mother's lap, and all she could think was how very much she loved vairë.

She closed her eyes against the pain.

I was loving him as wife, I had come to love him as friend too. A shivering tear.

And he left. He was gone after the children came. She was quiet, listening to the wind whistle through the branches.

I left here for him. I gave our children middle names for him. And he left me to raise them alone. Trying desperately to keep herself and three cubs afloat.

kukutux tired of this story, where young men had what they wished and then left. it was why the sunshine people had made their pairings so early and let the young ones grow together, either apart or into a well made match.

"he will carry much guilt for a long while. forever, no matter where he walks. his children will not know his face or his name. this is what he has lost. but you, vairë, you hold this pain and now all the kinship ties in the moonvillages will be known to you. never again will you hold to a man for what he cannot give. moonglow will make sure that you have it. a companion will come. time, my daughter."

Kukutux soothed with her soft words, but Vairë knew this wound would not heal for a long time. She could lay bandages over it, but every once in a while, something would strike it and it would bleed all over again.

I wish I understood why. She murmured softly, eyes fixed on a distant piece of swaying greenery.

Why did he do it, anaa. Why did he leave? I did everything right.

"this is not something for which i have an answer."

to be moonwoman was to admit the limits of one's knowledge.

"each of us have totems," she said in a teaching voice. "yours is doe. mine is lynx. if your husband's totem is not strong enough to match your own, he will fail you."

and this too, a truth that could not be denied. "he was not stag. what was he, my daughter?" she must search below the pain now.

What was he?

Once, he was everything, she wanted to cry. He was the waves that lapped on her shore, he was all the love in her already broken heart, he was all she could have ever wanted. Attentive, loving, then distant, then gone.

He was the sea hawk. There, for a time, before his wings carried him away. Never to stay, always to go.

For a sea bird and a land mammal were not meant to mix.

His wings will carry him to another nest, then another, never settling by any shore. And I move with the herd. And never again would she leave it, if she had any say in the matter.

sea hawk.

winter hawk.

both men who did not stay.

"he will not have another nest. only you made that for him, my daughter."

and now rhaegal had truly lost this.

winged and antler did not mix. she needed a stronger man.

The sea hawk fled her mind with great wingbeats, leaving their shore, leaving her. But, perhaps, in this she could find peace.

A stepping stone for her, a lifetimes regret for him.

And if he comes back, what will I do then? She could not forgive him, nor could she forget what he had done, but could she deny the man his children?

She would deny him her heart, for however long it took.

"you will never be asked to see him again. but your children must decide for themselves if he is welcome. if you say he must not come near the village, it will be so. you are moondoe. you will be moonwoman."

her power made such things their own truth.

He will not. In this she was certain. In this, she held the power.

In this, she was moondoe.

I am certain. If he comes, he will wait in other spaces. Perhaps the quiet, dark forest, where he could taste the heartache and know what she had been through.

Vairë looked up to her mother then, trying her best to put on a smile.

I hope I will be moondoe for a while. If Kukutux was not there anymore, sudden as Rhaegal, she did not know what would become of Moonglow.

"i hope for this too!" she exclaimed. ageing she might be, elderly and toothless she was not.

kukutux was inspired in many ways by towhee and her traveling between lands and villages. why could she not do the same? her legs remained spry, her mind sharp. and when the time came for her to truly retire, the territories of her children were now many and vast.

"sleep with me beneath the moon tonight, among the three oaks," she said at last, knowing the spirits of the earth would do much to heal the doe-woman.