Firestone Hot Springs moontooth

for dutch! all other tags are for ref but feel free to post a response if u would like!

once more he had painted himself; blood beneath the eyes, blood upon his scars. this time, a new addition: a nick torn by his own teeth in his wrist. a reminder of failure. a promise to do no more.
he offered his kiss to @Tullik and to @Marina that day; he looked with a man's respect at @Raiyuk and bid him keep the lodge, to heed his wives and do what was needed. to keep @Matteo close as the season turned to snow.
to @Heph and @Rodyn he gave his respects, and chakliux was gone from the village after this.
he returned to the last place he had found the man's scent. of course it had not been here for a long while, but the seal hunter breathed himself into a silent frenzy among the pools before sending up his call for @Dutch. 
it is time.

He had been waiting for it, but the call still shocked him into wakefulness when it came. With his fur already bristling, he tipped his head back to herald his arrival. He sought out first @Fallen Sun to say farewell, and then @Ariadne to ask for a blessing. The rest, he sang a quiet song: I will see you on the other side.

He moved purposefully, then, long legs eating up the ground.

Another call made him pause. @Valiant, singing from somewhere further inland: I will see you on the other side.

Feeling oddly bereft, he carried on, and soon reached Chakliux with white breath pluming like dragon's smoke from his dark muzzle. The addition of the bloodred markings on the other man's coat were duly noted, but he did not ask after their meaning. He wished suddenly that he had asked Valiant for a blessing as well — he suddenly remembered his mother's paw on his shoulder, and her strong-steady voice as she spoke the old, familiar words: Be strong and vigilant. Protect one another. We will find each other again.

"In this life or the next," Dutch murmured to himself as if in reply. Though neither Valiant nor his mother could hear him, he thought the blessing might still belatedly take. If he carried their love, then surely he carried their good will.

His gaze found Chakliux once more.

"Lead on," he said.

the moonsong man's voice was resolute. chakliux turned, brushing his shoulder against that of dutch, and returned to the hot pools where the trail had been lost.
here he described the man once more, pointing out that his scent was not youthful and its fragrance was oily with sin. "we will go into the mountains again," he decided, "and warn any people or packs we find of his face. the winter takes old men, and if he has nowhere to go," a hard shrug.
the hunters moved east, cold water splashing their legs as they forded a river and kept the growing stone teeth of the mountains before them.

The panther's mind remained at home with the Moonsingers for just a few minutes longer before the hunt took over his senses. The brush of their shoulders remained a moment longer, but the quest for blood was a more intimate kind of communion than that. He listened carefully to the man's description, lifting his dark muzzle to drink in the breeze or else pressing his keen nose close to the earth. But it did not appear that the man had doubled back, and they pressed onward, side by side, to seek him ever further afield.

"We can offer a bounty," he said to Chakliux, shaking the water from his pelt as they reached the other side. "Ariadne will support this. Fine pelts or sea treasures. Perhaps the offer of an extra hunter in times of need. For information or for his head — it has been done in my homeland. We tracked down the hunter-cat Tendua this way."

a bounty! "i have not heard this word before," chakliux said in a heavy, searching voice. "but i say this is what we do, what you have said. offer a bounty." his stride lengthened into a lope; he was considering this.
"a cat." the pale ears lifted and his eyes turned toward dutch. "tell me the story of tendua." it would fire his blood as they traveled, and chakliux would understand further what was meant. he had already decided that dutch should speak alongside him when they visited the strange peoples across the mountains. this sentiment would be conveyed by them both.

Dutch gave a solemn nod. "A cat. A panther. A dark sidhe . A child-eater."

Dutch had not known those children. He'd been in the midst of his second summer, suddenly full of more strength and vigor than he knew what to do with. He related this to Chakliux, adding, "Where my brother comes from, they would say I was fulla rabbit. Too much kick. I came to a pack I had visited before — one with many daughters. They told us that the sidhe had taken two of their youngest, and before that, three at a neighboring pack. But it was on the coast, and the cat swam through the waters and walked through the salt, and none could track it.

"This pack's mother told me what she had told four more already: that anyone who provided information leading to Tendua's capture would be gifted rich meats and promises of future aid. And the one who brought that cat's head may lay with the woman Auk for her first season — the fiercest and most beautiful of her daughters. I was a whole warren, then!"

There was a nostalgic smile on his face. He dwelled on that moment for a few heartbeats before soldiering on:

"I set off. Valiant, too — but we split up, to better catch the scent. Days from the seaside pack, I met with two more bounty hunters — they said they had found the cat, and they were only doubling back to find one more to fight with. I went with them. We all thought, I think, of the babes that Auk might bear — and we knew that if the hunter-cat lived, they would always be in danger — not that she would have let any of us near her without its head! But the rut does strange things to a man's mind.

"We were quiet — we hoped to take the cat by surprise. I remember that one moment, we walked together, and the next I stared up at the canopy, feeling as if I'd been dropped from the sky. I heard another hunter scream, and then stop screaming — and the other yelling for someone — me, I suppose — to grab it's other paw. I leapt to my paws. The cat had one hunter held in its jaws by the scruff, already trying to get a better grip. The other hunter had it by the front paw, and while he tried to tear the cat off of his father, the man twisted to sink his own teeth into the cat's neck. I ran to them, grabbing the cat by its other paw. It began trying to run from us, then, and the hunter and I pried at it like pups playing with a hide — but so much more frightening. I could hear in the father's voice that he was in agony. I could hear the son crying through the flesh between his teeth. Things grew very confusing. We could not let go to get a better grip. It was a waiting game, to see if the cat bled out first or the father. Our jaws grew weak while it fought, and it shook us off one at a time, but never got us all off at once. I do not know how it happened, but in one such struggle, I was throw off, and when I came back again, I had its throat between my teeth. We rolled. It set its back legs against me to kick, and at the same time I wrenched back. I saw its throat shred like ribbons as it shook me off for the last time, and its blood like rain as it fell back, dead."

He picked up a paw and craned his neck, but he could not easily see his belly while he stood.

"I still have the scars — but I got off easily, compared to the father. He walked, eventually, but he never hunted again. The son carried his father back to the sea pack, and I carried Tendua's head. The sea queen's daughters treated our wounds. We both laid with Auk when it came time. But after this, I was known in that land as the panther. Auk says that the blood that I spilled will run through my children's veins."

by the end of this, chakliux was trembling with passion and wide-eyed, and filled with awe for dutch.
child-eater, and the seal hunter tried to imagine if a monster-being had come for his son in the night, what he might have done to save raiyuk.
he could see it! the proud woman offering auk, who surely simmered to lie with so strong a man! dutch and his brother, prowling, tracking.
the sound of catscream and the pierce of fangs.
the masculinity of man returning to claim woman; the musk and vinegar in the blood.
"the panther," he murmured aloud to himself. no such cats came close to the sea, let alone made it their home.
"wah-how!" chakliux exclaimed loudly, his eyes filled with a thousand sentiments for dutch and his triumph, belly clenching strangely as he thought of this man and the other lying with the woman auk for their victory.
"you are mikiak. he who tears to pieces."
and his eyes had not left dutch.

The cheer was not entirely unexpected; he had told this story to great effect in the past. Not a fraction of it was exaggerated, but he did tend to underplay the terror that'd gripped him from the start to the finish of the fight. It had gone on longer, too, than Dutch liked to remember. Much of it had been spent in stillness and quiet, all four of them exhausted, all four of them trembling in pain.

Still. The panther struck a noble (read: slightly silly) pose under Chakliux's attention, and then laughed delightedly at the new title he was given. Mikiak.

"Only with help," he reminded the other man. "I could not have done this without Slow West, and we could not have done it without his father — who sacrificed the last of his fighting days to see the battle won."

The kinship he'd felt with Slow West had been far more complex for Dutch than it had been for the coywolf. They had enjoyed each other's company for a time, but ultimately, the other man had moved on to the next conquest. It had been a hard lesson, at the time, but Dutch had learned to remember him fondly long ago.

"I fought with luck more than skill, in those days," he admitted. "Not like a seal hunter! You cannot trip your way into slaying a sea creature in its element."

he bowed his head then, to think of the man who had given his life. slow west. in some ways, it felt that the conventions of naming might be similar between the white spine and the seal hunters, which pleased him in some inscrutable way.
dutch had seen many things. had done many things, and in each sharing chakliux felt that he grew closer to the other hunter.
"mikiak carries stories on his body," the seal hunter commented, "as do i. but for both we had respect, for we have fear of these beasts. it is the fear you conquered with tendua; this is the same as being beneath the water with your chest burning and blood in your mouth."
his heart thundered; he was suddenly fiercely proud and at the same time fiercely frightened for raiyuk, and wondered if his own father had been scared to watch his son descend below those waves.

Breath pooled from his mouth like a cloud as he contemplated this, fitting his words into the instructions he'd shared with Raiyuk not long before this day. It was one thing to hear the task summarized, even in detail, and another to imagine his friend below the waves.

A tiny shiver raced down his spine when he then imagined Raiyuk in his place.

"Will you tell me about it?" he asked, hoping for another story to add not to his repertoire, but to his own personal collection.

"mm," came the rumble of chakliux as within him, his memories found that cold peninsula and the day he had become a man.
"a seal hunter boy, as soon as he can hear, is told of how he must kill a seal to be a man. we are ready for it, eager for it; our earliest wrestling and biting is to mimic how hunters described their time below the waves."
"my father had told me i was almost ready for this time. the morning that he and my eldest brother came to find me, i was watching for whales, for their water-spouting far out upon the sea. nine time i had already been with them and the other men, taking young whales, hunting seal, otter, oilfish, sea lion. i knew the sea. i knew its danger."
"but that day was for me, chakliux, son of waking shark and the spirit-woman k'os. they told it it was time, that i would this day lead the seal hunt. we went down together, we and the other men. i broke the ice upon the side of the ocean and went down beneath it."
chakliux was lost in remembrance.
"nine times i had helped with a seal hunt. i knew to wound it. the other men helped me until all i could see was the red of blood. then i was alone with this seal, who was full of rage and pain. seals in this state are so strong as they lose their mind; they can break a hunter's bones. but i found his throat, and held my breath, and bit deep until his air-tunnel was torn. so great was the pain in my chest! i breathed the sweetest air when i dragged him up to the surface. the other men helped me bring the seal to shore."
"they were proud of me. we brought women from the village and butchered the seal. all i wanted was to sleep, but i was not yet a man. my father laughed at me. he gave me a very strong drink the women had mixed, and it gave me strength. i was taken to the lodge of my mother, the shaman k'os. i lay down. my brother lay across my stomach. our cousin held my head still. my mother said 'do not cry, chakliux,' and made the marks. it took no time. it took a thousand years! but i did not cry. she put crush-abalone in the marks, to darken them. and from that moment forward i was a man."
a wry smile attended his mouth. "that night, the woman speckled egg came to me. she made me a man in another way. i was a seal hunter the next morning."

The culture of the seal hunters seemed rich and fascinating. There had been no such rituals in his own upbringing, although he had witnessed and heard of many more amongst his larger family in Round Valley. Growing up on the spine, they hunted together without marking it in any way. Kills were celebrated, but more for the meal than for the feat. They sang together, and his mother would tell them stories in the dark. She had told him that they were given two names, so that one could be used where the fae might overhear, and the other, only in close company — an intimacy he allowed very few.

"Nine times only, and you killed your own," the panther marveled, after logging away the names that'd been spoken. His mind returned to conjuring the fight that must have taken place. There was so little detail of what went on under the water. He supposed he would have to see it for himself one day.

"You really think you can make me into a seal hunter?" he asked — and it was an honest question! But there was something just a little lascivious in his tone. There had been too much talk of making boys into men to pass over it entirely. Still, he went on in all earnesty: "I would learn, if you would teach me."

for chakliux, there was no way to describe what happened; it was a ceremony of its own. and so when dutch spoke of becoming a seal hunter, he was pleased, and openly so. "i think this can be done. but it will take a year. you will learn to swim hard, to hold your breath. to keep your eyes open when the salt scours them. to fight under the water. all the things that raiyuk knows, and twice as fast. we will both teach you."
he was delighted; he held the sunlight feeling inside himself. "matteo also has interest in becoming a seal hunter. he is learning. maybe you will get your scars the same winter."

This sounded good to Dutch, who voiced his hearty agreement with a wag of his tail. He'd not yet met Matteo, but he was eager already to get to know him. He thought it would bring the boy confidence to have someone much older having to learn beside him, and he said this to Chakliux as well.

And then he was quiet for a time while they traveled onward, imagining these new wolves and goals into his future.

He could not wait for their hunt to end.