Ouroboros Spine Cinders in the Hearth and Fire in the Home

Massaraq had not stayed much longer in Moontide, enough for the wound on his side to no longer disturbed his movement and his legs to stop shaking by the time he worked his way around the plateau. He had spent his days a shadow on the fringes, occasionally greeting those he met but seeking none out in particular. But the ache in him did not abate and he could not stand the not knowing any more than he thought he could stand the fear so he set his course to the spine and made the journey more in haste than in caution and yet his legs did not fail him as he had thought they might and he found himself once more on the edges of Moonglow.

The trees and the border were familiar. He breathed in the twining of scents, ones he knew, ones he had missed and he felt the corners of his eyes prickle as he forced a harsh breath through his lungs to steady his chest and his steps as he crossed the border. He would not call for he was home, if he could still call it that and somehow declaring himself like a visitor, like he had ever been gone in the first place, would have torn his ribs open so he slipped inside the borders and walked familiar pathways.

Unconsciously he set his steps towards @Kukutux's ulaq, allowing his memory to guide his steps for the first time in months for he trod once more pathways familiar to him though his body belied the change. Because somehow the steps forward seemed fewer, the shrubs and bushes seemed smaller, the spine was still immense and yet - did it tower all the same? And though he was home there was a shift in him that he had not remembered, perhaps did not realize at all for all Massaraq felt was an unease at the edges of his consciousness. As if his memories had betrayed him and he had not come home at all.

looking for Kukutux but all welcome!

moonglow had come home. when the meat had been distributed to caches and welcomes remade, when she had stretched bison hide in the clearing and exclaimed over the deep richness of the pelt, kukutux sent her mind out to kassuq and massaraq once more.

she did not mean to worry and yet she did; a soft chant rose on her tongue, and she offered a piece of bison fat to the spirits of air.

and when moonmother lifted her head again, it was massaraq she saw.

changed.

wounded.

a great sob rose in her throat; a great gratitude rose in her spirit, and kukutux was upon her feet before she realized, hurrying down the last feet of the well-worn path to throw her arms about him.

"my son, my son has returned! a man. a hunter." but he had come back differently than arrluk, and when she filled her eyes with his own, she searched behind them for the secret places where the spirits had whispered to her son.

There was the smell of something in the air an animal that he had never hunted before and that he did not know and yet it was rich on the winds and permeated the hearth. He walked, silent and on steps that had seen many miles and did not falter even when he was unsure. And when he felt his gut swirl and twist around his throat stealing any words he might have said she rushed forward to hug him and he had dreamed of returning home to his family for so long and yet he did not run and greet her could only stand still and feel her arms around him as they were real. But her summer green eyes felt out of place in the winter and he could meet them for only a moment.

A yawning pit, and he did not know what he felt a flash of whites around his eyes in fear at what she might see there - either through her spirit or a mother's intuition. "Anaa I'm back." Somehow the word home lodged impossibly in this throat and did not pass, something unfamiliar had crept beneath his skin. His voice had lost some of its exuberant spirit, was quieter, more even, steady for all he might have shook when he said it. She might have noted the slash on his side but it was a distant memory to him. A moment he stood stock still in his arms before his own returned the embrace, tentative and unsure, a memory of a movement that hollowed out his bones as he did it now.

He looked around and it was like water flowing down and down and down into nowhere, a bottomless abyss. So much that he had missed so much that he had loved and did still. And yet it did not feel like he was standing there, not unreal like a dream, but distant like a bird or the wind constantly rushing over never seen. Was it him? Was it this place? He stared helplessly back at this woman who he knew was his mother, his anaa, and for the first time he was not sure quite what he was seeing at all, a white pelt, green eyes, a scar upon her shoulder, smelling of herbs. A glimmer of what felt like clarity but blinded like sunbeams through leaves, as if he were a stranger.

just a cameo

Much like with Arrluk Aje watched for Massaraq. His steps took him longer and his journey farther and she would be happier when he was home. That way both were where they should be. Part of her stubbornly refused to believe they may choose to leave.

When she saw his pwlt over the horizon. She lifted her nose in a deleciate trilling howl. Much like she had done with Arrluk. Letting another of her dearest friends know she saw him. She was glad he was home. Then she'd leave to attens to her duties and he would find her she hoped as Arrluk had.

massaraq walked as if he had fallen beneath water and did not yet understand that he had found dry land.

he was here.

he was not.

he ate of the plant you gave, lynx whispered.

and he did not come back when he had made his dream.

kukutux guided her son to the ulaq; she pressed upon his shoulders so he would sit down; her small frame flitted to and fro, gathering food, gathering medicines for the wounding.

"what did you see, my son?" kukutux softly commanded, pausing to sit upon her haunches and look plaintively up into his empty, stricken face, the eyes that saw and did not.

ajei, near; ajei's power, growing.

Massaraq followed his anaa to the ulaq, he sat, bones clattering and folding and bending and cracking along the shuddering lines of his flanks as she bade him sit. He breathed though it was difficult and he was looking around, noting the things that had remained, and those that had changed. No longer did his and his brothers' scent sit in the edges. Even the mixture of herbs had shifted slightly, those summer spring buds long since dried and those few hardy leaves that unfurled under winter's frost and autumn's shower of golds and reds were most sharp in the air.

The question echoed in his ears, but he forced his mouth to move to answer. His eyes took in her face, seeing him, and yet what was there to see reflected in her eyes? He could not see himself, could barely see her. To think it was to feel it over again a flash of darkness behind his hollow gaze and he felt his heart stutter. "So dark and I couldn't fight it, or feel myself, but it hurt. It hurt so much. Anaa, there was nothing." I was nothing. But to even say it was already a contradiction, the words themselves held the paradox, imprecise and difficult things as they were. A flicker, what did it mean? He did not know. But it yawned within him. Deep and empty.

"there are many reasons why you have not come back as yourself. i have seen this before, massaraq."

slices of bison meat, quivering with fat. a heap of dried rosehips. small chunks of mallow root.

"eat, igniga. feed your skin."

the woman sat down before the boy-man, and pulled the sight of him hard into her eyes. "some spirit has been angered."

now she glanced toward the proud spire of moonspear, rising even in sight of the spine; kukutux was quiet in her contemplations and at last jerked her chin toward the village of his sister.

"we must do it again, massaraq. we must walk in the spirit world again. but this time you will not be alone."

HIs stomach rumbled and though it roiled making him almost want to vomit he was so hungry and took bites of the food. "thank you." He could feel her eyes on him, weighing, considering, seeing. And fear had not left him. But she had said she had seen it before, what had he done to anger a spirit in his short life? He did not know. THe injustice of it made him spark with anger but he tamped it down.

Another spirit walk. He did not know what would happen, but he would not be alone, the thought of his anaa there in the darkness made his skin burn. At the start of his journey he had been uncertain, and now he felt he knew even less. But still he clung to the hope of those threads of possibility. "ok. okay. I will go." An echo.

he did not want to go.

she did not wish to go.

to return to such a place would sicken them both, and yet the sickness was a small sacrifice when it was his soul which wandered unattached.

she pressed more food upon him until he refused, then gestured toward her own sleeping-furs. he must sleep, and if he could not, herbs would be blended into a tea for him.

A distant part of him resisted, it felt ill fitting to return to take his anaa's own resting place and food. But he was tired and he did not know what the future held and there was certainty there in following her instructions. When eventually he slept it was fitfully as if his body had forgotten the place, the safety it had once felt unflinchingly in these very walls. And he twitched in his sleep, dreams flitting in and out of his head but just out of memory a low growl entering his throat at one point before fading once more.

thank you for the awesome thread! I'm good with wrapping up here/in the next few posts?

good to wrap! <3

kukutux watched massaraq sleep. she would not leave his side until his father had risen.

the moon, the stars; she whispered to brother wind the favor she had for this boy, and the desire she held that his torment be ended.