Ouroboros Spine nightsong

It was night.

Vairë went to Firemother with an offering clutched in her jaws. Upheaval roared through the pack, brought about by the return of a sister, the return of a former friend who seemed so dead set on putting something between them and him. In this, Vairë sought wisdom, she sought patience. 

If it was strength, I would have ended him the moment he courted my little sister.

She placed her offering at the bottom of the lone maple, putting her paw to its great base, then her forehead.

And for a moment, she just breathed in, and out.

firemother.

they would gather here tomorrow, she had decided, to send the singing to little fox's spirit.

quietly she stood beside moondoe, soothing the tense shoulder and saying nothing.

Silence.

It wrapped thick bands around her, and she did not feel like the moon in that moment. Flame like anger licked at her heels with every movement, every sound.

I do not understand it. She would finally say with a quaking jaw.

Any of it, anaa. What changed from before? Was it bitterness? Was it pride? Vairë knew pride, it had almost killed her and her first litter both with the strain of trying to keep up Saltshore alone.

"you are changing, moondoe. move beyond your anger."

leave that to me.

"your sister became tartok and was named among them. still she has come back. trust in this, vairë."

she looked up toward firemother in the darkness.

for her own daughters, her moondoe must not allow the rage to mire her here.

"i have not seen her children. have you?"

She was changing. Being created anew. This was what she knew.

Sometimes, she felt less moon and more sun these days. Like the wrong move would set her ablaze.

No. I have seen her, and I have seen the winterhawk. But not their children. He suggested for our children to meet when they are older. She lifted her head from the trunk of Firemother.

She was a fool. But I find cannot blame her. She had paid her price a thousand times over.

"when they are older. daughter. kigipigak does not invite you to his home."

an observation. "i have not seen them. i went there today. he said they slept."

ariadne was not to blame.

"he said they were tartok."

she was angered, pained because she had not seen the young ones.

"i ask, truly, what anânsiak cares that young babies sleep."

she could not yet accuse him of keeping her eyes from his children, but the assumption was fast approaching.

A side glance, a glimmer of anger.

You are blood. What does he fear you will do? Because that was what it was, wasn’t it? She looked back up to Firemother’s great branches.

Do you grow tired, anaa? This has barely begun, and I do. How he held himself apart from them, never even trying to bridge a gap. How he’d taken her sister.

This, she found, she could not forgive him for.

Vairë licked her teeth, but said no more.

"no. i am not tired, doe woman. i am angry."

and perhaps that was more than all. more than blood.

"i do not think kigipigak will be cruel. he has nothing here but sunshine to hold. this may make him angry, however."

an owl's cry lanced through the night.

"it would be better if they were not one. she has come here to be among us. unless he too will accept this, his tartok heart will not live well beneath the sun."

and while this was his own fault, kukutux could see no better reason for all of kigipigak's hatred than if she stood across his path and pulled ariadne from his side. her daughter had chosen him. had she not accepted this first?

be wise.

"i will go tomorrow." the proud chin lifted.