Ocean's Breath Plateau all these talking heads are blurred in violet hues

@Red Leaf maybe?

being a baby isn't so bad, akiak's had about a week to realize.

but somehow, he's forgotten where aaka was! or why he even distanced himself from her. 
crawling is a pain, he just can't ever get it right. something jolts through his body whenever he does, and so he lays defeated on the den floor. the cub wails for aaka, each cry reverberating through a small but growing body.

akiak didn't know that his aaka was just right behind him, as all he'd done was turn around from her belly.

something was wrong.
red leaf had hoped it was only anxiety that came with the newness of motherhood. akiak fed well, slept well, and sang well, and so her worries should have been easied. she kept him warm and close, and spent every hour of the day alone with him.
perhaps that was how she noticed it so early.
his squalling, instinctively, sounded like one of pain, and it woke red leaf instantly from her dozing. baby boy, what's wrong? she whispers to him; maybe he had tripped, or could not find his way back to her teat. that is what she had thought until she noticed he was dragging one of his hind limbs.
heart in her throat, she reaches to nudge him, to help him crawl, and she is likely met with another yelp of pain. that is when the tears begin to well in her eyes, panic seizing her throat, panic, panic, panic;
ice mother was not done with her.
help! my baby! somebody please help my baby!

There was a screaming from the den where the caribou wife rested.

Tullik had been on her way over anyway, a clutch of bison jerky that had remained in the lodge in her mouth. She hurried the last few feet to the den mouth, immediately poking her head in. The caribou language is different than sunshine, and far different from mountain walker, but it is that which she speaks anyway in her hurry.

What is it? What is wrong?! Her eyes leave the woman and go to the boy on the floor, then back up.

May I see him? Its half babbled, slipping in and out of seal hunter and mountain walker like a linguistic metronome, but she thought she gets the point across.

aaka reels him back in with a hand nearly as big as himself and akiak reunites with comfort for only a brief moment. but distress bounced off the walls of the den.
he bristles, black back wriggling closer to the white belly but no matter what there remained a tension. her drum beats wildly again, his own matching hers for no other reason than proximity.

what is happening? is he in danger? akiak cries even as he burries himself in his mother's snow.

"what is this?"

his voice was a snarl. the reek of fish-eaters surrounded the seaside den where red leaf cried out. cen had been hunting beside the ocean, hating the touch of the salt. but he had found fish here, and bird eggs.

now he dropped them all and glared between the women, then stared down at ghelan.

at his leg.

for a moment cen could not understand what he saw. dawning comprehension mingled with shock, with rage, sorrow, anger —

"get out," he snapped at the seal woman. "your help is not needed."

red leaf was in hysterics.
bleary-eyed, trembling; her boy now began to wail and she began to transition to hushing him, soothing him. she pulls him close to her chest. it's okay, akiak, i'm here. aaka is here, sweet boy, we're g-gonna-- we're gonna figure out what's wrong, it's okay!
there is a voice just beyond her den, one soft and laced with concern, and somewhere in the twisting vocabulary she can hear an accent — her accent. red leaf brightens, sniveling as she turns to the denmouth, meeting the dove-colored woman face to face and blabbering through her tears. i-it's his leg. he-- i don't know, i don't know what's wrong, he can't crawl. please, please help.
and then, just as she invites the woman closer, she hears —
cen
the relief at seeing his face is brief, so very brief. instead, it is lit ablaze by maternal instinct, by the flurry of emotions that now clouded her and sent her into a primal overdrive. panic, panic, panic; she stares at him for a split second before her lip bravely curls in a vicious show of her teeth.
something she never dreamed she would do.
you get out, cen, bitter, enraged; the spindly forelimbs move to shield her pup, her boy, her son; her son, her son her son her son she would not fail him not again not again
leave! let her look at him! get out! get OUT!

Tullik crawled deeper into the den, observing the boy as she did. He was a small thing, cute the same way hers were. She mustered a smile for the woman, trying to make herself smaller.

Then, the man.

Tullik whirled, her hackles raised and a snarl blossoming from her throat. 

Unless you have suddenly grown teats, you are no medicine woman. Leave. She is cool, she is calm, even as the woman behind her affirms her words. Her stare is as cold as the peaks she once claimed as home.

She holds Chakliux’s name on her tongue, but finds she does not need it. If he steps to strike her, she will simply strike him back. Harder. Where it would hurt.

Her fur standing on end, rage cold in her stomach, her eyes never leaving the face of the man, Tullik holds her ground, and holds the line.

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she defied him.

the seal woman did also!

faced with two sets of teeth, discomfitted by ghelan's whining, cen seethed.

the fangs of the village could be upon his head if he struck the stranger, or moved her from his den.

the cold eyes pinned red leaf. "we will speak later." he did not yet move, demanding her contrition, her reply, and would not move to allow the seal bitch closer until his wife answered directly into his hard stare.

something inside of red leaf snapped.
she was angry, so angry. cen had abandoned her here only days after her birth to hunt with another woman. a woman neither of them truly knew. he'd hardly even so much as spared a glance at the son he had forced her to carry.
and now he had the gall to stake his claim, to try and shoo a village woman for simply wanting to help.
the red eyes cool to ice, to stone. she sniffles as she stares at him, unyielding; we will speak later, he says, but would they? or would he simply — go back to your 'cousin'.
coolly, she turns to ignore him now, granting the moontide woman space where he did not. she mouths a quivering apology, stealing a soft, dewy glance when her face is shrouded by shadow so her husband may not see it.

There is a memory Tullik carries off when she was young, high in the peaks with the others. When her father stuck his head in their snow shelter and told them come.

They had followed him to a thrashing man being held down by some of the warriors, and not too far from him a quivering child tucked into the belly of one of the women. None of the eyes were friendly upon him. Her father had lowered his mouth to her ear. ”He has done wrong. He killed his wife, here, and was to leave his child. This is what we do to these people.”

The sound of his legs getting broken was one she will never forget.

Two, for each of the lives he had and would have taken, then a shredding of something else precious. He was allowed to live, even to leave, and if he survived he was lucky to have, but he would never have children or a wife again.

Tullik held that memory, and snarled with the mountain’s ferocity.

I will not ask nicely again, caribou hunter. Leave.