Phantom Hollow saviguk ❄

@Andraste

kukutux stood with fog wreathing about her ankles, a familiar chill reaching to her thin shoulders upon which she had no pelt. lost in the river, from which she had gratefully been plucked by agana. and yet the duck was beref again at the thought of her neat little shelter, her carefully dried meats, the furs — all swept away.

trying not to think of it now, kukutux moved deeper into the hollow. it was no place for a new ulaq, but she supposed she had come here to hunt. the long muscles in her haunches flexed; the duck slipped between the darkened trees, casting about for this scent or another.

um im terrible & forgot all abt this-

When she had been Aurëwen, to lament had been a means of ravaging her entire figure and a soul that would forever feel everything and too much, too much;
now, it arrived and departed in flushes and fades, not unlike the sun seen through these very trees or the encumbering season of harvest itself; not unlike how she blinked, unseeing, as of late. Grief was a reaching thing, towards her person with all intent to hold her to its clammy breast and envelop her as before. It reached her, yes; it also did not. She does not know—
but again she has parted from her Weald, if only to fill her belly for the wolves who waifed therein.

She was but a servant to her people, all;
how had that been such a ghastly thing to misunderstand?

Grief, what-ever it is, is acknowledged with a slim sigh of narrow shoulders, and so it departs — just as the stricken raises rubied crown to note another spectre. Small, as she. Adrift, as she.

Andraste chirrups; hushed.

<3

a sound drifting from her left, and not one made by a deer or elk. kukutux froze a moment, jadeglow eyes searching for its source, then straightened. another, an ivoried creature who reminded her of the woman warrior regaling her with tales alongside the edge of a lake.

therefore, kukutux was softened by the call of the pinilak; chuffing back in response with a single wave of her plume to accompany. "this woman greets you," she murmured, shifting forward on small paws; somehow, the other's stately presence compelled the duck's reversion to an older greeting, and here she held herself, breath bated.

♡

The other gentled;
and as she saw the greenglimmer set into unassuming features, her stilted, stiffened figure came to ease. Formal, her salutations; it was all Andraste could do in responding ownwise:  "Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo,"  low, silken chords strained from her past silence. Eyes remained a bit numb, and went adrift; one more veiled, more shorn-over than the other; though when they alit once more upon the northpelt'd before her there is some means of returning to herself—
and how many times had she been drawn to these mists that were to go unclaimed, not as her own were? Tail feathered at spindling hocks; far from inattentive, though it may seem as much.  "... I am Andraste."

With this, she absently turned aside, so that her fellow she-wolf might join her on this aimless promenade.

andraste. 

"this woman is called kukutux," the duck whispered, some part of her satisfied by the completion of their introduction. she sidled hesitantly to the spirit's side. "the words you spoke before, what did they mean?" she asked after some moments had passed. knowledge was a wealth; kukutux had lost a good deal of her fear around inquries.

such things happened when one was alone, the girl mused, unable to stop herself from glancing quick and sideways into the serene scarred visage hovering alongside her own.

“ ‘A star shines upon ze hour of our meeting,’ ”  the stricken deigned to administer, chords strumming quiet all the same; the mists here cowling the northern figments in trendling white; a gathering.  “It is in mine mother tongue,”  the floral'd, foreign words rather at odds to the more faux-slavic settlement within her throat. Perhaps this esqimawe might find such sounds unpleasant ... so far, though, ears have not shied yet from the speaking. Yet.

A name, then;
like the clicking tongue of southerners, so much so farther than these wilds. The sibyl listened to the ended echo of it, before—  “Kuktus.”  Half-annihilation! but the once-heiress soon halted in place; again chirruped,  “Ku.. kukucks,”  not yet—  “Tukukus,”  damnation!—  “... Kukutux?”

Near anguish limned the lune-ruined features; eyes of despairing hope upon the arctic's kindly guise.

who was this snowpierced woman? kukutux wondered after her, andraste, wondered after the language of stars that seemed to cling to the other's mouth. was this a ghost after all? but no; ghosts did not falter. a gentle smile touched the girl's somber mouth; she dropped her gaze with a shy nod upon her crown. "yes."

not her spirit-name, mind, not the secret title that her husband had once called her. a burst of heartache, the whisper of the voice that she must not remember the name under which he had been born. let him rest, and kukutux agreed. "do i speak to someone who is living?" came the trembling cadence of her young voice, held in thrall and curiosity and a deep wariness.

Aquiver became the hen's voice;
no sooner did the feathered inquire after her being mere vision could Andraste bring forth a confident answer. She may as very well be: a knived spectacle, a willow-wisp, ever-thin to the bone and a faraway gleam in halfglimmer sights. She felt so ... stricken from herself, so half-listened towards, and yet the fée bore no admonishment within her at it all.

"Those within my weald are warm with ze blood in their veins,"  came her own musings, finally looking to the duck alongside.  "I ... suspect my own runs as such."  And perhaps still they might be follies, following the most foolish of them all. She does not know that she deserves it, these ... yearnings; the youth she can never again bear.  "I suspect there might be none, at all."  Yet still there was now a meaning she strove for that made surer the breath in her lungs; masses that now wished to run after the fairylight into a figment nigh possible.

And a male who had become the beat of her heart, entire.

the thrall spoke in riddles, and kukutux thrilled to the idea of a story perhaps lurking beneath the willow's tones. her people wove tales into the tapestry of their lives; they were not only for children. and so timidly she snuck another glance at the maybe-ghost. 

andraste seemed whole, but the duck was suddenly wary that a tuungak had taken the form of melancholy beauty, and thusly presented itself to kukutux for a warmer reception. "why do you say these things?" the girl pressed, worried now for the mortality of her young soul.

"Ze skies took from me that which had been already lost,"  and here now upon the fractured planes of lune-face did the vulnerable hesitance from beneath Moonspire's glimmer; felt the look of seaglass upon her spine, guided by the swivel of shoulder and spine that Andraste so proferred, then and there. Not theirs—  "Those which were never to be mine, in ze end ... and I still hear ze beat of my heart. Yours. Perhaps it is all that is meant to be."  And all that should only, perhaps, matter.  "I would like to remind those who wander that they will have a hearth, with those who tread with me. I would like to breathe for it."

Inquiry, invitation; to follow her might be folly, in the eyes, it seems, of most thus far. And yet ... she would not think ill of what-ever this selfsame traveler decided.

kukutux pondered this, fell into a glinting silence as they traveled, she and the snow-fowl. her home upon the totoka was surely destroyed, along with all that she had ever collected in her young time as inhabitant of the teekon. agana had come at a fortuitous time, for the duck did not believe she could take another loss.

"there is another," she murmured suddenly, softly, ears wilting back. "i would ... i want to come with you, but only if she does also." why did she think so of agana? it was loyalty, the girl decided, loyalty to a savior who had not abandoned her after the deep waters.

wanna wrap up? 0:

There is another;
​and at this the fée canted her head. The she-wolf who strode alongside her appeared to be unassuming enough; and though the stricken certainly, intimately knows that appearences can be rather deceiving, Andraste does not think that this duck and her companion  (who the identity of would be revealed, to her gracious glee, much later)  were of the breed that might condescend into doing so. Thus, it is with a kindly nod and rare, shorn smile that the silver draws the duck away, yonder and towards her misted realm.

kukutux had decided that if this was spirit, she herself was aijatkugnak. the girl's time alone upon the totoka had proved such to her, and so with little hesitation she followed the snowstorm into the dawning of a new chapter for a tome only half-opened.