Moonspear ilannak ⊕

"@Revui?" the duck's voice was hushed. twilight had come, finally, after a day of searching for @Mira outside the packlands. the seawife had become less timid upon her ventures, but moonspear's welcoming familiarity drove the last of the trepidation from her.

he had not healed swiftly, despite her medicines. but the trader still had youth to him, the stubborn heaviness of his bones. and so the moondrop searched between the gathering shadows near his sleeping-place, lying a trout upon the ground as she whispered his name a second time.

A vast and violent tide swelling up, forming a beast of many legs and heads and eyes, sweeping over toothed stone to reach for him, a tongue; wine-dark, greedily pernicious—

A snort, and he's awake. The smell of the trout hangs in the air and fills his lungs. It smells fresh and clean, and besides that there is the warm autumnal smell of Kukutux. The giant stirs. Blinks sleep from his eyes. Her presence dawns on him and he watches her with a flicker of longing in his gaze before he remembers where he is - and the look sours with gloom. An ache.

Revui clears his throat and shuffles his body, feeling tension where the earth has served him as a hard bed. Not knowing what to say, he sits there and lets his attention drift to the fish, his mouth filling with saliva, ignoring the hunger in his belly - he cannot trust it is the food that he hungers for.

the greystone giant awakened, and kukutux drew her eyes from him, so swiftly she did not see the expression in his seafoam stare. he made no move to take what she had offered, and for a dizzying moment the duck was concerned she had offended him.

revui had always been more silent than his ostrega counterparts, but there was something else here. something lurking. something damning. jadestone eyes dared back to the trader's impassive face. "i have come to see if your spirit also hurts." she knew many herbs; she knew the dew of the morning and how best to cultivate the small red flowers of poppy, but kukutux did not understand how she might begin to soothe those other pains that lurked beneath his surface.

Her voice was a curse, because it was so sweet in his ears. Revui did not think he would hear it ever again nor see her, yet here they were together.

It was cruel, he thought, that he could not recall how he reached the mountain, or that she was made to care for him while he slept. He wondered at all the things she would have done for him and the list populated swiftly in his head: medicine, food, bathing, helping him like a mother with a newborn. It was hard to process the indignities; he was no child, but he had been made weak by his decisions, and she had seen him through it all.

She spoke of his spirit, which reminded him vaguely of Averna with her boulder. He chuffs, giving his head a little shake, and is silent a moment longer. When he deigns to speak, Revui's mind is elsewhere.

I did what you asked of me. His throat burned, the pitch of his voice shifting irregularly. A pause. Went my own way... But I wake, and I am here. His gaze lifts to look at her only to fade, to drift, becoming distant. Is that the will of my spirit? Did I leave it here, or is it festering somewhere along the way - tethered to a loveless woman? He was not specific about who he spoke of, losing the desire to speak soon enough.

In his mind he pictured Ikkalrok tending two bundles of stone.

600 for uuu

kukutux groped for the earth, settling herself an inch too heavily down at his revelation. "loveless." the duck did not know of whom he spoke; she felt the word lodge against her breastbone. did he speak of her? "your spirit was not here, uyagakagun," the duck whispered. he had been gone in entirety from this place, from moonspear, from —

she had not expected to see him again. "but it led you back. i —" her words seemed heavy. worth nothing. "what did you find when you were away?" revui. trader. brother. all foreign to a mind that wished a single title for him, and not one she dared say aloud.

ooo grats!!!

What had he found?

A brother, first—a replacement for the one he should have sought. Merrick's one-eyed stare surfaced in Revui's memory clearly, masked in blood, grinning toothily.

A lover, for too brief a time—the bear-woman's face now, Revui's stomach clenching, his jaw muscles taut. Responsibilities which he fled; none of this he felt right in explaining, not to anyone.

In thinking about it Revui did not think any less of Kukutux for having born his brother's children (the same could not be said for Jarilo, and in thinking of his elder brother Revui felt a twisting jealousy hook in to him fiercely; had he been by to visit too? Did it burn him to know his wife tended to Revui's every physical need in that time? He liked the feeling that aroused inside himself).

No. He answered. All that he'd wanted was here, on the mountain he was forbidden to set foot upon. He couldn't say that either, especially when he felt Kukutux' eyes upon him, burning. He swallows it all and locks it deep where it should stay. Another thought comes to him then, warm like the fever, and this one grabs for his tongue - scalds as it's voiced: You should have left me where you found me.

"no." her voice, perhaps falling more firmly upon his greystone ears than ever before. "the spirits led you back, if you believe it or if you do not. and i am —" ticking through her familial bonds that would oblige her to use her medicine upon revui. or perhaps that he was trader and she was wife, and that too was the way of things.

but it was neither that had led her to ask for his life. "i should have done as i did. i wanted to do as i did." only a woman she might be, but even her own words must be heard, in times such as these. suppressing her gaze in silent submission to his status as man, kukutux nevertheless felt irritation brimming within, that revui should decide such things for her. 

quietly, tentatively reaching out with her small paw to brush the top of his own before withdrawing.

His pronouncement is denied, and he scoffs. She reaches for him to tentatively offer some measure of support, a strength to her voice that he isn't used to hearing, but it is the touch that startles him. Brief though it is, Revui will think back upon this moment frequently and distort it with things that should have been said, could have been done.

When Kukutux pulls back from him Revui feels himself steel against the rejection. He lashes out.

You know that Hydra will turn me out as soon as I have recovered. You have wasted her supplies for the last time. It was a jab in the dark, not a strong one. He could not help thinking, perhaps she will send you out with me, but knew that was impossible too. Kukutux was more tied to this mountain than he was at this point. Maybe I will go back to the valley, back to the woman who abandoned me for motherhood. She wanted me once, I could make her want me again.

It pained him somewhat to speak in this way around Kukutux, but he was hurting, and in his hurt he did not think.

i have not wasted! kukutux wished to shout, the blade of his savik cutting her again. but it was in the next moment, when her ears beheld the word of mother, that kukutux truly knew. 

"you are father?" the duck asked, finding she could scarce hear her own words above the thud of her own heartbird. there was a woman, and she had borne him,

— had she borne him sons? kukutux could not look at revui; the remembered touch of him beneath her paw scorched her flesh now, but there was no anger in her, only shock and the building sensation of a new and unnameable thing. the specter of hydra looming to banish the flint-knapped revui again did not register, not with what he had revealed hanging heavy between them.

His words had wounded her, as they were meant to. He had not known the strength of those words nor how sharply they might sting, only that he wished to use them as a tool to drive her back from him, to bring jealousy to her, maybe. The way Jarilo's connection to her burned him in kind.

The look upon Kukutux' face was one he could not translate. He only glimpsed her, unable to hold that face in his mind for long. Her question frustrated him more than anything, as Revui did not have a suitable answer. In his mind he was no father to them. They came as a curse to the woman and stole her away, and he hated them for it.

I am alone, he snapped. They may be mine, but I am no father to them. They were wretched little things. A manifestation of what should have been love, but it had never been that. The intimacy shared between Revui and Ikkalrok had been purely physical. He felt nothing for her or the children. They are back in the valley with her. I think I shall return to them, take her to bed with me.

At this he watches Kukutux out of the corner of his eye, being unkind, and knowing that the words he speaks are lies. He would never return to the valley or see Ikkalrok again. Should he ever find his sons, they would be strangers to him eternally. But he wanted Kukutux to hurt, too. It was wrong of him—a childish attack from someone hurting, wanting someone to hurt just as strongly.

children, but he had left them, in the way of traders. they came to her island, she had seen as a little bird; they had come and traded for what they wished, and in the next season babies would be borne to one woman or two, some resembling the men who had visited and enjoyed the hospitality of the wives.

if she was wedded beneath that cold sun, perhaps it would be her leading a trader back to the sleeping-place; perhaps it would have been her time to deliver children wearing his face.

his

but already they existed. she swallowed, ears quailing back against her skull as revui's harsh words grated onward, until it felt as though something deep within her snapped greenstick. ocean waves lapping against the bay of her vision, pulling moisture from her mouth until it felt as though she spoke through mouthfuls of sand. "any woman would find herself blessed by spirits to be your choice." stone he was, through and through, and it was with a haunted glance toward him, one barren in pain, that the duck began to shakily rise, rise and leave him be, rise and leave revui.

As always with her, he got what he deserved but not what he wanted. Yes, he'd wanted her to hurt, but she did more than that. This woman built of ice, more an isolated glacier in the manner he was carved of stone, began to crack. Began to cleave to pieces before him.

Kukutux wept as she fled from him, her words ringing in his ears. She moved so swiftly; a blink of light upon ice, the scattering of shards. Revui was alone with the constrictive feeling of his guilt. Himself an empty well, each tear she shed finding its way to him. Alone with the winter chill she left behind, he crumpled in to himself and found comfort in knowing it was all he deserved, and more.