Moonstone Quarry kajurujuk ≉

As a child, he had thought himself the rock that would steady his mother and his sisters, especially after father left. He had set his feet up a mountain then, and had not stopped their perilous climb, from Easthollow to Moonspear and back again. So he smiled a pained grin of this secret knowing that he was too far up now to find any easy way down.

"I do," he said, and then he thought, "but if not a home, then I wish to be a man who brings light and not darkness, who heals and not wounds. Sometimes those who are lost do not wish to be found - but I believe all who are lost need someone who will show them the world is not all wicked. That there is kindness, that there is hope." That was what Clary had been to him. "My brother -- uh - sorry, cousin, Kallik, journeys with me also. He too has lost everything, though... I suppose we have not lost each other."

Despite his vexation with the sea, Merrit found what Kukutux shared of her mother to be beautiful. Internally, he pushed aside the anger he held towards the raging ocean and put this knowledge in its place. A far better thing to think on. "I will think on you and your mother next time I near the sea," he promised her, "I do not think I will find anything for my mother there, but... she always loved watching the bison in our land." He remembered her tanning their skins, remembered how she had treasured them, in life and in death. "Perhaps I must start there."