Ouroboros Spine salumaruk ⇑

the time of nestlings had come, the time of warmer sun. already the walls of the winter ulaq were beginning to run with water.

"daughter. i go to the lake." the invitation for @Sialuk was clear, but the moondrop did not wish to be stopped, despite her injury.

nine days of mourning, of doing little beyond weeping and sleeping and singing, had strengthened the break in her ankle. grime and her own blood still stained her pelt; she had not washed the end of moonspear away.

and so kukutux would not be dissuaded. slow going, but moreso than before. 

at last she came to the expanse with its melting edges, the ice fracturing. the duck lowered herself into it at once with a gasp, but as the sluggish current underneath began to lift soot and blood-brown from her fur, the duck breathed. 

her death songs, finished. she would think of them as blackfox and her young hunter, for surely where he had gone, he ran with others in pursuit of a quarry, weaving in and out of the dancing lights.

kukutux pushed the thoughts away and began to bathe, letting the waters come together over her head before resurfacing. here the ground was still firmly beneath her paws; she groomed herself in the water.

when finally she emerged, the duck shimmered whitely once more, made whole by brother lake. "we will give you a name," she told its spirit, rosy tongue whisking droplets of water from her coat. 

eventually,

she slept atop pine needles upon the bank, the sound of birds filling her mind, in the subtle warmth offered by an early spring sun.