Ouroboros Spine salumaruk ⇑

jadestone gaze pulled itself away as raimo came close. kukutux caught the scent of him; pinebark and loam, stone from the mountains around them, and now the clean clear fragrance of water.

he looked away. she traced the edge of his jawline with her eyes.

raimo wore moonglow. the duck was both surprised and not to feel her awareness waking to this, to him, in a new way. finished with mourning she might be, but kukutux was not ready to take the unseen footpaths of a new future.

but the choice no longer belonged to the wise-woman. "in my head i have given you the name of firsthunter, raimo." perhaps it was the first acknowledgement she had made of his rank. 

"you do not know my ways. but here i wish to have two circles once more. firsthunter chooses who hunts and who will follow from among the men. it is he to whom boys are sent, for he decides if they are ready to hunt."

sons. daughters. children. "so long as he is fair, he is respected by the moon and by the star." raimo had said he would make of himself a blade, and that he had.

"sometimes —" she was not prepared to say it; inkdipped lashes hid for a moment her naked greensward stare, and then she had lifted it to the stoic shadowed plains of the hunter's face. she did not know him, and yet he had helped to make of moonglow a place where hunters might congregate. 

her expression replaced by the stirrings of something unsure, delicate, too new. "sometimes firsthunter is called upon by his leaders for more than hunting." it was all kukutux could say, drawing into herself and yet suddenly hungry and afraid to know what raimo might say.