Phantom Hollow Beams from your M2

AW! Preferably for anyone in another pack unless it remains empty for a few days <3

Setting: Night — 20:45
Weather: 57F — Cloudy, rainy, slightly windy

Alduin, having been traumatized from his event with Sasha, has been much too scared to venture off on his own. It pisses him off how fearful he’s become. This is not how his father or mother is; they’re not scared of anything. He would prove to himself that he can withstand anything. After all, as his father says: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 

So, he marches out of the safety of the scarlet clay walls and stumbles southwest to find an enormous lake. He’s invincible. He keeps telling himself. He doesn’t not want to die so therefor he won’t. He’s still a pup, only a tad older than four months to be exact and he knows not of the evils of the world — or at least he doesn’t know of all of them. Still, it doesn’t stop him from trying his hardest to catch a few fish, succeeding only once before scoffing it down and moving further north.

Its then, things turn bad. A storm brews overhead and his mind instantly jumps back to the night he was enraptured by the lightening cracking across the rainy sky. The night he got attacked. He finds himself shaking uncontrollably. Not from the cold, but the memory itself, having to plant his butt to the soil and reel his mind back to the present. After a solid thirty minutes of quivering and panicking, he breathes deeply and recites the same words he said earlier —

He cannot die. He will not die. So therefore he won’t die.

It makes him solid enough to stand. His brindled fur is soaking by now. He needs a distraction. So when a waterfall catches his attention, he trots towards it fearlessly. To him the water looks calm enough to walk in. He wants to fish once more. So I’m he goes, not thinking of the consequences and not knowing enough to judge wether or not the river would sweep him away. 

And much to his chagrin, it does. 

The first few steps aren’t so bad, but all it takes is one heavy rush of the chilling glacier water to throw his paws out from underneath him. 

Alduin yelps as he goes rushing headfirst into the stream and carried along. It sweeps him to the waterfall, where his paws scrape mercilessly at the rocks to gain any type of grip. He’s not strong enough. He falls, splashing and twirling into the deeper half of the river. Muffled screams fall from dark, trembling lips. The next thing he knows, he’s unconscious. 

He would be dragged all the way down the river all the way to the phantom hallow where his body would wash up upon the shore. Lifeless, cold, hopeless — but not dead.

not dead, kukutux told herself, stooping over the bedraggled child with a mother's concern.

the sickness had dried up from her as if it had never been; depleted, plush fur near brittle from the effort of supporting the little ones, kukutux strode out into the world, with a word to @Sialuk and @Aiolos, if either wished to follow.

but moonwoman would not be stopped. she had been restless too around the birth-time of her raindrop and ice crystal.

but thoughts of him brought hurt to the duck's heart.

she had followed a river until the land curved down, down, down; it had foamed and spoken with a loud voice, caught in the storm that suddenly washed across the territories. it had driven her into a run, and now she waited among unknown trees, resting upon sodden haunches. 

what a foolish girl you are! the inner spirit scolded in a furor. 

you are reckless, even with children inside your belly!

but it is my way

then change your ways! you have a new man who will be your husband. aiolos has much kindness, but his anger may be kindled to see you here, and near to the time that they will be born.

kukutux sighed.

and now here she was — she had woken, and in the time between sleep and true awareness, her jadestone eyes had beheld a shape that had not existed before.

lightning mother illuminated them both, the woman made of bones and curves, and the child lying soaked and unmoving on the bank. 

kukutux put her head against the small chest.

he lives

but only a little.

lynx now, striding forward to peer over moonwoman's shoulder at the poor babe.

from what path does this river come?

the springmint eyes, widening.

the sea.

perhaps sedna has sent him down this river. do not wait, daughter.

kukutux began to pull the strange son further onto the ground not soaked with water, butting his sides firmly. "napuagullâk," she commanded, willing her mother's power into him. "hakaagal!"

Alduin doesn’t wake when he washes against the bank. He believe he’s dead. He believed he was dead the second his eyes closes and water was inhaled through his lungs. But he forgot one very important detail…

He cannot die. 

So with the nudge of the pale woman above and the sound of her voice tickling his auds, he wakes as if he’d come straight back from the dead. Blood red eyes shoot open, wide but unseeing. Instantly his body begins quivering so intensely he thinks he’s on the border of a seizure. He wretches out a choked noise from his maw and throws up water and blood alike, hacking his lungs up. He’s only able to shift an elbow below him as he does so. 

Only after a minute of straight coughing, he stills, scarlet orbs still as wide as saucers and pupils squeezed into tiny pinpricks despite the darkness. The lightening shines off of his soaked pelt as well as his newly acquired scars from Sasha. 

As if he were in a horror movie, his head moves slowly to look up at the snow pelted wolf.

Mother? Nyra? Arlette? 

No. None of them. A stranger has saved him this day. No, no, no, no, she did not save him. Alduin saved himself. He wills himself to live and so he will. And will remain so until he wills it no longer. He’s but a god — 

With that it is like his brain breaks. As if he’d only just realized something. His eyes finally blink. 

“I-I—“ He tries to stammer out but the clacking of his shivering teeth and body make it hard. “I’m — I’m ali-alive.” He gazes up this woman with the moonlight mouth agape in shock. “H-help. Help-p m-m-me, ple-please.” He squeaks back to her, trying his hardest to get up and curl against her.

He’s terrified, injured, in shock, tired, traumatized — but he’s alive.

a terrified child. kukutux dropped to rounded belly to drape her pelt as closely over his cold feet and nose and ears as she might, gathering him close; snow-duck with child beneath feathers.

"what is the name that you have?" she questioned in swift, clipped tones. the light upon his face again, and she saw that already he had been injured before sedna seized him and sent him to the river spirits.

she listened for any death-rattling of water in the back of his voice, but heard none, and smoothed his ears with her tongue once, twice.

blood on the soil where he lay;

from where did he come, grandmother?

he is more broken than the water brought to him.

who would harm so young a boy?

"i am kukutux. i will bring you to my ulaq in the moonglow village."

The stranger drapes herself around him, though they’re both soaked, he feels a sliver of warmth he thought he’d never get to feel again. It’s the feelings of being alive — reminds him that he is. 

And so does her voice. 

“Alduin.” He croaks out quietly, shakily.

He cuddles closer to her, burying his dark face in her pale hide. He weeps. Tears rolling down his cheeks from squeezed shut eyes and mixing with the rain. Then he wails when she tells him her name and promises to take him to safety. It’s a broken noise, one that shows suffering that one of his age shouldn’t be experiencing so early let alone at all.

He doesn’t say anything back to her, only nods. He can’t speak. He doesn’t know what to do. So he doesn’t do anything. Waits for this woman, Kukutux, to sweep him away just as easily as the river did.

and take him off she would do;

alternately guiding the boy alduin and carrying him;

ignoring the twinge along her sides that begged her take rest,

and never stopping until they both were within the teeth of the guardian mountains, and the boy tucked into pelts against the inside curve of her shelter.