the sea does not forget.
even after two weeks, its scent still clung to her like a bruise beneath the skin—salt and rot, blood and silt. silatuyok walked the northern ridges with her hip stiff, half-healed, the fur stripped in a ragged crescent that had not grown back. pain was not new. but shame? shame was a fresh thing, sore in the chest, like she’d swallowed a jagged rock and left it to sit behind her heart.
wind brushed her pale cheek and she did not flinch. she moved with caution now— no longer the gull who swept low to taste the foam, but the kestrel, still and sharp-eyed. every sound in the grass made her ears twist. every scent made her throat tighten. she did not trust the valley, nor her place in it.
and yet she stayed. because she had not died. and because surviving was a language her bones had always spoken.
beneath the dappled light of spruce branches, silatuyok lowered herself near the cold stream, gingerly, weight shifting off her hip. she breathed in. and again. one paw reached forward, testing the water. she wanted to cleanse, wanted to forget, but the memory lived under her skin.