Moonsong Glacier inugagulliq ⋒

<33!!

dutch arjun, son of the white spine. and his forbears here had been morningside. kukutux did not think she had heard this word before. "tell me the name of your father and your mother," moonwoman encouraged, pleased by his silent perusal of what she had carried with her to the glacier.

kukutux looked at him with the eyes of atsak, matchmaker.

the hunter was perhaps older than she would have envisioned for ariadne. the sunshine people believed that two must grow together, must live as husband and wife, must grow to know each of the two villages. courtship among the siqiniq was arranged and lengthy, allowing for many moments where one or both of the young ones might refuse the other as was their right.

this was for one simple fact: it was fifteen days between villages, sometimes twenty, sometimes a journey without count when the long dark came and the ice crept up from the sea. a boy who left his family to live with the people of his betrothed would become as their son. a daughter who departed her mother to serve mother-in-law would be a child of that ulaq. and so, in this way were kinship ties deepened even though it might be many years before you saw these faces again.

but here there were now four moonpacks. they had no such distance. their choices were made then without contemplation of a lightless winter and the ocean which swallowed hunters.

the air here was cold and bit at her lips, her eyelids. it reminded her of that small isle and her grin next was unburdened, almost girlish. "you have made a long path to this place, then?"