anaa was gone.

mothers were not transient. they simply did not exist for the girl until the day she watched a cousin walk home to be greeted by vairë.

pain had knitted itself with a sudden sharp tightening of net-strings around a broken heart, a heart so crushed that shock had set in. how could something inside her feel as if it had been crushed into shelldust?

she bore her father's eyes now. but now it hurt to see him walk up the path.

it hurt to see nutuyikruk was never with him.

to tautukpik the girl clung, frantic if her brother left her sightline.

grandmother told stories. akmaaksi listened silently to these tales of women turning to red trees and mothers of lightning, and she wondered if her own anaa had become some spirit.

akmaaksi did not go to the forest. she did not visit her mother's death ulaq.

and she did not speak.