Northstar Vale distant sun

"You know, I called myself Ulloriaq for a time after his death."

Tulugak was sprawled in the shade of an oak tree as her teeth worked the hide of a young deer the sisters had felled that morning. Though she eventually intended to fashion a travelling shawl for Taqtara, what meat they were too full to eat was separated from the skin to be dried in the evening sun.

The glacierwoman grunted in acknowledgement, and Tulugak continued to speak her thoughts aloud. 

"To honour his memory. I wanted to keep a piece of him with me as I travelled." But had she been carrying his name in honour or with a selfish possessiveness? After all, she had never taken her mother's name - it had all but drowned in the sea alongside her. "The more I think on it, the more I believe I should lay him to rest for good. For a time, it helped with the grief, but now it brings nothing but pained memories."

"Then you should embrace yourself as Tulugak," came Taqtara's curt reply. "You will never move forward if you are always looking behind."

Tulugak let the thought sit with her a while as she worked. With Arkadiy, she had felt no grief for her family, nothing that made her Ulloriaq. She had felt truly herself, truly Tulugak. "I will leave the memory of her here, then." As she had done the first time she had left the coast, a little of her soul would remain in the vale for Sedna to care for.