Jade Fern Grove We mean it, but I promise we're not mean.

A new scent mingled through the refreshing churn of the creek, and Nanook quickly located its source. The inuit's fur glowed like an alabaster scar between the sentry of trees, and the greyscale girl watched her approach through wary eyes. This was the one who had been first to step up to the mother's side, and Nanook remembered the strength of her ire. She considered backpedalling before the sister could reach her, but she simply swished her tail through the waters and stayed.

Nanook fixed her eyes as the snow-clad woman seemed to study her in turn - a shrewd glance the Apaata herself had offered many times to many others, but had rarely received. But the tension of the moment simmered out, for the stream, and not her, seemed to be the white woman's ultimate destination.

Any right way to go about the silence slipped the Apaata's mind. In other times, she would have just remained quiet until the other left - but here she found herself fishing for words. There were surely a great number of smooth and easy ways to break the introduction, but Nanook was no ambassador, and words came just as difficult as ever. Perhaps even more.

So she watched the stranger drink, until she finally worked the courage to say something, regardless of how meagre or dead-end the words would prove. "You're... Siarut's sister?"  She edged in a tight and soft-spoken voice. If the woman had offered a moniker before, Nanook couldn't remember what it was. She had been too preoccupied then.