Duskfire Glacier There's coke in the Midas touch

anyone from IkKanattuk is welcome :)

Once, when she was still a child, she'd travelled north. Everyone knew what lay to the north: beyond the ice fields where the great nanuk roamed, farther north than the sun could even reach, this was where the world ended. It was here that the tundras and ice and the great arctic sea disappeared into an empty wasteland of cold so harsh, it burned where it touched your skin. Uki, a slight but spirited six-month-old at the time, had heard tales of lights that danced in the sky - the northerner's version of a rainbow. After seeing them, the saying hadn't compared; no rainbow could be so beautiful. 

The memory had lingered somewhere in her subconscious, on the fringes of her worries. For at the top of her list of concerns was obviously making it to the glacier - alongside making sure nanuk's family reached it one piece - rather than whether or not the place would feel like home. 

It was cooler here, as was to be expected when living on a glacier, and Uki still felt immensely relieved at dusk when she woke - for the lack of heat was the first thing she noticed every time she stirred. The tundrian had settled easily into the glacier, for it wasn't so different from the wild. Some nights she disappeared to hunt or explore, others she stuck around to patrol or dig caches. Founding a pack meant the waif wasn't usually short on work to do and it was this particular evening that she could be found on the Polaris Icefield.

She'd heard it mentioned in passing once or twice, by some wolf or another. As dusk fell, the slender shape of her could be seen winding its way from the den she'd dug(far enough from the others to feel comfortable, but not so far they couldn't find her), coat flashing silver in the moonlight like a beacon. The waif disappeared into the darkness, pale gaze flicking to and fro in search of the landmarks that would lead her to the field.

The plane was unmistakable once she'd found it, a ghostly expanse of snow against the black of the night sky - the only light that of the stars and moon. Tapeesa stopped, placing a single paw delicately into the snow and lifting out with care. A perfect imprint of her paw was left behind and a smile graced her fine features. The girl, who'd not seen snow since heading south, exhaled shakily - the closest she'd gotten to a laugh - and rolled herself destructively in the blanket of snow. She squirmed furiously, not unlike an excited puppy, until her pale pelt was powdered with the cold snow. When she came up it was in her ears, her eyes, it clung to her lashes, it was everywhere. She nearly missed the lights trying to scrub it from her face.

Uki turned suddenly, snow forgotten, her eyes caught by the sudden fluorescent colors. She froze in her stirred up snow pit, mouth falling open as the auroras danced across the sky. Pink, purple, green, blue, they danced on as the wild girl found her feet slowly, inching forward as if afraid they would disappear. They silhouetted her, a long shadow falling behind her on the snow and her pale fur lit with the same colors that fell on the snow.

And then, though it didn't quite make sense, the girl tipped back her head and let out a soft howl - one no one was likely to hear unless near the field. The lights died with the end of her lonely call; only the wind remained, howling back to her from far away. A strange ache settled under her breastbone and Uki found herself still turned to the sky, staring into the darkness as if she wished it could swallow her.