Duskfire Glacier moon song

She did not feel the young eyes upon her; Nanook remained fixed on the many more who watched her from above. They were her guidance, her friends, arranging themselves in familiar form, bearing names she recounted as well as her family's own. Before the stars, the sky shimmered with the faintest aurora, the palest green, nearly blending with the deep bruise of the night.

The faintest movement in her periphery returned her roving heart to earth, and weighed her back to the corporeal, to the ground beneath her toes, and to the whine of the young blood who settled on the ground, much too close. Her chest pricked with needles of heat, and she glanced in the den's direction with instinctive worry, expecting to see the white mother pull through the thin line of trees, jaws agape and ready to tear - yet only darkness met her.

So she turned back to the dusky girl, wanting to scoop the child up to set her back in the den before her mother could even notice the cool spot at her side, while at the same time... not. Nanook had watched her siblings from a distance a great many times, but had never dared to venture so close. Even now, the darkness obscured most of the young girl's colours from sight. It was perhaps safer for her to stay away, but it wasn't right, and Nanook ducked her head and kept her voice soft, glancing in the den direction once more. "What are you doing, sister?"

And truly, she could have asked herself the same thing.