Kintla Flatlands Manifest destiny

Not only was she aware of his home but she recently visited; led by Scarab—or perhaps the other way around—she was brought there to the plateau. Part of him wanted to ask about Scarab, Guardian of the Crab, and how they came to know one another; what brought them together, how did the child find her after the rage inflicted on them by the coast? Although there were questions to be asked, he couldn’t verbally form any of them. Truthfully, for as attentive as he knew he should be in regards to a former packmate, Aningan couldn’t help but want to know more about her instead. She was a piece to his past, indirectly—she held answers that he sought and provided him with some link to his father, aside from the tales of an uppik far from home.

He wanted to learn more about him.

The elder man was something akin to a father to the woman; the sharing of this information made him smile, happy to now know someone with more information on the man and, better yet, someone that he could perhaps view as a sister—the word shot sorrow though his veins, missing Tunerk and Sos now more than ever. “It would be nice to have a najak again,” he said, doing his best to omit the longing from his voice. He hoped his true siblings were well, wherever they were.

Aningan fell silent as he listened to her description, hanging onto every word. Smart, stern, and kind—he found himself hoping to claim that description as his own someday. A man capable of giving others strength, of providing for them when they could not for themselves; that was the type of man that he wanted to be, to fill his father’s footsteps. But this he did not say aloud, wanting to hear more about Kove instead—but her words shifted into a question, discontinuing the former topic.

“Anânak, ajâtsuk, ningaugâtsuk—” he paused, flashed a sheepish smile, and continued: “My mother and her family lived on a glacier in the north. They… I think they liked my nukagek—siblings—better than me. I didn’t want to be alone and then I met the uppik and she led me away from the glacier.” He thought back on the memory of his first meeting with the uppik fondly, easily recalling just how eager he was to have someone’s attention. “Eventually we met Caiaphas and she brought me to the coast, where Rusalka used to be,” he explained, a twinge to his voice at the mention of the wayward siren. “It’s nice here.” He couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.