Redtail Rise xv makittuk

Once everything was settled at the Watch the boy felt the urge to explore again, this time to the neighboring valley instead of the distant one; he wanted to check out the coast primarily and yet found himself ranging across a giant crevasse in the earth and around the fringe of forest that was the tangled maze—thinking fondly of the elder woman he had met.

Stjornuati had made his decision: Kigipigak would not venture back to the western valley until a later date. He was only welcome to travel locally for a while, and so Kigipigak would make the most of that.

Rather than venture in to the maze to get lost all over again, Kigipigak moved beyond it to where the forest tapered in to cliff. Curious about this space, as he thought of Njord and the cliffs the boy said he had migrated to, Kigipigak thought this could be the place.

Kigipigak climbed for a few hours and as the light began to leech away from him he realized, admittedly quite late, that the rise was not home to anyone. He recalled, as the purple sky lost its lustre, that Rosalyn had been nervous of strangers in this area—something about a rival tribe. The boy sniffed the air as he journeyed and remained cautious.