Stone Circle let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night

home —

the massive stones that dominated the heart of the stone circle stood ( or some of them did, anyway ); like crude and ragged altars. once kept clean, even beneath the thin dusting of snow, nanoq can see that they have not been tended to for some time. vines have crept over the rocks — especially the ones that have fallen flat against the earth — to reclaim what was theirs.

of course, imagining that he'd find more than bones stripped clean and left to bleach beneath the sun was a child's fantasy. he knew a few miles before he'd entered the territory that it was no longer occupied and hadn't been for some time.

there was the few, fading scent of stragglers travelling thru but nothing concrete. his family was not here; and had not been for some time ...but he could not imagine a scenario where his mother would abandon this place and thus was left to assume only the worst without any evidence to support or dispute it: that he was all that was left.

nanoq's shoulders tense beneath the soft snowfall; trying to plan out his next move. whether he would stay here ...his birthplace, the ruins of a family legacy that he alone carried — or if he would keep going. there was nothing left here but ghosts, but for this evening: they offered him soft and lonely comfort.