Ankyra Sound piyugaktuk

She was not hurt, she was not upset, there was no betrayal in her hear for the words he spoke.

He had, in her eyes, done what he needed to do. He had looked and that was what mattered. He had continued to live a life without her, not hindered by her emotional burdens — that she had now shed before him.

I'm here. She breathed into the icy space between them. Loathed the space that was between them. Never so badly had she wished to melt into another.

I don't...I don't care if you gave up, Kigipigak — I don't want to give up, though. I want...I want to just stay with you. I don't need to build something, I just...want your company.

And maybe that was why she had ever attempted to build Blacktail, to keep the company of those she needed, to make something more for them than herself.

Yet presented before Kigipigak, she had never felt the need to be anything more than herself.