Firefly Glen Hushatahli

It was rare for young Mojag to be anywhere his mother wasn't, or his auntie wasn't, or generally alone in any sense, but he found himself this way now.

He had thought he had seen his father Inutsuk. He had the inkling that the man was leaving on a journey and had wanted to come along, except the man had left weeks ago; what Mojag chased as he drew further from the village of his mother, was a lingering dream.

In that dream Mojag had been running in a field of red grass. He was calling for his father to make it snow while chasing a gray cloud, but the cloud swept away from him. He had danced along after it; and when the dream ended Mojag felt compelled to keep on trying.

This was how he found himself beneath the village, in a place he had never seen before. It was very dark and twisted, green and black and enclosed in a way that frightened him. For now the namesake fireflies did not dance before his eye, and so Mojag saw only the dreary darkness of the woods.

He moved with a hunch to his body; he felt smaller here than on the mountain, and looked to every strange shape in the dark with apprehension rather than his usual enthusiasm.