Qeya River anilaaktuk

It was a great transgression they had perpetrated against Tulimaq, one which had not fully settled for Tulukiri's spirit; she felt she had wronged the wrong person, but was made to follow Kigipigak because of his choice.

She was young. She had been easily swayed away from the war-effort by her tutor, but to see the fallout - the battle between the men, the rising of the warriors against their leader - it was too much for her.

Yet here she was, following. Making her patrols, feeding them both with what little she could catch in this foreign place. It was not so bad to be on the road again. It felt very much like the early days of the war-effort, while Tulimaq collected warriors from different tribes. In this case they ran away from the danger and splintered apart.

When they made their beds that night, Tulukiri wondered what could have drawn Kigipigak to such a moment. Why had he fought against the orders of his superior? How had she let herself be swayed away from her dream of being a warrior, so easily? But she did not question these things as they settled; instead, her mind was upon their destination: Natigvik.

Tell me about the village, she asked of her tutor, and soon enough the man was speaking. He did love to talk; that was only thing Tulukiri had to acclimatize herself to. Nobody in her home village was as animate as Kigipigak when it came to story-telling, and she came to enjoy his lessons.

This time, as she clung to aspects of his tale - of the village, and his family, and all the bounty of the river - she found it harder and harder to focus, until she was deeply asleep.

---

They crossed the borders without pause. It was hard for Tulukiri to do this, too; she found the same scents, and they were all foreign to her, and so she hung back a wolf-length or three while Kigipigak plunged ahead. He clearly owned this place or at the very least, was comfortable here.

She recalled when Tulimaq had sought him out. The secret meeting in the night - the other recruits further afield by an hour or so, but Tulukiri waiting in the dark for word of the general's return. It felt different, now. It felt almost like she were an invader set to pillage, and the pitch of her blood in her veins only exacerbated that.

A stranger came, then. They moved with finesse across the terrain — flashing teeth, aiming for her. Tulukiri was trained well by many warriors, but she was not fleet-footed enough to be there to stop what came next.