Gilded Bay immulivik ⪤

Her and Shikoba, the only two names that Sakhmet had been able to pull.

She felt odd to know she had been right. Flattered, maybe. Yet it she was faced with options and decisions. Things to be considered from so many sides!

You told me to think hard upon my wants. She drifted a bit further into the cold touch of the water. As if it might somehow place her back in the taiga, where she had felt as solid as winter ice. Where she had grown a back bone and not been so terribly soft.

Was it terrible to be soft?

I think the truth is, I don't know. Are my wishes wants? Are they what I need? She did not grow harsh upon herself, or in tone even. She only considered these things. Vocalized them away from the village of Moonglow.

There is stability and family with you, with Moonglow. Hunters and circles. Growing boys and girls, futures to watch. Your daughter is engaged! My son is secondhunter. Shows of the growth that both of their children experienced just so freshly. More than she had been able to give as Issumatar. And I do not know if I'll have more next year to watch do the same. I do not know where I will be a year from now. When the world had cycled again through seasons that were kinder than winter — and she feared the harshness of this one already.

I think I have been scared of becoming nothing.

Like her brothers now gone, like a home lost to time and earth.

But settling into life isn't nothing, is it?