Cassiopeia's View reflection

She knew the Moonspear, with its great scar, but a true mountaineer must know her mountains outside of a village’s territory. Her people had been nomadic, traversing the mountains to avoid rockfalls in former camps, to follow the prey to where it was thickest.

Tullik could remember her father, his face weathered by hardship, as he taught her and her sister about the mountain.

It is harsh, he had said, even cruel. But this is home. Home does not change.

Perhaps that was it. Home had changed, and Tullik was on uneven ground. 

She came over the peaks on steady feet, her body adapted to the winding goat paths and sheer slopes. She moved as a great cat, leaping from edge to edge, pressing her shoulder to the mountain when her height grew too high and her stomach swooped.

In the end, she was rewarded by the sight of a distant great water, the view of a hawk as she stared out over the world beneath her feet. Tullik closed her eyes, breathing out a soft sigh that clouded from her nose. This place, this felt important.

She liked it here, she decided.