Moonspear aippaapak ⋰

"it is our way. my way, to make good skins that are soft. if many are made, we give them in trade for things we do not have. aya, see," moonwoman went on, lapsing back into her own words, for she wished her grandchildren to count the siqniq tongue also among those they spoke, "we can trade the skin of deer for the fat of seals. or maybe we give fish from our lake for the teeth of sea animals."

she smiled wrly. "one who travels many places, to forest, to sea, to lake, to river, to snow, to mountain; that one is called tayanax. trader." among her people, it had been a thing only a man might do, a thing only a man might wish to do. few young women wished to leave the protection of their mothers and their villages to face death and hard hunger in their trading forays.

but those men who traveled brought something that was not whalebone nor seal teeth, was not the delicate bones of tiny jeweled birds whom kukutux could not believe existed. they brought stories, and through these stories were every wolf in that village transported upon the journeys of these traders.

perhaps a child of hers might wish this. perhaps a grandchild.