Moonsong Glacier say don’t go

The panther's fiery gaze followed the sweep of her paw and lingered there for a long moment. She wore strange medicine — he understood its purpose, but it wasn't something he'd encountered before. He lifted his eyes instead to the peak she'd indicated, trying to imagine what she'd described.

Small and young and injured, he thought to himself. The little cloud was quite the wonder.

"It is a mountain range," he replied. "It stretches like a hunting cat, each peak a bump on her spine. Some peaks are white all year, and others are green until winter. The peak where I was born wears pine needles fur — great lodgepole pines, Douglas firs, juniper trees. She is the soft breast of the living animal. We grew there until we could climb into the ever-winter ridges, where the rams leap across the bald faces of the range. On the spine, we leave our dens and sleep every night under the stars, just as soon as our pelts grow thick enough to keep us warm."

If he spoke of this place with such passion and tenderness, why then would he ever leave it?

It was the usual reasons, of course.

"But all the women on the spine are kin to me," he told her, and then, with a smile, "And besides — my legs had grown long. I wanted to use them."

He came as close as he dared, his nostrils flaring as he took in her scent.

"What about you?" he asked, his gaze intent — almost like a child asking for a bedtime story. "What place were you born? What people dwell there?"