Moonsong Glacier inugagulliq ⋒

the path was winding and ate at her feet with deep cold. 

ice bear. this rose a wariness in her, for she remembered how adrastus had come back from a hunt with an evil spirit inside him. and yet she put this aside. valiant was a new man and she had not even seen his face. she would not place around his shoulders such expectations.

"perhaps you will share your words in this village of ariadne. perhaps you will trade them to us."

he asked after this name. cold breath of winterwind played with the ivory hairs along her shoulder. "another daughter to moonwoman," but she guarded vaire even in this. the young woman still grieved.

a halt was needed; hips ached with a deep spear of pain, and in acceptance, kukutux  exhaled and slowed, sitting to rest. there was no apology in kukutux for ageing, however. to reach the age of elders was a blessing, a gift from sedna. now her eyes found that of the arjun man.

"that mountain is moonspear," she began, lifting a small hard paw toward the peak where her life had truly begun. "it is where sialuk was born, my first daughter and head of the village there now. she did not have a year when a great star fell from the sky. it threw rocks from the mountain. it destroyed our ulax and killed many. even those who lived beneath the mountain were harmed."

to live such an experience twice had devastated kukutux in a new way. "so few of us came down from the mountain. i waited in the place where moonglow was to be built. i waited to know if my children had died. sialuk returned to me." she did not weep. mauruk too, now lived, even if she had sent him to the caribou people. even if his spirit had not been whole when he came back.

sialuk had returned.

"she helped me to build the village while we healed. we sang the first death songs for those who had died. the spirits of moonspear called always to sialuk, and now she has returned. now the mountain too, has found its better heart, in her. now i am grandmother. her village is strong. signs show themselves to her eyes, and animals answer sialuk. she has husband and wife, and knows many ways of speaking, for she has traveled far to gain much knowledge. you will meet her soon. she will come to see moonsong and her sister."

the second; "i found for another daughter a good husband, a strong man of great loyalty. they agreed to their marriage in moonglow and went out to build moontide, upon the place where i met her father for the first time." the plateau, and now kukutux gestued in that direction. "my sea-shining girl. moontide rose. some from moonspear and moonglow went to join them. she was to be mother in this same year." her gaze tightened and she tipped her scarred muzzle in some physical grief, unable to look at dutch for a moment. "sedna called to her spirit the day her sons were born. sialuk gave them milk. i built her death ulaq there."

"we do not say the names of those who have gone to the dancing lights."

but she could feel the name pulsing beneath her breastbone.

"and now there is moonsong." the third. and the dread of mothers for mothers had not abated, only lain quiet until the moments in which kukutux remembered she would be grandmother over again, and could think only of how the soil of moontide beneath her paws had felt that day.

"ariadne wishes to make her own way, as i did, as her sisters have done. she has built good trade between those she gathers. some of them i have known for a while. this land calls to those who come from ice, but she brings peace with her. already i see how calm it is."

and those were the stories.