Hoshor Plains allotment

she listened. it was much the same knowledge that ice mother had shared with her the rare moments she would speak up and ask, although dutch was warm in his telling, and more open. he said that it was sacred, and sulukinak agreed with that part and not with the rest.

my mother did not trust. she would make trades with the hungry men that the ice brought to us. this was shared with as much innocence as her questions. it did not feel wrong to sulukinak. it was how, she said, she was given her children. how her conclave came to be.

she had wanted a husband when she was my age, but that no man would look her way. that as two-spirit she watched for women on the ice, and saw none. this was of no great surprise; women often lived protected by fathers, brothers, husbands. men were the sort that roamed.

the only woman to ever heed my mother was -- beneath the ice. the spirit in the everdark. this name sulukinak could not share.

she was snared by her knowledge and did not notice the effect of dutch's medicine.