Ouroboros Spine There are things in life you learn

No need to apologize!

They settled into a silence that was neither stifling nor wholly comfortable. Sialuk took the opportunity to look around them at the moss-draped pine trees. She realized she was seated, but couldn't remember sitting. She was about to ask Sitri when she'd done it, but the male had his own question, one which was far more open than her own.

"It's warm," said Sialuk as she twisted the right corner of her dark lips up into a crooked grin. "But maybe not for you folk, huh? I come from Alaska, where it is bitter cold and dark this season." She wondered if Sitri'd ever travelled that far north, if he'd witnessed the great polar bears regally striding across ice floes or seen the savage dance of elephant seals, whether he'd ever spied a walrus in the misty morning... but she refrained, if only because memories of home made her stomach knot uncomfortably.