Firefly Glen No matter how your heart is grieving

After professing many great and jumbled apologies for ending their game of seeks earlier in the day, Tauktukpik had nested very close to both of his sisters. He had been the bridge between them — listening as Akmaaksi drifted in to a whistling snore, and waiting expectantly for the same from Nutuyikruk; except, that did not happen. Late in the evening as he had begun to drowse himself, he felt the shift of a body and woke with a start. But he did not see his sister. He did not see the sleeping body of one, or the running of the other. He did not even see their mother who had nested around them, loosely.

He saw a shape at the mouth of the ulaq, and rose to meet it. As he stood there in the syrup-thick darkness of the witching hour, Tautukpik heard a voice upon the wind: Little Brother, where has the lynx gone? Prompted by this pressure, this absence he wasn't entirely alert to, Tautukpik looked over his shoulder and saw the sleeping place of Nutuyikruk was empty. A glimmering trail flowed from the ulaq out in to the dark — a faint and shifting magenta-to-green.

Aaka had told him to behave earlier in the day. She had said he would be in trouble if he did not obey. This tugging leash of his mother's rule now warred with a deeply internalized protectiveness over his sisters. Aapa wasn't here and he knew Nutuyikruk had gone to find him — but what if she got lost too? What if she never came back?

A tiny whine caught in Tautukpik's throat as he teetered between these vastly different, equally powerful desires to make his aaka happy, keep his sister close, and his own desire for his aapa. Tautukpik stared after the tendril of light that only he could see, feeling a brisk wind catch upon his cheeks and noticing only in that moment that he was frozen, unable to choose one thing or the other.

Nutuyikruk was on her own.