Whitebark Stream look, this comes as no surprise.

companionable silence etched between them; or at least, this was sobeille's imagining.

her mind was at some distant junction in the future.

eyjolfurs. dahomey. rivaini.

surnames of bygone houses; ghosts whose faces were mirrored in her own. here she was, alive among them. breathing life into a legacy they had no way of knowing they aided in constructing:

because she could not say with great certainty that her grandmaman's surnames did not come from men, sobeille composed her own.

solique.

her yellow gaze slid back to yura, noting the shift in expression and the tentative step back. she remained unmoving - if sivaak had taught her anything at all, it was that things were simply what they were. the strong were the strong, and the weak were the weak.

yura would either follow, or she would not. in this way, the caribou-hunter's bloodchilling pragmatism had seeped within her.

she lifted her chin, considering what culture yura must hail from to think lifting women to the sky came at great cost. her own maman's words rolled back to her: you be loved, girl. if you do anytin' else, if you go, den seek de company of women wherever you land.

such proclamation had moved sobeille, for it showed a coven of sisterhood that ran deeper than blood. men could not account for it, because they had no reckoning of it; this was the communal power of women alone.

dere is no cost. you come, you grow stronger. an' in your strengt' you be makin' your sisters stronger too.

it be women dat 'old up de world.