Phoenix Maplewood itiqsaqigniq

north of the glacier and bracken, following the sea until it spidered between sheets of ice, and further on again, until there were many days between herself and the saatsine. so far that she did not know the scents that crossed her path; so far that the birds she spied winging overhead were new to her. the sting of winter was meaningless here; but this was the most familiar, and this is what sulukinak chased.
a week of travel brought her to this place between the sea ice and the borderland of unknowable wilderness.

the time she spent there, the things she did, she held close to her heart; and when she finally felt the pull south again it wasn't because of winter's easing, for there had been no real shift in the weather and no indication by anything alive to tell her, go home, but she knew to turn back, and the journey was much more swift the second time.

winter clung to the shadow as she flowed across crystaline beaches with their frozen sand, or crossed among pines laden with snow, or fjorded the splintering ice sheets — all, everywhere, white upon white, with a haze of flakes falling even as sulukinak journeyed to the cusp of the teekon.
as she found the brackenwood again, the valley suffused with another sunset, and then the moraine — she knew where she was, and she did not turn immediately for the lands of her uncle.

a feral quality had possessed her — she thought nothing of the caribou people for now, seeking something even she could not name.