Duskfire Glacier [M] a place for your head

was this how it was done?
was this how nukilik had made her offerings? found the men lost in the long dark, promised meat in one form or another; warmth, a distraction from difficult days? sulukinak did not know, but in these moments she felt closer to her mother than ever before.

the man was not about to ignore the opportunity. was that a reflection upon him? was it more about her, having offered herself in this way to a stranger? questions spiraled through her mind as white noise. none of this mattered. she would get what wad wanted—he would not sleep alone, either.

but she wasn't ready for how he seemed to rush against her. his bulk was like a molten flow, and sulukinak was swept up in the momentum; his touch sparked a new feeling in her body and she could not tell if it was good, bad, ugly—or something else entirely.

before, sulukinak had been a student to her mother's madness; to her uncle's teaching—and sulukinak put herself back in to that curious, detached state as she was swallowed up, first by the glacier ice, next by the hunter man at her flank.