Snowforest Taiga you were laid in verse, living on a promised word

kanuux had chosen the march after all.

step by step. ridgeline to ridgeline.

the sea had been left behind him. salt and seal and the deep groan of ice. now only the press of soil beneath his paws, the clutch of trees, the chatter of birds he did not care for. he told himself this was the way of men who sought wives, who left the lodges and the smoke of the hearth.

taktu had followed. he should not have. sharadoii women had been spoken of, sharp with feathers and rites, yet his lodgebrother had turned his paws south. kanuux had thought him weaker for it, but the sight of him still pressed a quiet warmth into his chest.

his scars burned in the night air, twin rakes across his temple, the torn ring about his eye. the leopard seal had not killed him, though it might have. the ice had not claimed him, though many it did. and so he stood now in this valley, a man too large for the trees, too silent for the streams.

he thought of women he did not yet know. wives to fill the winter lodge, children to carry the names. he thought of the old way, the right way. his father’s words: a man without kin was a ghost.

icy eyes turned across the dark, catching the faint stir of movement; elk shifting in the grass, caribou hooves striking stone. food, hides, wealth. they would be driven, corralled, herded as he had done with the seal at the floes.

the wind curled sour brine against his nostrils. he did not speak. he rarely did. but in his silence there was weight enough.

kanuux of the big shoulders. kanuux of the long scars. he would find what he came for.