Ocean's Breath Plateau caught in the waves

a flashing smile, a radiant eye. "i was round with children when i made my meeting with aiolos. when i saw his face after the great star, we had both lost much. but from this moment, we have been together."

nostalgia glimmered upon her face; she found herself in the reveries of an old woman, thinking not only of sun man but the blackfox who had been killed, all the gentle ways in which he had loved her.

and then —

"there is something i have not said to anyone, seal-girl," kukutux murmured, for in this moment she found something behind the soft listening eyes that spoke of a power not yet realized.

"when i had nine moons, there was a seal hunter boy. his father and mother journeyed far to my village to speak with my father and my mother, who was head of the women's circle. they brought him. his mother did not think well of me. 'she is too thin, like bitter saltgrass!'" echoing the complaint brought warmth to moonwoman's face, not for what had been spoken, but for the time after. "in the time when she said this, and more, i felt a wounding inside me. but as our mothers talked, i looked at the boy and he looked at me. and i saw he was very kind."

a breath, the jadestone eyes lifting heavenward as if to search for the memories. "they left him there. it was the way of things. there was much distance between our villages, and much ice. for six moons he lived in my village. we were sent to stay in an ulaq of our own. in this way, you find if you are able to be married. if you are able to grow, two in one bond."

wistfulness; "i liked him very much, natchik." a blink. "and i would have married him as a true wife, for in those six moons he hunted well and was very kind." kukutux did not say more on this; how men had held power in the isle, how it was by their word that things were done. that punishing one's wife was the right of a husband. she had not brought those ways with her and her daughters would never know them.

she had loved a boy despite all this, and he had died beneath the falling rocks as had all of them, save kukutux, and only because her grandfather had sent her out onto the taiga to collect eggs that day.

"i say all these words to tell a story of love. i knew when aiolos came to me that we would belong to each other. but i remember the seal hunter boy even after all these many, many years. you will love more than once, seal. you will choose more than once."