Firefly Glen No matter how your heart is grieving

Late into the night, Nutuyikruk ran.

Her tail had brushed over @Tautukpik's nose.
Whether he joined her or not, whether he had even stirred at her touch—well, it was too late to have stopped her now. The wind blew in triumphant howls, its icy fingers whipping through her fur, blurring her vision.

She could hardly see over the spin of her own fur and tail, which lashed and whipped about her face like a creature possessed. Her breath came in ragged gasps, each one a small, desperate fire in the expanse. Shaken in her jaw, she did not stop running until she was covered by wild grass and shrouded in the inky cloak of nightfall. Owls croaked and screeched, their voices a cacophony of eerie lamentations. She could not see, but she could feel the darkness pressing in on all sides.

She just kept going, and it was all she knew to do. Each step was a defiance against the encroaching nigh. She had to find her aapa. She had to find her aapa. Somewhere, if she went far enough, she was sure she would find her daddy. But the night kept growing longer. Darker. Colder. Her once proud form, now a tuck of fur and flesh, was dragged down with every step. The crows groaned in wicked laughter, their mocking cries echoing in her ears. She wound in circles, her own shadow a relentless pursuer that crashed her to the ground.

The trees towered above her with waving antlers for arms, their branches like skeletal fingers reaching down to ensnare her. The willows whispered echoes of despair, their voices merging with the wind in a mournful symphony. The ground beneath her was unforgiving, a cold, hard reminder that she was no longer home. It never felt like home without her daddy. The night was a living entity, a vast, breathing beast that watched her with a thousand unseen eyes.

Her thoughts were fragments, disjointed and fleeting, like snowflakes in a storm. She saw her daddy's face, a comforting beacon amidst the chaos, and she clung to that image with all her might. But the cold was relentless, a creeping frost that seeped into her bones. Her senses ran rampant. The wind whispered cruelly in her ears, and Nutuyikruk cried out beyond it. "AAPA!?"

Farther, deeper into the wilderness, she moved, her neck slowly swiveling, eyes wide and vigilant. Frightened by many things, yet none enough to deter her from her tireless walk onward. A curdling cry once more, a raw, desperate plea into the vast silence. All she wanted was to see him. She just wanted to see him again. "AAPA?!"

Forward, forward, she trudged, farther and more lost with each step, walking in the only direction where she had last caught a whiff of her aapa's scent. The night air was thick with the smell of wild grass and muck, but no trace of him. She would fall silent often, sinking into the quiet despair, then rise again, muttering trembling reassurances to herself. Hoping to keep any adults far, far away. Feeble, lying confidence filled her words, because if she kept walking, it would get better. It had to get better. Her voice shook and shivered, breaking the stillness. "Aapa?" Lost. Lost. Lost. Her eyes stung from burning tears, a twisting belly. Stained fur. "Aabbaaaa?"

Her cries grew weaker, the syllables stretched thin by the wind and cold. Each whisper became more diluted, more quiet. Hiccupping between attempts of hidden weep. "Aba-aaaba. Aaabaaa?" She questioned the emptiness around her, her voice a soft, pleading echo that found its way back to her ears. When would he come out of time out? When would he come? The questions circled in her mind, heavy with confusion and sorrow. Why would Aaka punish him for so long? She wouldn't do that. He could come out now, didn't he know? Didn't he know? "Aaba.."

After professing many great and jumbled apologies for ending their game of seeks earlier in the day, Tauktukpik had nested very close to both of his sisters. He had been the bridge between them — listening as Akmaaksi drifted in to a whistling snore, and waiting expectantly for the same from Nutuyikruk; except, that did not happen. Late in the evening as he had begun to drowse himself, he felt the shift of a body and woke with a start. But he did not see his sister. He did not see the sleeping body of one, or the running of the other. He did not even see their mother who had nested around them, loosely.

He saw a shape at the mouth of the ulaq, and rose to meet it. As he stood there in the syrup-thick darkness of the witching hour, Tautukpik heard a voice upon the wind: Little Brother, where has the lynx gone? Prompted by this pressure, this absence he wasn't entirely alert to, Tautukpik looked over his shoulder and saw the sleeping place of Nutuyikruk was empty. A glimmering trail flowed from the ulaq out in to the dark — a faint and shifting magenta-to-green.

Aaka had told him to behave earlier in the day. She had said he would be in trouble if he did not obey. This tugging leash of his mother's rule now warred with a deeply internalized protectiveness over his sisters. Aapa wasn't here and he knew Nutuyikruk had gone to find him — but what if she got lost too? What if she never came back?

A tiny whine caught in Tautukpik's throat as he teetered between these vastly different, equally powerful desires to make his aaka happy, keep his sister close, and his own desire for his aapa. Tautukpik stared after the tendril of light that only he could see, feeling a brisk wind catch upon his cheeks and noticing only in that moment that he was frozen, unable to choose one thing or the other.

Nutuyikruk was on her own.