Oh, ever soft. “Aya, aya, aya.”

The river-flow was gentle.

“Aana, I have practiced your songs. ”

At the top of clear waters, a mirror into the world of all that was below the surface. And all that resided above. Rippling green spheres which bore into themselves, flecked with ground pebbles and striped by white lines where the river molded around stone. Nothing would compare, aya, to the emeralds of Nuiruk.

“They say I have your eyes. ”

That of the great moonwoman.
All at once, for only a second in Sedna’s order, there had been a great joy once. Then in the caribou band, only a curse. Shame, and forever guilt.
For He knew that day.
Yet she never knew how, no. Perhaps it should have been known when aana was first met. But now she did. Aya, she did now. She did now.

Moonwoman soul.

“Now I do not see me in my reflection.”

Nutuyikruk could only offer a small smile. Thawed flesh, picked from the claw and thrown into the water.

“It is only you.”

And her mother’s red fur, which she had gained from her father. Aiolos. Aiolos. “A price I pay for never coming to know you, aana, hm?” Grandfather. “Aata.”

“I heard real village girls learn their spirit names when they become women.” A name whispered at birth by one’s mother. But her mother had found goddess Sedna. “I will never know mine.”

She wished her grandma had given her one.

Nutuyikruk would never know. This, she knew. So much so that there was little pain to feel anymore. Only wonder and dreams of what might have been, even if what could be now was not so bad. No, not bad.

“Oh, aana.”

Did her family see her face now?
And all the ones she had never known?