A Flicker of Perpetual Stars

Unnusakkut (Good Afternoon)

Despite her embarrassment, Atiqtalik appeared at the fjord again the next day. At their meeting place. Though it would never truly convey the gratitude she had for his pearl, she had come with a gift; the flawless black and white feather of a snowy owl.

She paced along the shoreline, fingering the small gray pearl tucked inside her pocket. It was nearly dinner, the sky was darkening. She had to be home soon, for her mother and father, her brothers. She had waited all of the daylight hours for the boy to come, but still he wasn't here.

Hadn't he wanted to see her today?

She stopped at the boulder where he had sat just the day before. There was no trace of him, this boy who had brought her a gift. Nothing, no marks, no forgotten mitten or bootlace. Only pale-green lichens, enveloping the rock for centuries, perhaps. She settled on the rock face, pulling her knees up to her chest. A strong wind blew across the fjord. Dusk brought colder temperatures, yet she was grateful to see that that hadn't changed, despite the warmth of late. The cold deepened even further, and she tugged her furs closer about her. A sea eagle soared overhead: toward home, she surmised. She should be doing the same, but still she waited. Waited, in the small chance that the boy might appear.

Her sun had nearly dropped past the horizon. Slowly he descended, a red, globular inferno, suspended by nothing at all but will and wind. The sky was streaked with salmon pinks and oranges, and higher up, a watercolor spread of indigo and cobalt. The clouds were sparse yet dark with shadow. And the fjord: it was a crystalline mirror, reflecting and displaying the world above. Atiqtalik, her forehead creased and her thick, dark eyebrows furrowed, stared out at the rapidly changing landscape. A dark lock escaped her hood, waving frantically in the escalating breeze. The air was growing as cold and as sharp as slivers of glass.

Night was fast approaching. She knew if she didn't leave now, she wouldn't get home before dark. Wistfully, she hopped off the rock, giving her fjord a parting glance before turning to go.

She began her trek home, twirling the white feather between her fingers. 

She came the next day. And waited. He didn't appear. She came again the next day, and the next, and the next. Waiting. Each passing day gave her less hope that she would see the boy again. Yuka. Bright star. Boy with eyes of flickering stars.

She passed her time wondering over where he might have gone. What he might be doing. Who he was with. Had her thanks provoked him into keeping away? Her hug? 

Was it because she had called him 'friend'?

Her mind was an unending labyrinth of questions, and so she found ways to amuse her troubled mind; taking up one activity, or another, to avoid the tangle of her thoughts. Hunting. Sleeping. Sewing with her whalebone needle. 

Sometimes she threw pebbles into the dark breadth of the fjord, just to watch them as they battered the surface of the water, then as they sank into its lustrous depths. It was an oddly calming exercise.

Every day, it seemed to get warmer. She felt certain that the fjord was warming, too. Was it just her, or was it less icy than before? 

And the wind. The wind was bewitched with a warmth that chilled her to the bone. 

She longed to feel the flecks of blistering snow on her cheeks, for the wind to whip her hair and flush her face with cold. She longed to pull her coat up to her chin, taking comfort in the soft fur. But it was too warm. More often than not, her coat found itself unbuttoned for the lack of cold.