Men were sent off at the beginning of dusk, right before the sun kissed the horizon line. They were pushed out into the water in canoes made of ice dressed in their hunting attire with their weapon of choice in hand. Their spirits would rise as the sun fell and fight night spirits until the morning breaks.
Women were pushed off with the rise of the sun. Dressed in their wedding furs and covered with the blanket of their eldest they met the spirits in the gentle morning sun. Attached by the beauty of the coat and softened by the sentimentality of the baby's blanket the spirits would keep the woman company during the hours of light. This to ensure that by the time the sun fell and the darker spirits made face the woman would be ready to shut their eyes and take slumber.
As the tribe woman prepared her mother's coat, beating the fur to remove dust and ice and age, they retold stories to Lakal of her mother's wedding. She listened as they spoke in depth of her mother's beauty in her youth and how her father had hunted the most ferocious icebear for weeks in preparation for his proposal. Bruised and beaten he had presented the thick, white coat to her mother with a large, triumphant smile the moment she had stepped from her father's ship.
"Itano was never usually one to show off," Malarn recalled as she set the fur on the fire's left side, "but he went over the icecaps and back for Serne. The ceremony was grand. Your mother, used to be so small and petite that woman, - the damned coat nearly swallowed her whole. She was nothing but fur and long hair. And pearls. As much as the divers could find. You could say we all spoiled Serne to some extent. We were all so happy to have her."
Lakal was hungry for information concerning her mother. The past months, as she had grown closer to her mother in a way that transcended the normal mother-daughter relationship, Lakal had grown to understand that her mother was so much more than just her mother. She had been – still was – Serne of the Seas, and was just as separate a person from Lakal as Lakal was from her.
And despite the stories, despite the images bouncing around behind her eyes with each retelling, Lakal was blown away by her mother's image when she was carried out of the tent and rested into the crystal canoe settled on the water's edge.
Having been dead now for almost nine turns of the sun Serne, for her job as Lakal's mother had ended with her death, was still a thing of immense beauty. She was engulfed by her wedding coat and the thirty-seven pearls twisted in her hair, one for every winter she had survived, threw the sun's lights in many different directions.
Lakal was crying as she came forth and placed Twao's blanket across her lap. She carefully folded Serne's arms across the worn, frayed fabric just as the women had instructed. Using a canoe for balance she leaned and delivered a chaste kiss to her mother's forehead, just as she had done to Lakal before, and then retook her place by the water's edge. Three hands, from women she could not see but knew all the same, reached out to touch her back and shoulders for strength and support.
