Piqpagi

~We Met In The Summertime~

I first met the Eskimo Princess boy called Nanuq in the summer when I came to Alaska all the way from France...

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I was happy to get far away from the city and my mother's insanity but being sent on a "study expedition" with my delusional cousin Baptíst all the way to some godforsaken frozen wasteland full of crazy prospectors and uneducated people who live like cavemen in iceboxes was not my idea of peace.

This bloody ship stenches of dead fish and dirty old seamen so high up satan's asshole it warps the boundaries of hell and Earth.

I mostly stay in my cabin because of the tossing of the boat making me so ill I lose both my lunch and my tea but also I don't want to look outside...I just want to pretend this all isn't happening.

I've been looking through all my photography portfolios and I just can't seem to feel the magic anymore!

Mother says taking pictures is not real art and as much as I hate her I have to admit it hurts me.

My cousin bless his soul says that this place is the most inspiring place on earth

"it's a paradise of the soul Barnabas!"

He tells me over and over again and I just can't seem to understand him.

He first came to that frozen dump to by an oil mine but he wrote us back saying he was a changed man, that he dropped it all and sold everything he owned and donated all of his millions to the poor and nature parks in Alaska.

He only came back to Paris to sign his divorce papers and was practically singing of the place and how much he wished to be back.

He's insane but if anything at least this damn trip might satisfy my curiosity as to what the hell makes him love the iceberg so damn much.

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Baptíst wakes me with a smile and a skip in his step saying that we have arrived.

He helps me load my luggage, and we load up into the ride he has set up.

It's summer but the air is chilly and slightly damp and I slipped on the pebbly beach sending me falling onto my face with a crunch.

And as we ride in some coal miners truck I try to hold Baptíst's handkerchief to my bloody nose but the ride is so bumpy I have to wrap my arm around the back of the seat as a last-ditch effort to stop my head from slamming into the ceiling.

It's 13 hours before we reach the town of Black Beach and I'm exhausted but Baptíst is like a child on Christmas he even kisses the ground when we get out of the truck.

As I look around I don't see a town I see a bunch of wood shacks surrounded by crates and barrels with filthy damp streets crowded with people and men pulling sleds overflowing and spilling over the sides with wood and dead animals and even a few injured men and...children.

There's also a strange man drinking a whole bottle of moonshine singing in gibberish waving his shoe in the air outside of a rundown looking Church where a nun is standing outside with a sour face as she lights a smoke.

Ah, yes...the paradise of the soul! Indeed!

I'm suddenly interrupted out of my mind by my cousin laughing at me with a knowing grin.

"Trust me I felt the same when I first came!"

"Then why the hell are we here Baptíst! I smell like fish and old man sweat and I think my nose is broken!"

He just keeps smiling the bastard!

But then he takes my hand and leads me off the bed and breakfast where he drops off our luggage with some Russian girl he knows by name and he leads me off to a man with a sled and makes me sit in it.

I feel my heart leap out of my throat when a bunch of dogs is tied to the sled and we take off.

My cousin is sitting behind me and covers my eyes telling me I'm going be amazed and to get my camera ready.

I don't get my camera because I don't see what about this place is camera-ready but I let him cover my eyes.

After a while, I almost fall asleep because unlike the truck the sled is smooth but soon the sled stops and with Baptíst's hands over my eyes, I get up out of the sled.

Then he takes away his hands and as much as I can't believe it...I'm...completely amazed at what I see and I wish I did get my camera ready after all.

I can't explain it...

The air took my breath away

The mountains painted the sky

The flowers were like swaying rainbows

The most beautiful place I've ever seen

I wanted to know the name of every flower

And a moose walked through the glean without being afraid at all

I got such a close shot and then to my shock, the moose licked the camera and I fell back

Like a child seeing the world all over again

Baptíst laughs again and helps me up

"All the animals are that way here!"

"Really!"

"Yes! In fact, I pet a real wolf once!"

I don't know what to say, my passion for photography has risen from the ashes.

I feel like a child in a candy store running around taking photos of everything!

The swarms of hummingbirds and bright flowers! The mother deer and her fowl not minding my preference just resting eating clovers with the fowl sneezing when a butterfly lands on his nose.

I'm there for hours and then suddenly I hear Baptíst call me again.

"I have something more to show you!"

After what I've seen I can't wait

"What?"

"Come this way Barnabas I want you to meet the Eskimo princess boy I told you about!"

I'm confused because when he first told me of this I took it as a strange joke.

But I have no time to ask anything as he leads me off to a riverbank and then he yells something I don't understand off into a field.

Then out of a field of tall flowers, a figure approaches.

He's not like what I pictured... half-naked savages with dirty hair and shaking spears or some strange transvestite with feathers in his hair.

He's tall with cool skin and rosy cheeks and plump red lips and big brown eyes.

His clothes are decorated with little baby seal beads and coloured as bright as the flowers in the fields making him look like a beautiful flower himself.

He has tattoos on his face but they're not ugly there like a crown and jewels adorning his shining skin.

Those brown eyes are so beautiful

And so...kind looking

To me, his eyes are the type of brown that is like a bar of sweet chocolate.

The type of chocolate that melts at the slightest bit of the heat from love, or happiness.

And when those melancholy chocolate eyes look into my own they can see into the very core of my heart! That's something no one else can do!

Such a sweet brown-eyed boy!

Beautiful Eskimo boy!

And I'm stuck staring at him like a lost fool when I drop my camera.