The Wall of Mist

Chapter 1

Today the early morning air was warm enough for the daughter of the village chief to wander the tundra with only a long-sleeved shirt. Her long raven colored hair danced as the gentle summer breeze flowed around her and through the open expanse of the land she strolled through.

She had to enjoy these warm days as there were not many these up north. In addition to that, there were very few of these exceptional days left in the year. Summer was coming to an end and soon the long night would be upon her village's people.

It was a joy for her to escape in the mornings for her wanderings. This habit of strolling through the frozen plains so early in the morning that no one, except her, was awake was in a sense her way of abandoning the norm of her people. Her people chose family before all else. She always chose herself.

The sun floated above the horizon as she continued to wander further away from the safety of her village. It would continue to sit there seemingly paused for a few more hours although it had been hanging there for a fair number of hours already.

The sun's permanent residence in the sky was the normality of summer. In late spring and early fall, the sun would set for a short number of hours. There was a long expanse of time in mid-summer where it did not lower past the horizon line. The opposite was also true for mid-winter as the sun never rose above the horizon.

As she approached a burbling stream her star-studded eye started to dart at the small flurry of white dust the whirled in the soft wind. There at that moment as she stood beside a life-giving force, the Long night had declared itself with the first snow of the year. It was sealed now, the warm days that allowed whale fishing were counted.

The Long Night wasn't feared but it did bring great sadness and made the inhospitable land they called home that much harder to survive in. It always took the blessing of their ancestors and the Great Bear in the sky for all the members of the village to survive the winter.

She did dread the Long Night every summer for truly she disliked seeing her father's people suffer. She also disliked how the Crow Master was rarely able to heal the ill. Most of the patients that she helped the Crow Master heal, or try too, had huge sores on there that would bleed for days. They would lose their teeth and be swept over with disastrous fevers. Most of them never made it to the end of the Long Night.

She watched the snow dance as she shoved her small hands into the pouch of her seal skin shirt. The move in elliptical patterns through the air as the wind pushes them along in front of her starry night eyes. She breathed in the fresh air of the unspoiled earth she was blessed to live upon.

The quiet was the most welcomed thing to the gifted daughter of the village chief. the tranquility that flooded her mind when she passed the last few huts of the village circle was her saving grace. Her father's saving grace was speaking, the Crow Master's was healing, and her sister's love. Hers she felt was much more refined.

She did not believe herself better than any other creature that lived in the same world but there had always been a feeling of difference and distance. That source had never been a secret to anyone in her village.

She continued to observe the ever-changing tundra. There was an immense beauty to her home land. It vastness could make you feel like the only creature in existence. I could make the world around her disappear and could swallow up all the emotions she felt. It was like being a move to a realm beyond.

That quiet was what gave her the life force she needed to survive every day she walks on the ground. She was born in the silence and that was rare for a child that had so much life with in her chest. Rare for a child that desired much more than silence although she never thought such a desire out loud to herself.