(A fireside story by Mapak Tellapillak)
This is a tale from the lands behind the mountains, a place where one can be born and die and never know sand, or trees, or rain. It is the place of the Long Dark, but also of the Midnight Sun.
There lived a tribe that hunted the black seal. Only the bulls – never the cows or calfs, until one day Crixis, a young but terrible dragon arrived and demanded she be given fresh meat each day. The hunters of the tribe now killed bull and calf and cow alike, and it pained them because now there would be no seals left before the season was done... But if Crixis did not receive her meat she would swoop down and take a hunter, a sleigh-dog or a child for her meal and place their clean bones amidst the icicles of her cavern. The people of the tribe, in secret, gathered their belongings and in one trek moved elsewhere, where they hunted the white eider even if there were only few. Meanwhile, Crixis had followed and found them and once again, started dema