Age | Ice

She picked it up. It was smooth. Dead, surely.

Her name was Nuna. She was twelve winters old, though winters had lost their meaning. Her tribe kept moving, always moving, following the bones of great beasts—woolly giants with tusks like crescent moons—and the ghosts of rivers frozen solid.

It lay in a crack of blue ice, a tiny, dark fleck no bigger than her smallest fingernail. She almost missed it. But something made her stop—perhaps a sliver of instinct passed down from ancestors who knew forests, not this glittering desert. Ice Age

Kumiq crouched, her breath a brief cloud. She took the seed and held it between her calloused palms. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she closed her eyes.

And so did she.

“Put it down,” said her grandmother, Kumiq. The old woman’s eyes were the color of storm clouds. “It’s only a memory.”

That night, as the aurora painted the sky in silent, cold flames, Nuna tucked the seed into a leather pouch against her heart. Outside their shelter of frozen hide and bone, the wind howled like a hungry wolf. The world was a white grave. She picked it up

But deep in the dark, pressed close to her warmth, the seed dreamed of rain.