The green grass beneath my feet is warm under the bright sun. I can feel the sun upon my raven-black hair. A sweet and gentle breeze gently rustles the leaves of the large trees protruding from the earth near the edge of the rock face. I look over the edge of the cliff and see the glorious river that flows beneath. It glistens under the light of day with a brilliance unlike any other. The world is peaceful and wonderful, while at the same time having much movement and activity.
Suddenly, all of that peace and wonder is interrupted as my younger brother Aujaq shouts, "Think Fast Aklark!"
Along with this warning, Aujaq chucks one of the smaller salmon from his basket at me. I barely duck, and the fish flies above my head. As soon as it clears my head, I look over the edge of the cliff to watch the fish gruesomely make a rather large splash in the river below. At this moment, I turn to look at Aujaq's troublesome smirk with a stern, serious, yet frustrated face and yell, "What were you thinking!"
Abruptly, nearly all activity in the surrounding wilderness stops in curiosity to see what the commotion was all about. Deer, Elk, and Moose all stopped grazing upon the soil, and turned their heads in the direction of the noise nearby. Chipmunks and Squirrels quickly turned their heads in wonder and marveled at the scene unfolding before their eyes.
"I thought you would catch it! After all, your name means Brown Bear! You catch them so easily!" He retorts.
"That's in the river though! I don't catch fish with my hands or my jaws!" I yell back.
"Whatever. We only have like twelve more," he replies very sarcastically.
"But now I might have to go and catch more. We were responsible for catching enough for the week, and now we're short."
"It's not that big of a deal! You just need to relax!"
It's bigger than what you think.
I shake my head and sigh. Even with a problem like this, we keep walking home with baskets of fish on our shoulders. Fairly soon I see the glacier that is located next to our hut. I pick up the pace. Unfortunately, Aujaq kept with me. We climb down the side of a large hill, making sure each footing was placed carefully. One slip-up, and there could be great injuries. Once we reach the bottom of the large hill, we return to our fast pace, and once again, Aujaq keeps up.
Soon enough, we are upon the mighty glacier, and we carefully tread across the vast sheet of ice. About halfway across the glacier, there is a large cracking sound. I look down to see the transparent sheet of ice have a large crack running right in between my feet.
It's dangerously thin.
"Tread Carefully. The ice is thin here," I tell Aujaq.
We slowly amble along towards the rest of the tribe, sticking to blurrier parts of the surface. Almost to the path leading home, the ice is visibly thin, as the sheet beneath our feet becomes as clear as the stream we had fished from.
There's no way to avoid thin ice now.
Steps away from the path toward home, we hear what sounds like a clap of thunder, and suddenly, the ice disappears from underneath my feet, and I am falling. I can see the extreme shock on Aujaq's face for a split second before everything goes pitch black.