He counted veins like naming constellations.
He did that once with his brother, playing cosmic dot-to-dot. It was the night the drowned men began to sing, when they found their father clawing at the ice, half-mad with cold. It was the winter so biting even the polar bear dogs burrowed under the ground. The night the full moon loomed overhead.
"Let's name that one Father," Tarrlok giggled, tracing some starry blob. His gloved hand pointed at the largest shape he could fathom, "And this should be us! Noatak and Tarrlok! Brothers larger-than-life!"
There were more. Vague shapes on vaguer skies. Wolf-Tail. Penguin. Mama. Large Tent. Small Tent. Sea Prune. Blubber.
Farther north, only the ice spoke. Drowned words. Unholy chorus. But the skies always wove the same tale. Father. Wolf-Tail. Sea Prune.
Noatak wondered how it was possible to look up one night and see a different sky. Only a leering full moon looked back. Or perhaps that was a cloud. Last night, the moon had just been a sliver.
A lone wolf shuddered near his feet. Noatak felt its heart beat, faster and faster and faster until his veins strained and his arteries coiled and his organs became less than a lung, a kidney, a brain, but instead constellations in the night sky.
Father. Small Tent. Blubber.
Noatak and Tarrlok.
He did that once with his brother, naming stars, the night the moon was so large it looked as if it could consume him.
Noatak let go of his hold over the wolf with a sickening crunch.
He wondered: when was the moon never full?