Like snakes of iridescent white mirrored into the sky.
He waited, his sealskin parka bundled around his waist in the warm air of summer.
Spear in hand poised above the breathing hole he waited, hour after hour he waited his breath
Streaming from his nostrils in long even clouds into the cool air.
The seal were not as easy a pray as they used to be, nothing was as plentiful as it used to be.
The air it self hung heavier .The ice grew thinner and the winters shorter with each passing year.
White man said it was Ozone
Tonk nar says it is white man.
But he says it under his breath
In long even puffs of condensed carbon dioxide he says it, fearful even now
Out here on the ice flows
But Tonk nar had learned one was never alone anymore
Jets flew overhead Russian and American con trails cross above the land that was once Tonk Nars.
The people who poison the north poison the people
The are dog children and not of the land
Tonk Nar knew the past of his people was a foundation, on which the present road was carved,
To take them into the future.
Long ago the People were as one alone with the land and living with it as it was meant to be.
The legends say the Elders came to this place and birthed the people out of joy
To live with the land to hunt and eat and to see the land
The Inuit were to keep a bond with the land so that they could return to the elders and a way of ice and snow, born out of still pureness and the Inuit were to spread across the ice fields
Holding them awaiting the return of the elders
What if the elders came now?
Tonk Nar would be ashamed to face them in this cold bleak place
That was once the crystalline pure palace of the gods.
One day it was said the ice would thin the lands would warm and then the world would crack
Revealing the way to the gods.
Tonk Nar waited
He waited poised over his life with a spear in hand, waiting with even breaths
Flowing out in puffy clouds of condensed carbon dioxide
The taking in of the planet and the giving out of the planet,
This ever present exchanging of the most elemental forces in the universe
The only motion for a thousand miles, other than the shimmering sun streaks like snakes over the ice.
Beneath the ice something all together different waited…
They came here tens of thousands of years ago and planted the seeds of humanity,
They watched it grow and evolve into something splendid
And the gods walked with the People across the frozen ice of the land
When the people were wise and no longer children
Gods went to sleep
Entrusting the land to the people.
But the People were restless and moved ever further,
Ever changing like a melting ice flow they diluted the blood of the gods and crossed the land
Becoming impure weaker and weaker
They came to depend on the machines they would build and grew weaker and weaker still.
This weakened the land and made it sick.
Now the people waited for the gods to return and heal the land.
They waited with slow even breaths hanging in the chilled air.
The stories vary and names change but all the people know the songs,
All the people know the path but sadly most do not adhere and become sick and shallow
Like the ice flows.
Broken out of his reverie by the sudden spouting of water from the air hole
Tonk Nar jabs his spear into the hole as mightily as he can, down it goes,
to bite into the smooth flesh hooking deep as he pulls back twisting the seal up onto the ice
Tonk Nar wrestles it around
and drives his blade into it and up ,tearing through the brain from the opened throat and sinus cavity,
killing the animal as quickly as he can.
As he rolls off the carcass pulling the knife down with him in an expert motion the animal is gutted
He begins to work.
He must work fast, for now days the bears will be more than curious.
Now the great white polar bears would kill him for the seal,
Now the land is sick there is less food for the great white bears.
Now the People must steal the food from the land.
Tonk Nar thinks such thoughts as he chews the warm liver of the seal,
Carving out its organs and flesh.
The seal’s body heat is lost
in long steaming clouds of condensed vapour pouring evenly into the chill air.
After packing the frozen meat and blubber
Tonk Nar begins the trek back to his camp at the shore of the flow.
Soon it would break and he would be on the open sea ,soon he would use his boat to hunt .
He looked back at the bright red stains on the ice shimmering with inrridesence streaks of sunlight
dancing across the pure whitescape of light.
With a thunderous heave and a bellowing crack Tonk Nar falls to his knees.
The echo shatters the sky and the world begins to tremble.
He clutches to gain his feet and is shaken down again,
the ice is vibrating beneath him as he tries desperately to run from the developing cracks.
They tear like fingers across the ice,
they rip and heave up mountains of ice sending great splashes of water into the sky.
Huge shards of ice splinter with a horrific sound and crash around him.
He has never known such power and noise
It deafens him and repeatedly sends him sprawling as it relentlessly rips across the land.
Tearing the fabric of life itself .
Tonk Nar only realizes it has stopped when the echoes fade and he regains his feet ,
panting panicked and sweating he stands there ,his breath comes in ragged puffs of condensed
As in a dream
he is spellbound by the open water,
a perfect circle of water with fingers torn through the ice and piled high on the edge of the flow
it begins to undulate as a gigantic bubble forming blackness in its centre.
Something is rising something bigger than Tonk Nar had even imagined .
Never in his life had Tonk Nar known fear,
now he stood frozen
as he watched the huge metal thing rise slowly out of the frigid depths until it hovered above the water
a vast dark metal city revolving above the shadow of open desolate waters.
It made no sound and it was a big as a city
It would take Tonk nar 2 days to walk across its shadow.
A great metal circle with ten thousand lights shimmering across the ice in silent retribution
As it began to turn and hum deeply
Tonk fell to his knees and began to weep, as it lifted into the sky and soundlessly moved toward the horizon
to be lost from view in the shimmering light splayed across the ice.
His breath returning slowly until it was nothing but even puffs of carbon dioxide rising away.
He wept then poised on the brink of a different kind of blow hole
Tonk Nar watched the gods that had planted the People leave,
sickened they had to forsake the people for here the summers grew longer and the ice grew thinner
and it was too late to bring the people back to the land
The gods had left and there was no hope
Tonk Nar wept as he stood poised over the blowhole of his soul,
and he knew there was no redemption man had failed and the gods had been shamed.
Now the ice would be thinner and the winters shorter and the land was a place of a lost people
a people without a god
without hope.
Now Tonk Nar was only a puff of breathless smoke
drifting aimlessly across the ice like an iridescent snake of light .
Lifelessly hanging in solid collision with emotion
Man has ended his once divine communion with earth
Truly the age of man had begun.
