Taki was beautiful.
She was beautiful on the outside, with black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin against the white snow.
She was beautiful on the inside, with a warm heart beating steadily against the Arctic cold.
When she was born, her aaka, her mother, swaddled her in a blanket her aakaaluk, her grandmother, sewed for her.
The blanket was red, the color of the sky over Point Hope at dusk, just before the night sky blanketed the people in frozen darkness.
Across the blanket, stitched with bright yellow thread, were the three Arctic whales - the beluga, the bowhead, and the narwhal.
“With the beluga whale, I hope curiosity and music into the life of the baby,” she whispered, “for the beluga look quizzically at you and sing songs that cause us to call them the canaries of the sea.
With the bowhead whale, I hope mystery and endurance into the life of the baby, for the bowhead’s scientific name is Balaena mysticetus and that best describes it’s wonderful, mysterious ways. It lives longer than any creature on Earth, for it’s heart beats slow and strong in the cold, cold waters.
And with the narwhal whale, I hope compassion and empathy into the life of the baby, for the narwhal will place the tip of it’s own hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of another narwhal to ease it’s suffering and pain.”
There were two narwhal whales.
The long tooth of one of the narwhal's, the one that extends out from the whale's upper lip, the one that makes the whale look like the unicorn of the sea, was broken.
Taki's aakaaluk was an artist with needle and thread.
She sewed the hurt and despair of the wounded whale into it's face so you could feel it's pain just by looking at it.
In the face of the other whale she sewed compassion and hope as it placed it's own tooth into the hole of the broken tooth to assuage the pain of her friend.
Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
She was beautiful on the outside, with black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin against the white snow.
She was beautiful on the inside, with a warm heart beating steadily against the Arctic cold.
When she was born, her aaka, her mother, swaddled her in a blanket her aakaaluk, her grandmother, sewed for her.
The blanket was red, the color of the sky over Point Hope at dusk, just before the night sky blanketed the people in frozen darkness.
Across the blanket, stitched with bright yellow thread, were the three Arctic whales - the beluga, the bowhead, and the narwhal.
“With the beluga whale, I hope curiosity and music into the life of the baby,” she whispered, “for the beluga look quizzically at you and sing songs that cause us to call them the canaries of the sea.
With the bowhead whale, I hope mystery and endurance into the life of the baby, for the bowhead’s scientific name is Balaena mysticetus and that best describes it’s wonderful, mysterious ways. It lives longer than any creature on Earth, for it’s heart beats slow and strong in the cold, cold waters.
And with the narwhal whale, I hope compassion and empathy into the life of the baby, for the narwhal will place the tip of it’s own hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of another narwhal to ease it’s suffering and pain.”
There were two narwhal whales.
The long tooth of one of the narwhal's, the one that extends out from the whale's upper lip, the one that makes the whale look like the unicorn of the sea, was broken.
Taki's aakaaluk was an artist with needle and thread.
She sewed the hurt and despair of the wounded whale into it's face so you could feel it's pain just by looking at it.
In the face of the other whale she sewed compassion and hope as it placed it's own tooth into the hole of the broken tooth to assuage the pain of her friend.
Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
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