She does not grow old; though she outlives her children, and their children's children, and eventually her own name, her body remain in the strength of her youth, her hair as dark as her mother's own. She is venerated for it, and feared, and eventually, when there are none remaining who do not remember the tale behind the story of her first great hunt, she sets out on a long journey, a trek that follows both the Great Mother and the curve of the coast to the south.

Years pass along the way, generations spent on foot crossing the steppes, in forested wood and sun-scorched grassland, relearning the taste of salt at each new coastline she encounters, before she turns and begins to retrace her route north to the great walls of ice that cap the world once more.