Mattaq Eegeesiak here.  

Sorry I have not written in so long, but I continue to work long, hard hours at the factory where I have worked since my sister had gotten sick, and now, nearly three years after her passing to the other side, I continue to work there.

I work many hours so I don't have to think so much about Sikik or about how much I miss her.

I also have my dogs to tend to and to suppliment my income by fishing or hunting.  I have a very hard life.  It's all I know.

I have moved.  Still living here in Barrow, Alaska, but I have moved in with my best friend, Tualaq, and his family.  I sold the house where Sikik and I lived; too many painful memories of her.  

I still have some of Sikik's belongings, but I have them in a box, which I have shoved under the bed; can't look at them right now without crying or missing her.  Maybe one day, but not now.

The auroras lately have been very bright.  They've only gotten more so; sometimes the entire sky is filled with dancing, moving shapes of multicolored lights.  There has been a major storm on the sun; the result of that are the auroras, and lately they've been tinged wih red.

 I am most worried.  I don't like to see auroras when they turn red or magenta:  a red aurora means bad things.

There was a brilliant scarlet aurora just days before Sikik passed on to the spirit world.  Knew she was dying; the aurora just confirmed it.  It upset me.

Ever since, I fear red auroras.

I don't hear from Jenna Doucet who lives in Anchorage:  guess she is busy with her family.  Last I knew they had the two little boys and she was pregnant.  I am sure she must have had her third child by now.  Don't even know if it is a boy or a girl.  She named one of her little boys after me.  Hopefully she named her daughter after Sikik if the baby was a girl.  That way, Sikik's memory will live on, just in somebody else's child.

At times I wish I had a girlfriend, or at least a lady companion, to talk to.  I had Sikik, and she was my best friend.  Now I'm all alone, with nobody but my dogs to keep me company.  And, of course, my friend Tualaq and his family, who were so kind to take me in when I needed a place to stay.

Jenna Doucet was really close to Sikik.  I wonder if she misses her as much as I do.  That was how I met her.  She is part Inuk, too, on her mother's side.  She looks Inuk with her slight build, silken black hair, ruddy skin, and slanted eyes.  (She is also part German; her dad was German.)

Jenna is also mute.  She can hear just fine; she just can't talk.  She's been this way since she was born.

Anyway, it is very cold here.  Temperatures in the negative teens for highs, in the negative twenties (or even thirties) at night.  Not fit for man or beast.  If anybody is outside with exposed skin, they will become badly frostbitten within minutes.

Of course, we Inuk are  used to harsh conditions.  It's in our blood.  Nothing stops us, not even brutal cold with winds screaming at forty to fifty miles and hour, which only makes things seem even more colder than what it actually is.  

I get  uncomfortably hot when the temperature reaches sixty above.  I can't handle the heat.

Well, I have to get ready to exercise the dogs, so I must tarry.  I will write in here again; hopefully I won't wait two YEARS to do so!  I am very bad at writing; Sikik was the writer, NOT me.  Take care, and may the Great Spirit bless and watch out over you!

~Mattaq.