Lago

Friends with Jytte

**Lago** is an arctic fox who lives in Nunquivik. She is smaller than Stellan and Jytte, but is older than them. She has delicate ears, a sharp and tiny face, and has pointy ears.

## Life History

### *The Quest of The Cubs*

When Lago encountered Stellan and Jytte in her grieving chamber, she assumed that they thought that she was a fool. However, Svenna had told her cubs that arctic foxes knew a lot of bears and seal hunting. Lago said that she arrived in the grieving chamber through another tunnel and said that she heard Stellan and Jytte in the grieving chamber. She said "Taaka's mean as a weasel. And there's nothing meaner than a weasel." when Stellan and Jytte mentioned that they escaped from her den. When Lago asked why Svenna left her cubs, they said that she went to the Den of Forever Frost. Lago mentioned that she had never heard of it. Lago then mentioned that the cubs were in her grieving chamber and after they asked what grieving is, she defined it as "when someone you love is taken away from you." Jytte asked if the latter was missing her mother as well and she said she was missing her kits. Lago recited the story of how her kits were taken as prey by two big snowy owls.Stellan felt as if he was watching Lago's memories of her kits being taken from her. He imagined them bleeding and struggling as they tried to break free of the snowy owls' talons and he then saw them being taken away. Lago then apologized for sharing her griefs with Stellan and Jytte, as she said that they were unfamiliar and unaccustomed to the situation, because polar bears were the feared animal in Nunquivik.

Lago then introduced herself to the cubs and the latter doing the same. Jytte said that Svenna had told her and Stellan stories of arctic foxes changing into musk oxes, seals, and polar bears. She said that they were called the Ki-hi-ru stories. Jytte proceeded to recite a Ki-hi-ru story about a bear who had taken a bear-converted fox as a mate while not knowing that the fox had done so. Lago then dismissed the story as pure nonsense, but she still held fear towards the cubs, because she was still worried about her own survival.

Lago had let Stellan and Jytte rest in her den for the night, because they had nowhere to go at the moment. She had no food in her den and when dawn broke, she hunted a mouse for herself and mice for the cubs. She leaped straight into the air with her body forming an arc, as she plunged headfirst in the snow. Stellan and Jytte were astonished at her hunting method and they thought she had the characteristics of a bird. After subduing the mice, she dropped at at the cubs' paws, saying that they may not like it as much as other prey, but she said that they needed to eat. The cubs ate the plump mice even though they radiated a strange smell. Jytte asked Lago if she would eat, but the latter exclaimed that she could be satisfied with the mouse she ate already. When Stellan asked how she could detect the mice, Lago explained how arctic foxes were gifted with a trait known as the Northing. Lago explained the Northing as a gift all arctic foxes were born with that has helped guide them and hunt. She said that arctic foxes imagined a line in their heads that corresponded with a deep line in the Earth and that arctic foxes measured all distance with it. Stellan said that the Northing was similar to how polar bears use the Nevermoves star to help guide them. As with all arctic animals, Lago had to venture out onto the ice to accumulate fat in her body and find a mate, as well as a bear that she had to follow on the ice. She tipped her head in a good-bye and walked in the direction of the Frozen Sea. Jytte asked her brother how their mother could have left them with Lago, but Stellan said that she didn't, because Lago was a different animal. Stellan and Jytte then feel a gnawing hunger due to the fact that the mice did not satisfy their hunger for long.

## Trivia

* It is possible that Lago was named after the species name of the arctic fox, which is "Lagopus". It is the second part of the binomial nomenclature, "Vulpes lagopus".