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Laying out in the middle of the courtyard, under the dark of the blanketing sky, was a small figure. It was young Wynn, lying out on the cold cement, sprawled as if he had fallen there, some ethereal Icarus out of a dreamy sky.

After not being able to fall asleep, Wynn had retreated to the cold outdoors, sneaking out of the student dorms with a steamy mug of hot coco in his gloved hands. His room mate unnerved him since all his kind and curious approaches were snapped at and unappreciated. The cold outside was a lot more familiar to Wynn and his cold climate aptitude. He much rathered the cold chills to the machine-created hot. Besides, the quiet distant boy missed his village...

He thought that here, he could perhaps figure out some old stars out of old familiar legends. So, there he was, sprawled across the cement, like an Icarus out of place. Quiet, distant, and unmoving, completely at peace.

Perking at the sound of scuffling slippers nearby, Wynn shifted his head slowly towards her, like a monk being disturbed out of his silent praying reveries. He blinked his brown eyes at her, somewhat confused by her appearance. He was sure that he was the only one out here a couple moments ago, nonetheless, this was the first lady that he had seen here at the campus. For a moment, he kept his mouth shut, simply acknowledging her presence before he prompted himself to speak with his soft halting English.

"I am, yes. I seek stars. Stories that my village speak around fire. I like..." the boy shifted himself up from the ground ever so slightly, but decided that he wanted to simply stay down. So he did, "I miss cold." He watched her again, amber brown eyes admiring the stars to the side of her head. There was the polar bear...And the narwhal...

Wynn reached for his coffee mug and dragged it closer to him, holding it against his side with his gloved hands. It looked like he was shy, but the Inuit didn't move away or shift. He just watched her carefully as she sunk down onto her haunches near him. "I am called Wynn," the boy replied to the mention of her name. When she asked him about stories, Wynn raised his brows slightly, as if he were surprised that someone else was interested in what comforted him. So far away from home, the sky was the only thing kind of similar here. The stars were in different positions though and up until Dr. Hale came close, Wynn had been reacquainting himself with the positions of the figures he saw in the heavens.

Lifting up a dark gloved hand, Wynn pointed to a certain area in the sky. Doctor Hale would've recognized it as Orion the Hunter. "There," the lad spoke softly, "Stairway from Earth to Sky." He shifted his arm over and pointed again, far above their heads, "And that is Great Caribou." But Dr. Hale saw it as the Great Bear.

Wynn was so entranced in staring at the night sky, that he almost didn't hear her next words. He had just seen something shift in the stars, a face, or was it a star? Perhaps it was a stray cloud hiding and darting in the blackness between the pin point lights in the sky. He didn't know. He knew all the stars to be living things, things with lanterns that followed determined paths in the black fields of the heavens. That much he did know.

When he thought over her words, her asked question, the boy tried to formulate an answer fitting enough to explain it, which was easy. The hard part was finding the right words. "We see footsteps, footsteps in snow. That is Stairway from Earth to Sky, where ancestors walk. Some time, when darkest dark, they come. Ancestors walk on Stairway from Earth to Sky to dance. When Ancestors dance, colors fill the sky like sunsets and died wool. Can see our ancestors, see them dance. It's pretty. Not now, though. Can't see them dance," Wynn tilted his head at the sky, as if waiting for the moonless night to get darker, dark enough to see his ancestors. His mouth pulled down ever so slightly.

"Darkest dark," he repeated, "But they have not come."

When the teacher gave the soft explanation, telling him that the lights he was waiting for would not come, Wynn was suddenly very perturbed. That was...No, he refused to believe it. Back at him, on the darkest nights, there were always chances to see his ancestors dancing from the steps of the Stair from Earth to Sky. Here, he was waiting in the wee hours of the night, eager to see traces of his ancestors, but, more recently, his grandparents and his own parents, waltzing across the black drapes of stars. Furrowing his brows deep over his amber eyes, he glanced up in her direction, his small mouth twisting into a dark frown.

"Yes. They come. They always do."

"If you look...So much to see," Wynn said softly, glancing at the teacher who was kneeling to his side. He didn't know what to make of her now that she had told him about the northern lights. Her statement, so sure, so final, something that, to Wynn, tried to block him from seeing his family dance in the sky, made him distrust her. There was a part of him that realized what she said must be true, but there was another part, a desperate part that clung to what he knew and felt comfortable with, that disliked her for telling him that. Quite honestly, he didn't know what to think of her now, even though she was still trying to be nice. She was trying to connect, the Inuit had to give her that.

Lifting his confused distraught eyes to the star the doctor was pointing at, Wynn pursed his lips into a thoughtful frown. A swan she said it was. But to Wynn, he saw it was, "A seal."

"That seal is lonely," Wynn relayed, pulling his arms around him to hug away the cold, "Hunters took his parents when he was young, but he dreams that one day, he'll grow up to be big and strong and become leader of his clan, but what he doesn't know is that he can't. The little seal chases after the moon, chases his dream, but he will never reach it." Wynn quieted and his gaze softened as he looked up at the stars, his coco colored bangs being blown slightly by the wind. For a slight moment, he grew lost in that constellation and he was taken away to another time, another place, a place much much colder than this one. But as soon as he got there, he blinked and shook himself back to the school grounds of Shinkami.

Glancing towards Siona, the dark-skinned boy tugged the edges of his lips into a sad smile and he didn't notice his skin prickling with cold. For him, he was used to it.