You'll probably hear Sky Dog before you see him. If he's not laughing it's likely that at least that wide mouth of his will be lip-peeled and teeth-showing in a canid grin. He's young and tangle-haired, a shade under average height. A long, curl-ended scratch surmounted by three nicks scars his left cheek.

It's hard to tell where exactly Sky Dog is from: he has the vaguely Asian look of the far Northern tribes and the sharp features occasionally associated with Cree, but his shamanic practice shares more with the Peyotists and Ghost Dancers of the Southwest. Skin and hair the colour of mare's milk and eyes the unpigmented ice-blue of a white newborn just add to the confusion, as does a habit of barter that probably accounts for the snow goggles and quilled moccasins. He claims to have come off the ice, far to the West, but then he also claims to have turned himself into a bear once and to know what it's like to lay eggs, so who knows?