This is a short story about an orphan penguin named Pete whose iceberg heads south to the tropics.

Pete's iceberg has just broken away from the ice land it has been attached to all its life. It's the end of a six months of night, and naturally, the beginning of six months of light. It's still dark, but the darkness is weakening, and if you were there you'd be able to make out Pete's face a bit more clearly, not that you could read too much from his expression.
He is standing with his back to the North, where all the penguins he has known still are, still talking to each other, still making noise, still smiling, still cursing, with each other - all the things he was never a part of.

This place where Pete comes from, or found himself in as long as he can remember, is a little colony. Little, with thousands of penguins, but still a colony, an orphanage colony. Within this colony, and within the clustering, and within the rowdiness, and within the littleness of it all, Pete managed to find a little spot for himself, where he can stand alone, with his back to the rest, and to God, and be by himself.
Pete used to stand on his own, which was all he owned, and look to the South. He wasn't conscious of what he was looking at, because he didn't actually see anything, it's more that he was drawn to look into the distance. He didn't know what he was looking at, or towards, but he didn't mind. He didn't think, he didn't need to know. He had given up thinking, and knowing, a long time ago.
There was a time when he did think, and tried to know, but things never added up, and he never knew anything. Eventually he stopped, and he was left with nothing. When he found nothing, the world inside him began to feel more comfortable, and he began to belong inside him. The outside world near him began to feel more cold, and sometimes he would shiver, while the rest didn't, while the rest played, and played, and were lost in the noises they made. The outside world near him began to seem removed, very removed, and not of him. But the outside world that was very far, like the high high sky, and the long firm horizon, to him, was nearer than the world just around him. It didn't make sense, but it fit, and that's how it was.