Over the weekend, I got a clue: "Cim" is capitalized
the same way that "Nashhwonk" and "Min" are, not the way
"boat" and "tree" are. It's not a thing, it's a name.
And given the other things that are named this way, it's
an animal (c.f. "kluy", a plant, which is not capitalized
on reference).
Firefly sounds nice (thanks, mantis!), but small.
However, if this is not Earth (for which we have clues),
and is smaller, then the firefly could be larger and
brighter.
But where do the snow monkeys come in? And what does
everything eat? Yeah, the carnivores eat the herbivores,
but in our world, there isn't a whole lot of "herb" to
eat in the winter, and the animals as a whole are using
up resources acquired in the summer. Even the moss that
reindeer eat doesn't grow much in the winter. Years of
winter would really cut back on the animal presence (e.g.
the high Arctic or Antarctic: once you leave the sea,
there's not much life).
'Course, we are shown plants growing under the snow. Even
so, that's only going to create a tiny fraction of the
number of calories per day per acre produced by plants
during our summers. And we see enough animals that there
have to be lots of plants to support them.
On another topic, "how can the world be circumnavigated in
a few days by a sled going not much faster than a crude
sailing sled?", here's a potential answer: the action
isn't taking place at the equator, but close to the pole
of the planet. So the Great Sleigh isn't running along
a great circle route of ten(s) of thousands of miles, but
just zipping along a thousand or so miles around a pole.
Or, if you don't like that, it's zipping around the edge
of a small continent/island: that removes the "always going
the same direction" component, though.
-John