Fifteen-year-old Thomas gently lifts his 10-year-old brother, guiding him away from the front door and towards the living room couch.

"Come, sit down," he says quietly.

But instead, Darren slips under his brother's arm and heads towards the kitchen. Thomas lets him go but keeps watch from the couch.

The house is warm and sunlight filters through the peach-coloured curtains as raindrops land on the window panes. Outside, low-lying clouds make the vast landscape feel smaller; they blanket its spruce trees and tall grasses, spongy tundra and miles of mountain.

Thomas is from Newhalen, a remote village of 180 residents in Alaska's southern interior. A single road runs through town, passing by the community centre - where bingo nights are held and youngsters play basketball, the rows of single-storey houses, the tribal government office, and the local school.

The school gym is a gathering place for the community. Thomas plays basketball there on a court painted in the school's colours: blue and white. On the walls, a mural depicts the surrounding lake area; travelling across its snowy terrain is a team of malamutes - the school mascot - pulling a sled. Black ravens circle the scoreboard, and silhouettes of athletes are painted at eye-level.

In the colder months, residents sit on blue bleachers to cheer on their children; there are so few students that almost everyone has to compete in order to fill the teams. In the last academic year, the school had 67 students enrolled from pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade.

On the couch, Thomas fidgets with the seam of his jeans before letting his hands settle on his lap. He explains that this past year he wanted to try something new. He left the village for Mt Edgecumbe, a boarding school 1,100km away in the city of Sitka, for ninth grade. But within a month, he says, he knew he wanted to return.

He shakes his head and smiles. "I didn't like it."

The school had more than 400 students and Thomas shared a room with five other boys.

"The population in the school itself is bigger than Newhalen," he explains, fidgeting.

Everything felt cramped, he says.

Most of the students were from rural areas like his, but few knew anything about his village or understood just how quiet and small it was. He played basketball, made friends and enjoyed some of the classes, including culinary arts which he wants to pursue in college, but he didn't get along with everyone.

"Some of them were obnoxious," he says, but doesn't elaborate.

Last summer, his mother had spoken to me in the same room as she'd applied ointment to a wart on Darren's finger. She is the quiet centre of the home, grounding her two sons with their widely different personalities. Thomas had asked her if he could go to boarding school and she had agreed that it would be good for him. He was into video games and technology, she'd reasoned, and could only find opportunities in those fields elsewhere.

She also thought it would be good to distance him from the care he provides for Darren, who has Down syndrome and requires around-the-clock attention. "He's been the biggest help," she'd said then. "I'll be scared when he goes. But I don't want him to stay here watching his brother."

While the village was good for her and Darren, with a community that felt like family and would help out in any way it could, she wanted something different for Thomas.

"I hope he'll move on. Just go. I don't want him living here. I want him to go out and see the world," she'd reflected.

But when he was feeling particularly homesick at the boarding school, Thomas would think about his mother and brother, who is now curled up on the couch beside him, wearing a faded yellow t-shirt that reads "Born to fish".

I ask Thomas what it is like growing up in Newhalen.

"It feels normal for me," he says with a shrug. "I don't know how to explain it."

What did he miss about it, I ask?

"Everything," he says.