As is my routine, I was lying in the lap of one of the watchmen. The watchmen switched every week or so, but this one was one I fancied especially. It’s Hatte. He likes me a fair bit better than the others, who call me unclean and dirty. As though they have anything to say about it. He pats me gently while keeping an eye out. I keep my ears perked and ready even though I may look asleep with my eyes closed.
And then, all of a sudden, my hearing diminishes greatly. I wonder briefly if Hatte has put his hand over my ears, so I crack one of my eyes open. He’s looking down at me. I’m looking up at him.
With a strangely loud yelp, he jumps to his feet, leaving me to clatter out of his lap and onto the hard ground. Ah, my butt hurts. Hm.
Waitaminute.
My body feels large and clumsy. My night vision has pretty much disappeared. My vantage point is higher.
It happened. A bit before schedule, too.
“Wh-, what?!” Hatte exclaims, with the other guy joining his fear. Ah, a spear is being pointed in my face. Makes sense, I suppose.
I stand up. Hm. I’m much shorter than I’ve ever been as a human. Not even my shortest forms were quite this small. How strange. Even more so, if I touch my face, it seems like my features aren’t disfigured - hence beautiful. How odd. It is rare that I am short and beautiful.
That is, unless a special feature of Azrael has come into play. I didn’t expect it to work for all hominids, though.
Indeed, I am in the body of a seven-year-old girl. I look up at Hatte and Liet. Their eyes are filled with fear and surprise. My mind races for something to say. “Good evening.”
My voice is monotone. Not because I don’t feel anything but rather because I’m not sure how to put my emotion into my voice. The duality problem.
Somehow, my words don’t seem to have a relaxing effect on either of them. Going by the fact that they have made no attempt to escape it is sensible to assume that Barachiel remains in effect. I suppose I’m rather lucky, then, since a disturbing form would probably have had a very negative reaction. That is, unless that disturbing form looked more like a neanderthal. Goodness.
“U-, Ungin?...” By this point, I’ve just accepted this to be my name. So, to confirm it, I nod. He says a few words I don’t understand. Then he turns nervously to the other watchman. They discuss things before turning back to me. “Are you… a Kirki?”
A what.
I have no response to that, so I stare blankly at him. He seems to take my silence as an affirmative. How unfortunate.
Well, all I can really hope is that he isn’t calling me anything too horrible.
“L-, let’s awaken the rest,” the other watchman says. Hatte agrees. As he scampers off and leaves the two of us, we remain just sort of staring at each other. Now that I think about it, this is the first time a huma-, hominid has seen me take on my human form. Of course, living things have seen me transform, but I didn’t much care for their reactions, even though they were usually similar to what Hatte is experiencing here.
Okay, this got awkward real fast. More noteworthy, I’m tired.
“How did you do that?” I glance over at Hatte, trying to keep my eyes from falling closed. “And-, and why do you look like that?”
I look at my body. It’s a human child.
Well, to him, I must look disfigured. Which is, well, understandable.
Groans inside the cave soon reach our ears as people awaken and file out, each a bit more tired and confused than the last. Mumbles of “who is that” and “is she okay” abound among them. Cinn is among them, though her displeasure is more of the “where did my pet fox go” variety. I wave to her. She just seems more confused.
People start gathering around us, speaking in hushed tones among themselves. I can’t really understand much of what they say, but Hatte seems to be explaining what happened. In turn, I just stand still. I can’t speak too well, after all.
Cinn creeps up to me. She’s taller than me, so I guess she’s around 12 or 13. My own body is only around 7.
“Did you eat Ungin?” she asks. Aha. Indeed. Uh.
“No.” At least I know affirmative and negative words.
“Are you Ungin?” she says.
“Yes.” Well, there it is. She makes a funny facial expression, kind of like if she tried to swallow a fish whole.
“Then… you are Kirki.” There’s that word again. I still don’t know what it means, but if two of these people have deemed it worthwhile to call me a kirki, then I guess I am a kirki. Kirki might be food. Ah, I do remember reading that neanderthals did occasionally practice cannibalism for ritual purposes. Though, since I’m in the form of a homo sapiens, it wouldn’t be cannibalism.
Though, under the will of God, we are all simply His lambs.
Just kidding. That sounds like a hassle.
Since I didn’t answer Cinn, she takes my silence as an affirmative. I am the messiah, indeed. Why are they like this.
People start bustling around each other, saying Ungin and kirki in equal measure. What the fuck. Eventually, the butcher steps up from within them. Wassup bro. He says a bunch of words, one of which I’m pretty sure I heard the healer say the other day. Then, he presents his right hand. It’s wrapped with green leaves. He gently removes the leaves, holding his wheezing breath. Oh, that’s a big gash. Seems like he slipped with the knife, slicing right into the gap between his thumb and index finger. The area is bloodless and slightly purplish with blots of sickly yellow and paleness around the skin. Even worse, the wound itself is edged with white bulges as though something was trying to get out. The only liquid visible is pus, which flows richly without coagulating into any form of protection.
Yeah, that’s bad. I had noticed he hadn’t been working much the past few days, but to think he was this badly hurt...
Knowing the healing capabilities of the current healer, this is a regretfully fatal wound. Furthermore, knowing the butcher’s apprentice, should he die, the apprentice will not be able to work with nearly as much efficiency and speed. There is a strong likelihood of starvation. Part of the pain the butcher must be feeling comes from knowing this fate.
He must think I can heal this or something. Well, sadly enough, I can.
We have all the needed ingredients and things in the cave. Assuming I’m allowed to use them, of course. It probably won’t be the magical instantaneous healing he seems to expect from me, but he’ll have to take it as it comes.
I gently grab his other hand and pull him back into the cave. Let’s see here. A few bones, a knife, some herbs… Yup, I’ve got all I need. There are a few things I would like to use, but I don’t really have time since everybody’s looking at me and if I don’t do anything they’ll be disappointed and this will be very awkward.
I sit him down while I prepare things.
First of all, I shave a piece of bone into a thin needle, eye and all. Then I fancy some of our tree rope into a thin thread. It’s not as strong as I would have liked it but I don’t really have a choice. I quickly prepare the herbs. People are looking at me weirdly since I use methods they aren’t familiar with. I was kind of forced to learn these sorts of things since if I couldn’t heal a broken bone or deep wound then surviving for any amount of time as a dinosaur was next to impossible. In truth, I could do this without opposable thumbs as long as I had teeth sharp enough.
With the preparations finished, I quickly wipe down the wound with a few leaves before applying the necessary herbs to dissuade the inflammation. Then, once I know it’s safe, I sew the wound shut.
There. Now it’s okay. -Ish. Now to tell him not to engage in too many strenuous activities.
“Do not do.” Okay, that didn’t help. Let’s see, I’m pretty sure I know how to say this. “Don’t do exist.” Wait. That didn’t sound too good.
“I shouldn’t work?” the butcher asks. Oh, he can understand me. great.
“Yes. No work.”
“I see…” He doesn’t seem too happy to hear it, but if he works and gets meat juices or faecal matter or whatever into the wound, it’ll just make it even harder to heal. Might even kill him.
At seeing my skill with medics, most of the people in the tribe accept my use, even if I am a bit disfigured. I soon find my role within the tribe. The other shaman - the woman who had this role before me - promptly gives it over to me. She didn’t seem all too happy at knowing her role had been usurped, and she even seemed to try to spread the belief that my healing was ineffective, but once the butcher recovered from a seemingly fatal wound any such conceptions were disregarded.
As for Cinn, we soon developed a friendship of sorts. It seemed her training might have been a little too effective since I now executed every trick purely subconsciously. I hope this doesn’t stick with me or something.
She even teaches me the language. While most others in the tribe just accept that I speak strangely, she’s the only one who realized I just literally don’t know their language too well. So, she teaches me. Thankfully they don’t have a written language so I don’t need to learn anything like that. Within just a few months my vocabulary improves immensely, though I obviously don’t speak much. I’m more interested in listening to what others say than talking by myself.
You might wonder how I pay her back for teaching me how to speak. Simple. I make her my apprentice. I teach her how to use herbs, which ones are edible or not, how to make certain plants edible, what usage this or that has, etcetera. Sometimes, when the group goes out gathering, we join them to find herbs and tell them what to gather. Some are against us joining them, but I silence them with a look.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
On that note, it seems “Kirki” has about the same meaning as spirit or divinity. They think I’m some sorta divine creature, peh. They’re both right and wrong but I’m not about to change their perception.
Years pass. I am now 14 years of age. Cinn is now an adult woman who has survived mainly through her connection to me.
During these years I have learnt many things. For one, during the evenings, while we all sit around the fire, sometimes, we play music. After going 250 million years without music, it’s pretty nice to hear. Well, somewhat. They mostly play using things made of wood and bone, like flutes. Some are better at it than others. I quickly made it my mission to get really fucking good at playing the bone flute, so I’ve had people teach me, and now I can play pretty damn well. During my early years in the Triassic era I spent some time mastering the normal flute, so holding one again is somewhat nostalgic. Since I know how to play a normal flute I get pretty damn good at the bone one.
That isn’t to say that people don’t sing. Yes, they sing. Quite a lot, too. And often.
In the mornings and the evenings. When a hunting party returns, when they leave…
Songs. It’s nice. Sometimes I join in. I kinda suck at singing compared to playing the flute, but since I usually sing songs from my time as a mortal, they have no idea what it’s supposed to sound like.
Rickrolling them isn’t even funny. They just don’t understand. I guess nobody will for many thousands of years to come.
The reason this year, nay, this moment is important is because of what one of the guys in the gatherer party has returned with. It’s rust. Red pigment. It seems they found an open vein of iron that had oxidized.
You might wonder why this is causing such a stir. Well, it means it’s time to do some good ol’ cave painting.
Now, during my time as various dinosaurs, I did sometimes draw things in sand and such. That is only to be expected. But drawing with actual drawing tools in an actual cave? Hell yeah. Within seconds the kids (a few have been born since my transformation) swarm around the guy who brought it, but he just tells them that only the artist is allowed to use it since it’s such an honour. The kids are a bit upset, but once he suggests that if they can draw in the dirt well enough they might take the artist’s place, they run off to do so.
I do not leave.
The apprentice of the butcher gratefully accepts the pigment. It seems he’s working as the apprentice since he needs a reason to stay in the cave apart from just being the artist. I follow him as he walks deeper into the cave. He shoots me glances but otherwise says nothing.
It’s not like my word is law or anything, but usually, they kind of let me do what I want.
We reach the art wall. There are already a few paintings there, visually representing various events from many years past, from before I came here. One shows how the hunters defeated a boar. Another shows them chasing away a cave lion. It’s that kind of stuff.
He begins painting.
First, he draws a scene of people eating, with a fox in the middle, crushing berries. Ah. Then, he draws the fox next to a girl - Cinn. Yes, I was a good little fox. Then, finally, he draws the fox turning into a girl. The drawings are crude and very simple and the artist looks somewhat embarrassed drawing them in front of me, but by the end, it looks very typical for cave art. Considering the location and the reports I’ve seen, these paintings will likely survive until the modern times. How fun.
I steal the remaining pigment from him. He makes a few chastised sounds but I don’t let him do anything. Then, I started drawing.
Okay, let’s see here. What could possibly cause the most hilarious stir.
...Shit. I can’t think of anything. Drawing the face of a future president would be funny. But then it might get disregarded as a prank or something, which it technically is.
Ah, this is seriously too hard.
…
Okay, I’ve got an idea.
I draw a face that doesn’t exist yet. Then, I write “We’ll meet” beneath it in the language of the person who will first see these paintings. If I quickly tap into my knowledge, I can tell that he’s an archaeologist. Great. Perfect.
The artist is looking at me weirdly but that’s okay. Don’t worry about it.
And so, life continues. Years pass. With my help, the population inside the cave gently booms, with children now living longer. Due to lack of access to clean water, I cannot wash my hands, meaning that child death and mother deaths remain frustratingly common. This fate also takes Cinn. I am sad to watch her go, yet I know that she has smoothly passed into the afterlife, where she’s currently meeting others who have passed. It’s heartwarming to see and makes me very happy, but I fight the urge to meet her again.
With her gone, I have instead taken her child as my apprentice.
The hunters do well. Most survive. We are now around 40 men strong even after I have only been here for around 60 years.
I should be happy about this, but I’m not. The reason for this is simple.
Michael is warning me that the tribe cannot be allowed to continue this. It was their fate to go extinct after only 70 years following a steady decline in population, punctuated by the death of the butcher. My presence has thrown a wrench into this, causing them to survive. If nothing happens, they will likely survive to pass on the techniques I taught them, eventually having a much larger effect on the world as a whole, changing the course of history immensely. I cannot allow this to happen.
And so, at every turn where the younger members suggest that we expand our territory or try to reach out to other tribes, I stop them. At times I let people who would otherwise have lived die. I do all that I can, but it is not enough.
And so, one day, knowing what will happen and what I must do, I wander into the forest at the ripe age of 80, an age only reached due to the kindness of my tribe.
A wandering bear takes my life and Azrael implements my plans perfectly.
I awaken as her cub. This is the first time I have been reborn so close to my point of death, but that is only because I demanded it. I live by her side for 7 years, always keeping a close eye on the tribe. Any time someone begins straying too far, I’m there to frighten them off. This is hard to do in the winters, but knowing them, they won’t do anything. More importantly, during these years, I spend much of my time growing larger. I eat a lot, and unlike what bears would usually do, I train. When I am on the cusp of maturity, I am massive, easily larger than even the largest neanderthal. A swipe of my paw could kill a man.
Knowing I am almost an adult, I finally pull myself together.
It’s time.
I walk the familiarly traced path through the forest as though I was still human. On the way to the cave, I run into a hunting party. It contains 13 people in total - 6 men, 4 women and 3 children. I slaughter them like animals. Of course, as beings that want to live, they struggle fiercely against me. Bows are drawn though many arrows miss me with only inches to spare. This is not only because they are too terrified to aim properly, but also because I simply dodge out of the way.
Spears and knives are thrown and thrust my way. I slap them to the side and out of their trembling hands. Then, I swiftly rip out their throats, making sure none survive. The children try to run, scrambling with their short hands and feet, but I simply catch them, giving them a quick and merciful death by breaking their necks.
I hate this. I hate what I have made myself do.
I continue walking, moving towards the cave with steady steps. This is not because my heart is still and I am unmoved but more so because I force myself to pretend that I am as such.
I reach the cave. None have run. They’re not that cowardly.
They stare at me. The effects of Barachiel are instantly disbanded as they see my bloodied fur and bloody mouth. Sachiel takes a hold of them.
They freeze in place, minds racing for a solution, for a reason, for an explanation. I give them none.
A swipe of my massive paw cracks the neck of one man instantly. Another man has his throat crushed. I pity their souls. A woman tries to run, but I am faster. The children are the hardest. They simply collapse to the ground, but I can only bring myself to kill them once I abandon all lingering humanity to understand that their souls will live on. It doesn’t matter if they die now or later.
Warriors and musicians and artists and poets are felled by my hand.
The butcher, who was a mere apprentice when I first met him, tries to stand before me, guarding the entrance of the cave. I stab my claws into his gut before crushing his skull underfoot. Broken spears and arrows poke out of my hulking back. I can’t feel the pain. It is a mercy.
Only a few stragglers have survived this massacre. They will be unable to reform into anything and their deaths will come naturally from the wilderness. That is simply how it is.
I enter the cave. Only a few people remain. Well, maybe not people.
There is one woman and four children, each below the age of 6. She holds them closely although only one is her biological offspring. The woman is around 20 years of age. Her name is Cil, and she looks so much like her mother. She is the shaman and she was my second apprentice.
I kill them as painlessly as I am able to.
I try not to look at their anguished faces.
To the side, I notice what seems to be a small shrine of sticks and herbs, carefully aligned to form a sort of frame around one of the cave paintings the artist painted many years ago. The shrine seems to be in honour of me. The herbs around it are all ones I have taught them the use for.
I stand there staring at it as the deep wounds in my body begin taking their toll. This was only to be expected. I had not intended to survive this slaughter.
Slowly, I lumber over to where the corpses of my most recent victims lay splayed out, their blood still pooling, their heat still lingering. I lie my dying body around theirs, bringing them into my embrace.
Then, I fall into a deep, unfathomable hibernation.
Originally, I had wanted to have somewhat close relationships with the neanderthals since most of the other hominids currently existing kinda scare me. However, following my nearly disastrous first encounter, I’ve decided against it. I like the bastards, but I can’t let them get too advanced.
So, to avoid yet another such situation, I decided to stay away from most cavemen.
Instead, I would watch various hominids from afar, just to get a sense of whether or not they could be bestowed with souls or not. Sadly, trying to ascertain the sentience of people who are really far away (and mostly just want to run if they see you) doesn’t make for a good method. Reluctantly, unhappily, I approach various communities. Unlike my first time around, I make sure to only approach once I’ve assumed a human form. While in this form, I grant the first trial, namely: will they attack me the instant they see me or not?
If they attack and kill me, I just go away and leave it at that. This only happened once when a species too close to apes became instantly spooked at my ugly and malformed state. I moved on from them.
Most of the others let their curiosity and mercy overcome their apprehension, greeting me with voices and trying to make sense of my form. That was all fine and dandy, but without understanding them, I had no way of ensuring their sentience. Thus, the third trial was whether or not they had a language and if this could be taught to others. This wasn’t always the case, and once it was clear we could not communicate, I kind of just left.
Learning countless new languages would have been much harder if I wasn’t allowed to skip the written section, but that hardly made it easier. Most of the languages had pretty simple grammatical structures and a limited number of words, but since they were so unlike and disconnected from any language I could speak (alongside the matter of some species having completely different vocal cords) it remained immensely difficult. If a member of the species could show me enough patience and sympathy to teach it to me regardless, I would pretty much take it as a sign these bastards were soul-having miscreants after all.
Granted, the number of individual specimens for any certain species was pretty limited so it wasn’t like several million souls were instantly created or anything.
And then, after a few hundred thousand years of this, I finally get to the one other hominid I was excited to meet.
I find myself on the island of Flores in Indonesia. I have the form of a grasshopper. To ensure that this meeting is as funny as possible, I have forced the hand of Azrael in a specific direction. Now I just need to assume that form which I have halfway determined. The cave within which the hominids live is just beyond a small brush. They’ve actually been here for a hundred thousand years already, so in terms of stone-age development, they’ve gotten pretty far.
While I indulge in the feeling of gradual maturation and personal plans unfolding, I nimbly jump out of the way of an attacking predator. Then, I transform.
My perspective shifts in a matter of seconds, bringing me far off of the ground. Already I can see that my body is well-built, stout and thick. Still, on my personal order, I am quite tall, easily nearing the 2-meter mark. I have a good reason for this. Furthermore, despite being right outside a hominid settlement, my body is that of an adult. I have a good reason for this as well. It is to maximize my height.
I step out the brushes, greedily lapping up the gazes thrown my way.
...Still, I am a bit disappointed.
I would really have wanted homo floresiensis to be more human-like than this. As is, they look more like small, bipedal apes than any human. Even then, their size is certainly not disappointing in the least. Some are taller than others, children are even smaller, and a few are quite short.
Not a single one of them reaches up to my loins.
Each individual is about one meter tall. This is even shorter than most human children and I relish in the way each of them pales before me. Alright, let’s stop teasing them. If I keep staring at them they might overpower the effects of Barachiel, after all.
I gently raise my hands, presenting myself fully unarmed. Then, knowing fully well that no words I can speak will reach them, I begin singing a melody.
Confusion rules.
Just to further assure them of my harmlessness, I go down on my knees. This way, if one of them approaches, they can at least reach my chest. A few of them approach, spears raised to my throat. I try my best not to smile, instead continuing to sing “In the Mood”. A few of them bark words at me. Since I’ve learnt around 30 other hominid languages, I can roughly understand what they’re trying to say just going by their tone of voice and such. I wish their faces weren’t so monkey-like though, it’s really distracting.
“I’m no harm,” I say as gently as I can. They must have realized I can’t understand their language since they begin conversing with each other. Ah, how common. This is the most common course of events, though I usually don’t hold this kind of inherent upper hand. Like, if I wanted to, I could easily snap the necks of most nearby individuals. Even on my knees I tower over them in both height and mass.
I grin. Ah, oops. The spears pointed at me jerk closer as the people around me bark orders again. It sounds more like the screech of an ape than any hominid, though.
After a while, it seems they reach a conclusion, and they begin saying things to me. I listen, trying to understand what the hell they’re saying. After a while though, they simply shove a spear the size of a shortsword into my arms and point into the forest. I suppose that means they want me to bring them a tribute or something. Well, easy enough.
Hunting took a bit longer than usual and the child-sized spear certainly didn’t help, but after some time I bring back a large stork I found. The hominids seem impressed enough and seem to accept me into the group, but nobody makes an attempt to teach me their language. As a matter of fact, the more I observe the creatures, the more keenly aware do I become that these creatures are really just glorified apes. Less empathetic than the neanderthals, with a simpler language than the erectus.
In the end, they decide to just use me as a sort of living tool, going out and killing things for them to eat every so often. My only reward for this is to partake in meal time at night. Nothing else.
With little else to do, I create my own regular-sized spear, massive enough for me to hunt pretty much anything with.
I’m dead within only five years as their pride causes them to send me at anything that makes an even slight threat against them, including larger predators and the such. My death is in trial. I accept it readily, hoping never to have to meet those creatures again. Yeah, no souls for them. I didn’t even become slightly close to a single one.
Funny creatures. Unfunny individuals.
I leave them behind as I prepare to make contact with the final species of hominid on my bucket list.
Homo sapiens.