---Raala’s perspective---

I take a sharp breath as I jerk awake.

Fire flows through my veins!

I spend the briefest of moments staring at the leather that lines the inside of the sleeping hut, listening.

Then “EVERYONE WAKE UP!” I cry, leaping to my feet and treading between their stirring bodies as I run to the doorway.

I grab a spear with my left hand and pull back the door curtain with my right.

Compared with the heat of the sleeping hut, the late Summer night air is cool against my bare arms and chest but I don’t have time to enjoy it!

I sprint across our hearthstead, clutching my weapon, tightly.

I leap more than twice my own height to clear the embers of yesterday’s fire and avoid losing time by going around it.

I hear the shouting of the boys on watch tonight but it isn’t until I come around the larder hut that I finally see it.

Down on all fours and still more than a head taller than me, the moonlight reflects off of the shaggy coat of fur covering its massive frame and catches against its dark, beady eyes to make them glisten like glossy flint.

Drool hangs from the bottom jaw of its short snout beneath the enormous nose that’s sniffed out our winter stores in the larder.

I see Morlu, lying on the ground behind the cavebear, bloodstained and unmoving.

Dolut and Tabrok stand in between me and the monster, jabbing their spears at it and shouting to ward it away.

My brother turns his head to me and shouts “RAALA! G-!”

But that’s as far as he gets before I scream “DOLUT! LOOK OUT!!!”

It’s no good…

The monster’s left paw lashes out for my brother’s head, taking advantage of his distraction to lay a blow on him that it wasn’t able to when he had his focus on it.

It seems to be happening very slowly but I know that that’s relative.

Dolut has no time to react!

The swipe connects.

My brother’s neck breaks instantly and he’s thrown against the side of the larder hut, hard enough to shake the entire thing as well as dislodging the weatherproofing leather, revealing the wooden frame and insulating reed bundles beneath.

Dolut crumples down to the ground… dead.

My mouth hanging open in horror, I turn my attention back to the bear, seeing it rear up to twice my height on its stubby back legs, its long, thick arms hanging down in front of it’s body.

The gigantic beast seems to grow even bigger as it takes a deep inhale before it opens its mouth to roar down at me!

Silencing the grief and anguish that would only be liabilities to me right now if I let myself feel them, I grip my spear and roar back!

---Ksem’s perspective---

I stand on a clifftop, my cape billowing in the chilly wind that blows from the North as I look down at a large river channel, far below me.

Just as Old Red said, the water sounds like distant thunder, clearly audible even from so far up.

The river isn’t as impressive as the Great River from back home but it’s still definitely the second grandest I’ve ever seen!

My sister steps to my side and spends a brief moment enjoying the view of the sparklingly icy mountains with me, away in the distance to the North and stretching East, as they catch the setting sun.

Then she turns her head to look up at me.

“We finally made it, Ksem!” she says, gleefully.

“We finally made it, Bwey.” I smile back.

Ahead of us should be the Great Basin… Our destination… The place we’ve been hearing about since we were children… the place we’ve been striving to reach since we lost our home…

Our journey’s nearly over!

“No one’s going to forget your part in this, Ksem…!” says Bwey, unusually seriously, gesturing to the camp being set up behind us “…You did this! You got us here! We would never have made it without you!”

I grin, playfully, and observe “You… realise that’s a bit of a sharpened handle there, BweBwe(!?)… If it turns out the Basin is terrible, everyone’s gonna remember that this was my idea(!)”

She twists her face into an exasperated smirk and slaps the back of her knuckles against my arm before answering “If it’s half as nice here as Old Red always told us it was, I’m sure you’ll be fine(!)”

“I really hope so…” I answer, taking a deep breath of the strange smelling, foreign air.

Then I catch a whiff of the earthy smell of petrichor (so similar to the way Old Red smelled and yet not the same) that announces the presence of our guide.

I turn around to smile down at the man approaching me and my sister.

He stands about two finger widths shorter than Bwey but, like Old Red, his shoulders are broad, his chest is rounded, his limbs are thick and his skin is as pale as dry papyrus leaves!

Also like Old Red, this man has wide cheeks, a large nose, a brow shelf and a sloping forehead.

His hair is not brown and it grows thick on his lower face as well as the rest of his (mostly nude, despite the chill) body but, unlike Old Red’s, it isn’t red either.

It’s a vivid yellowy orange colour… like desert sand!

“Torgan! What can I help you with?” I beam at him, speaking his language.

The short, stocky man finishes striding over before looking up at me, his large, doleful green eyes about at the height of my clavicle.

He takes a moment to just stare into my face, his expression fairly unreadable, before jabbing an arm past me, down into the gorge below us.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“That’s the Thundering Rift… That’s as far as I said I’d take you… I know I didn’t do much in the end but…”

“But you want what we promised you…?” I smile sweetly down at him.

He shifts, awkwardly, and casts his heavy brow to the floor before saying.

“N… No… I was actually wondering if I could renegotiate…?”

“Renegotiate?” I ask, my voice neutral.

I’m braced for the worst…

Just what is he going to ask for?

It would be a shame to fall out with him now… after the weeks we’ve just spent securing him and his clan as allies!

“I was… I wanted to know… If I could have a woman instead…”

My face immediately goes stoney as I answer “Torgan… No! That’s absolutely not g-!”

Panicking, he looks up at me and says “No! I didn’t explain myself well! I don’t want to take just any woman! I have a specific one in mind! Tsazel! All I want is your permission to take her back to my hearthstead… For that, I’ll give up what you promised my clan.”

“Does Tsazel actually want to go with you, Torgan?”

“She… does…” he answers, uncomfortably.

“…buuuut?” I prompt.

“Well… her mother… doesn’t want to let her…” he says, ashamed.

I sigh “Alright, Torgan… No matter what, you’re walking out of here with what I promised your clan… I can’t break my word to them.”

His face sinks.

“But…” I add, perking him back up “…why don’t you and I go and have a little chat with Tsazel and Kseley and see if we can work this out between the three of you, hmmm?”

Confused, he asks “You mean…? You’d let me take the bows and the girl?”

“Tsazel’s not mine to give you, Torgan… If she wants to come and we can convince Kseley to let her go then you can take her with my blessing. The bows aren’t yours to refuse… They’re reimbursement to your clan for your absence as much as they are to you for your help… That’s the way it is…”

He gives a nervous smile, revealing a mouthful of thumbnail sized teeth.

I lay my palm on his broad, bare, hairy shoulder and ask “Shall we go and talk to them right now? Do you know where they are?”

The bearded man gives an enthusiastic grunt of agreement and spins around to begin leading the way.

I turn to my sister and say “See you later, BweBwe.”

“Go work your magic, big shot(!)” she chuckles back.

I follow Torgan as we cross the shrubby ground between the cliff and the edge of camp.

It doesn’t take long before I can hear the sounds of a loud, heated argument that give me some idea of the direction we need to be heading(!)

Being quite tall compared with even my people, I’m able to see over the tops of some tents that will be blocking Torgan’s view of the younger woman and the older woman physically grappling while screaming into eachother’s faces.

Thankfully, the argument is in the language of the 144 Channels and rapid enough that I don’t think Torgan is going to have the slightest chance of understanding the awful things Kseley is saying about him!

“…If you think I’m going to let my daughter run off with some short, fat, smelly brute and live in his camp without a soul in the world to talk to or protect her…!” snarls Kseley, hand gripping her daughter’s wrist.

“I’ll have people to talk to!” defies Tsazel “Unlike you, I bothered learning the language so I’ll have an entire hearthstead of people to talk to! And I’ll have TorTor to protect me! This is what I want, Mum!”

“You’re too young to know what you want! Running away seems romantic to you now but will it be as romantic in a year? Two? Five?! Even if he and his tribe don’t eat you the first chance they get when you don’t have us around to protect you, do you think whatever charm that beast’s worked on you is going to survive the first one of his broad shouldered crossbreeds you have to push out!?”

“I love him, Mum!”

Fury flashes in Kseley’s eyes but I interrupt before things can get more heated than they already are!

“Ladies…” I smile, turning on my (not inconsiderable) charm to deescalate “…I understa-“

“TorTor!” shrieks Tsazel, swinging her arm to break her mother’s grip and running to the man by my side, clinging to his bare chest protectively and glaring back at her mother… who matches the expression.

I sigh inwardly and continue “I understand there’s something of a disagreement between you three? Why don’t we go into your tent to discuss it?”

---Torgan’s perspective---

I look up at the tall, slim man with the flat face, skin the colour of chestnuts and hair the colour of charcoal.

I cannot believe what he just did!

The absolute best case scenario I was hoping for was that he would order Tsazel’s mother to let her go!

I was resigned to the fact that Kseley could not be won over, that she would never be convinced to let her daughter live so far from where she and the rest of her people are going.

This man, barely more than a boy (though these people’s baby faces do make it a little difficult for me to exactly guess their ages), sat us all down in their tent and not only mediated a reconciliation between mother and daughter but, also, convinced Kseley to accept Tsazel’s choice to return to my hearthstead with me!… All while acting as translator for me and the older woman!

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a man acting as the (effective) leader of the single largest collection of people I’ve ever seen would be charismatic and persuasive!

Still…!

Even though he was doing it for my benefit, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a little frightening to watch him just completely change a person’s mind in front of me like that!

And not just any person! A sorceress!

Makes me a little anxious about whether he’s done that to me at any point without me realising!

My clan were absolutely terrified when this utter host of lanky flatfaces descended on our lands a few moons ago!

It was reassuring to learn that they didn’t plan to stay long and were just passing through on their way to the Great Basin.

When they asked for someone to show them the way and promised to compensate us in the form of their incredible ‘bows’ (pieces of wood and lengths of sinew cord that they’ve made such that they launch tiny feathered spears further and faster than anyone could throw by hand!) and ‘arrows’ (the tiny feathered spears), I was volunteered by my clan.

I told them I’d only ever been as far as the Thundering Rift, so that was as far as I could take them… which they agreed to.

To be honest, they didn’t really seem to need much directing and I suspect what they wanted more was someone to help them learn our language.

I never imagined that, so quickly and so entirely, I would end up falling for one of them and she for me!

I watch as Tsazel and her mother press their foreheads together, tears streaming down the chestnut skin of their flat faces as they say their goodbyes that I don’t have a chance of understanding.

With a final embrace, the two women part and the younger one comes to my side.

The older one strides up to me, her flat face glaring down, slightly higher than mine, beneath her (mostly black with one or two white) ropes of head hair.

“Svu’eh ve’tse! Ksletema! Se’anatashe un’a nun se’antsita an s’xentae bwantle qot’e vetsein angweutvei ne’nentsa vakreu!” snarls the woman.

“She says that if you ever hurt her daughter or make her cry, she will feel it in the wind and she will lay a curse on you… so bad as to make you wish you were never born.” translates the tall man, standing behind her.

I look into the old woman’s fierce brown eyes and answer “Please tell her that I will spend the rest of my life trying to give her daughter smiles… I swear it on Mother Mammoth!”

The old woman’s tear stained face softens as the man puts my words into their language for her.

The flat faced witch seizes the sides of my head with her palms and there’s a brief moment where I think she’s about to headbutt me… only for her to lay a ferocious kiss on my forehead.

She holds my head against her lips for several long moments while I’m left unsure of what to do… and so do nothing.

Finally she pulls away and says “Wehentsa! Ve’irtsa!”

“The pact is made. The bargain struck…” translates the lanky young man.

I have a small amount of terror wash over me as I realise I just made a deal with a witch… before I realise how easy it’s going to be to hold up my end of the bargain…(!)

With that, the old woman stands aside and Ksem steps forward.

He first holds out a bundle of carved sticks, their ends all tapering to points with notches etched in, bound in their own bowstrings.

“As promised, eight bows…” he says, handing me the (surprisingly heavy) bundle before holding up a long leather bag, many feathered sticks poking out of the open end, handing me that as well “…and ninety six arrows. Take them with our deepest gratitude to you and to your people and know that you are friends of the people of the Great River Delta.”

“And… know too that you are friends to the people of the Speartooth Hearthstead.” I answer, a little bewildered.

The charming man beams down at me with all the warmth and radiance of the Sun!

“Goodbye Torgan… Goodbye Tsazel… I hope you find your happiness together.”

“Goodbye Ksem… I hope you and your people find whatever you’re searching for in the Great Basin.” I answer.

He smiles.

I sling my clan’s rewards over my shoulders and wave a hand to the entire crowd of tall folk who’ve come to see me and Tsazel off.

“Ve’ehna!” chorus more voices than I’ve ever heard speaking at once.

“Ve’ehna!” shouts back Tsazel.

“Goodbye!” I shout.