I was about five weeks old when my mother decided to bring me outside for the first time. She put on some simple sandals, wrapped me up in some warm furs and held me against her chest as she went out of the tent. I can't say I wasn't expecting what I saw once we got outside, but I had been definitely hoping for something better.
We were living in a small village made up of a few dozens tents and a large permanent wooden structure, which probably served as some sort of town hall. The village was situated in a large, probably artificial, clearing in the middle of conifer woods. Compacted snow made up the ground it rested upon and everything around us was painted white. The peaks of the mountains we were on could be seen not too far in the distance, probably only a couple of hours of march away for a grown man, if it weren't for the snow. Considering that, despite the weather, my mother was still barely dressed, it was obvious that our species had quite the resistance to cold.
She made her way through the snow up to the doors of the large wooden structure and entered. Immediately my nose was assailed by the smell of cooking food and raw meat. Most of the floor of the only room in the building was occupied by short wooden tables with furs for cushions next to them. On one side of the room there was what was probably some sort of kitchen, where some people, one of which was the old woman who always brought food to my mother, were butchering a beast that had to be some twelve feet long and looked like some kind of moose. At the far end of the room there was an elevated platform where a man was sitting on a wooden throne behind a table. He was clad in more furs than what was usual among the members of the tribe but, like all the other men, he too had a completely bald head and a beardless face.
Mother walked all the way up to the man and stopped short of the elevated platform. She bowed her head to him and waited to be addressed, then they started talking back and forth about something I could not understand. The talk went on for a few minutes before my mother left with a smile on her face.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
We returned to our tent but, unlike the other days up to then, the old lady didn't come to bring mother food, instead, mother wrapped me up in some furs again after a few hours and made her way back to the hall.
When we got there, this time around, what was probably the whole tribe was present. There were a little more than a hundred people and, for the first time since being born, I saw other children, and there were a lot of them. Over a third of the people present were children, which, coupled with a good chunk of adolescents, meant that little more than half the tribe was actually made up of adults. This was really bad news for me, as it meant that child mortality was probably very high and I had to be extra careful. A curious fact was that there didn't seem to be any babies under one year old, as all the children around were able to at least walk by themselves.
When the adults present saw us, they quieted down and urged the kids to do the same. In the now dead quiet hall, my mother made her way to the one who was probably the tribe chief. On his table there were now two bowls, one that contained what looked like blood, while the other contained ash.
My mother bowed her head to the chief and deposited me on the table between the two bowls. The chief then held a speech for the tribe, which finished with loud cheers by all the tribe members. Having finished his speech, he dipped his hand in the bowl containing the blood, before smearing it over my forehead, soon followed by a sprinkle of wood ash. He then closed his eyes and murmured what seemed to be some sort of prayer.
As soon as he finished his prayer, pain assailed all my body, like fire going through my veins. I started crying, uncaring of trying to control my reactions as the pain got the better of me. Soon the pain was too much to handle, and I passed out.