World
You're moving across the valley now, the endless valley where the grasses grow tall and ripple against the wind, where the rabbits hide close to the soil and the birdcalls can't be heard from the forest, because the forest is far behind you. The grasses are strange here, and the short, dark man says they remind him of where he's been, someplace where the water doesn't end.
The water always ends, you tell him, because nothing goes on past where it should. Sometimes things stop before they should, like the deer in the snowtime, like the meat by the fire. Like your woman and her smile and her child - your child. Both gone, both wasted when the food ran scarce, and your woman's milk dried. You left the winter when you left the forest, but you carry the stones from their body-places with you, and you always will. It's not so cold at night now, sleeping down under the sweet, raspy grasses, but those rocks in your fists make you shiver all the time.
The short, dark man hunts the rabbits, although it's no kind of hunting you've seen before. He's from other people, and it took him many passes of the full moon to able to speak with you. When you first found him, he was shivering, lamed and helpless at the foot of the mountain without any furs on at all. His words were fast and high and liquid, trilling from his tongue like the warble of the baby owl. Your people took him in, strange as he was, with the horns of hair sprouting from his chin, and the long, dark, matted tangles that hung down his back, and as soon as his leg had healed, he was hunting the snow-hare to repay his debt. You wondered how he had wandered so far, how he had survived, but you didn't wonder now.
He was quick and he was clever. He sang back then, before he could speak, and it made your dying child laugh. You looked at him then, and the grace of his shrug had shone like the sun on the ice. He sat with you, skinning the hare, handing you the tenderest parts of the meat, and you took them, mimicking his song, lower and flowing, and he had changed the sounds to make them easier for you. He helped you carry your woman to her body-place in the back of the cave, and he had gripped your shoulder as you wept into her furs. He had sat with you quietly, a hand to his heart, and through your tears, you saw his own. Your woman had cared for him; your child had played with him, and now he hunts the rabbit for you.
The fire burns in the ring of stones. The grasses whisper behind you, and they speak of things to come. He sings with the night, and he sits by your side. Your people are close, but you are alone, and the valley is as vast as the sky. Your arm circles him, and his hand on your thigh is as warm as the flames.
The water always ends, you tell him, and he presses close, dark and clever, wise and young. No, he says, the water's always just beginning.