《Of Frost and Steel》Chapter 9

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At the beginning of my third summer the tribe held a ceremony to see off some of our members who would leave to set another camp of their own somewhere else. The change had become necessary with the increase in numbers of the tribe, as the food the mountains around us could provide might have not been enough to go through another winter.

During the ceremony the chief nominated the strongest hunter of the adults who were leaving as the chief of the new tribe, thus giving him the right to perform the rites of our people for his new tribe. Thirty people in total volunteered to leave the tribe, of which only eighteen were adults. One of the adults was Tasha's mother, Ivanka.

She saw her off with the rest of the tribe, managing to hold back tears to show how she had grown up from being a kid. Despite her act, it was obvious she was going to miss her, and in the following weeks she had a bit of a melancholic air around her and had lost a bit of her usual competitiveness.

I tried to talk to her multiple times, but she would always say that she was was fine. In the end I had to resort to the only way I knew I could get her to open up, challenge her. Despite not being completely into it, she still couldn't refuse an actual challenge for me, thus we found ourselves racing to one of the peaks that towered over the village and back to settle it. Thanks to her slacking off in the previous weeks I had a bit of an easier time winning than normal, although it still took almost everything I had to do so.

Having cornered her with my win, I made her talk about it. She struggled at first, but in the end she finally managed to open up and admit that she was going to miss her mother while crying on my shoulder. On the next day, her old self was already coming back and, a couple of weeks and a few more talks later, she was back on her feet.

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From there, our training resumed as usual, until, just before the days with no sun, some hunters managed to find and bring back an enormous cave bear. The whole tribe celebrated the find with a large feast, unusually letting even those who were going to receive an infusion partake in the food. The reason was the rarity of bears, which made them the most prized spirit animals for our people. Because of that, even those who would normally not be considered ready to go through the ceremony received the boon anyway, so as to not waste an opportunity that came only once every few years. Not that it was the case for the four of us, as we had been ready to take the next step for months by then.

When it came the time for the actual ceremony, for the first time since I was born, I was also able to contain my reactions despite the pain caused by the infusion, which was something I was actually quite proud of.

With our fifth infusion, our childhood officially ended. Our bodies transformed to that of a fifteen year old, if a fifteen year old was a towering mountain of muscles. We were definitely forces to be reckoned with, but we were still missing one final step before truly being considered adults.

Andrei and Ivan shaved their heads, like all male hunters in the tribe did, while I and Tasha decided to style our hair as it was common between the women, that is, with one side of the head shaved and the other braided, with free flowing hair on top. I shaved the right side, while Tasha shaved her left, making us a sort of mirror picture of each other. Another noticeable change we girls went through was that the furs that covered our breasts had definitely become more necessary and, although not by much, Tasha was definitely the winner in that field between the two of us, which caused her to have a smug grin on her face for days until I won a bout against her.

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As fully-fledged hunters of the tribe we could no longer live with the other kids, instead we formed a four people hunting group and started sharing a tent between the four of us, as the only ones allowed to have a private tent were mothers and the chief.

We still weren't required to keep up with the adults when it came to bring back home food, as one of the main jobs of someone who had gone through all the five infusions of the spirit animals was to find a beast worthy to be slain and brought back for the sixth and final one. For this reason we'd often find ourselves spending multiple days away from the tribe, sleeping outside, in search of a worthy opponent.

Something that could be considered such wasn't easy to find, as there were few things that could really pose a worthy challenge to us. The powers of the elk, wolf, and eagle had become even more powerful as time passed, and in addition to those we now also had the power of the tiger, that allowed us to sneak through the forest and leap over obstacles that no one should be able to jump over, and the power of the bear, that increased our strength and allowed us to shrug off most injuries.

It was during one of those long trips when, two days of travel away from the tribe, we finally spotted our prey, circling in the skies above us.

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