When Archos started to descend the hill, he made a careful point of staying in the midst of the humans. He could not help but note that though he was in the midst of them, save for Ayente herself, they kept themselves a bit apart from him, more than one of his arm lengths. She however, did not do this. She remained close at his side and seemingly at ease.

Her comfort seemed to inspire others, and the rest of the little gathering drew at least a bit nearer. When they did, an elderly looking figure with a head of long white hair that hung down her back and a wrinkled face came from the midst of them, she approached Ayente and in a very creaky voice she started to speak. “Ayente, where are the rest?” Her voice was full of anxiety as he asked, and his hands reached out and took hers.

Ayente lowered her gaze and shook her head. “These are all that live. All others died. Makine was...” Her continued speech was cut off when the old woman’s hand flashed out and slapped Ayente hard across the face. Her head snapped to one side, she reached up and touched her cheek and looked at the older woman. “Mother! We did our best! We slew many, but the Cave Children were more, we would all have died but for this one!” She said and gestured to the dragon beside her.

The old woman craned her neck up at the beast, her cloudy eyes slowly taking in what she was seeing, and Archos stared back down in turn.

Though he could not understand what the two had said, it was not hard for Archos to determine that the woman was in some way related to Ayente, or the meaning of that slap. The scales covering one of his teeth curled back, baring the razor sharp behind it. ‘I went out of my way to heal that one, I do not appreciate seeing her reinjured.’ He thought, the one that struck her, seeing the tooth exposed, took the hint, or guessed it well enough at least.

“Oos lope’ti eyapi. Oos ima.” She said, in a voice more gentle than Archos expected.

“Are you thanking me?” He asked, she looked at him blankly. He could hear words being traded back and forth like coins at the marketplace, occasionally he saw them point at him and the word ‘lope’ kept coming up, it seemed to make them relax, their bodies became less tense and their shoulders went from stiffness to ease, and those farther away, drifted closer to him with less fear than before.

He made a point of not staring at them, and instead further surveyed the area, coming to a very grim conclusion. ‘This tribe is screwed. Those by the lake who had mostly dark or light hair, moved quickly and had strength, presumably that meant they were the young, these others are mostly stooped and have gray heads and skin like wrinkled leather, they move slowly, none like them had been at the previous skirmish. I suppose that makes them the old, and the very smallest, are most likely children and infants. Damn. They lost almost all their fighting power that quickly?’ Archos turned these thoughts over in his head with no small amount of displeasure.

The old woman was still looking at him, though what she expected him to say when they did not have two words in common, he wasn’t sure. He reached up and scratched the underside of his jaw with one talon, unable to think of what else to say, he simply nodded to her. Having seen the gesture among others, it appeared to be a favorable sign.

His guess was appropriate it seemed, as she turned back to Ayente, though she backed a foot away from where Archos stood.

Ayente did not meet her mother’s eyes. She didn’t have to look to know her mother’s arms were waving over her head in anger. “You have killed our people, what will we do now?! We have few remaining, and so few is the same as having none! The other grounds are taken, even with these little growing places you made, ‘if’ they work we will not have food from them for a season! What will we eat?! How will you make up for this?! Answer me?!” She shrieked and grabbed Ayente’s hair at the base of her skull and yanked her back hard to look her in the face.

Ayente’s eyes filled with tears and she clenched her fists defiantly at her side. “Had I not gone, they would have come here, and you would be dead now mother! Yes, it was bad, but now they cannot attack us either. We slew many, I injured Makine, they will hide in their caves and hunger. While we still live. Too, had I not gone, I would not have met this one.” She gestured to the dragon that had identified itself as ‘Archos’.

Her mother tugged harder on her hair, “What of it! Yes, it helped you once, but will it help again?! Why should it?! I cannot even offer you to satisfy it in trade for fighting service!”

Ayente yowled in rage at her mother’s statement and, grabbing her at the wrist, she yanked the old woman’s hand away and pushed her back. “I am no child now, mother! I am blooded by our enemies, and I have the right to strike back!”

The old woman glared at her daughter, “You thought to strike the Cave Children, now our warriors are gone but for what? You dare grow angry with me when, because of you, if we wish to live we will have to offer up our daughters to the Spirit Horse tribe, or worse, join with the Cave Children for us both to survive? Did you do this so that Makine could cover you as their last chief covered me in his youth? You have the right to strike by blood, but not by strength of being right. A generation of shame begins with you!” The old woman snapped and pointed her boney finger at Ayente, whose face lowered unhappily.

“Tonight we have Malach give council, you have done enough, we will ask for his magic to help us, if he demands you perform a service for the spirits, well, your idea is why we are here now!” She said furiously.

Ayente spat into the dirt. “If the chief were alive, he would strike you for even suggesting such a thing.”

Her mother shook with rage, and raised her hand as if to hit Ayente once again, a discreet rumble from the dragon however, caused her to lower her hand without striking. Ayente went on, “I will act within reason, but I am not Malach’s, I will find some other way. There is always a way.” Ayente said and slammed the butt of her spear hard into the ground for emphasis.

Archos watched the exchange with great interest, but with a rising distaste. He’d seen Ayente’s wounds, they’d been horrific, but she’d obviously done well given the numerous dead nearby. He’d rumbled a bit when the old woman looked to strike Ayente, though as he did so he thought, ‘It is best I not act rashly or intervene, so what do I do if she ignores my displeasure?’ He was still wondering when to his relief, the old woman thought the better of striking the young one and lowered her hand.

‘Whatever else is in play between those two, the problem is clear. The ones to fight must also be the ones who hunt, few left to fight, few left to hunt, they can neither hunt enough to feed themselves, nor can they take food by force. Nor can they defend themselves if another tribe wants to remove them forever.” Archos thought the matter over, leaving Ayente and the old one to argue between each other as he engaged the problem in his own mind.

‘OK, this isn’t really your problem Archos, you could just walk out, they can’t stop you, most of them probably wouldn’t want to. Go back to the lake, dig around until you find a way home.’ He clenched and unclenched his right hand over and over, the close filed tips of his talons scraped against the scales. ‘You have your own problem to deal with back home, your prince is dead and his brother is at fault. You have to go home, prove his guilt and make this right, the elders will listen to you. They have to!’

His tail lashed angrily behind him. ‘No, they don’t. Even with your distant relationship, the best that will get you is a public trial, and by now...’ He could not keep the angry growl from growing as he thought of his prince, his friend, dead in his room.

So lost in his thoughts was he that he took no notice that his growl had become audible to those around him, his talons opened and closed into his palm again, and again, and again as his wrath began to rise in earnest. The reality of his situation was hitting home and his eyes narrowed with a rising bloodlust. ‘I will go home, one day, somehow, and I will make this right.’ He thought further, only to look down when he felt a soft touch, and saw the pale pink palm of Ayente on his scales.

The others around her had already given him space, she did not. “Archos. Lope. Lope.” Water was glistening in her eyes.

‘Lope... is that ‘help’ or... ‘people’? I thought before she was asking me to... oh. I see. Those who help... ‘are’ people. I think.’ He lowered his face down and covered his eyes with one palm, “Home.” He said. “Archos... home.” He pointed back the way he’d come.

She looked at him. “Patima.” She uttered the word in with a sense of desperation.

He sighed, she paused for a moment and drew a crossed line in the dirt, she tapped his scales and pointed to that spot. She then raised her arm and moved it over her head, as if to represent the passing of the sun. “You want me to stay. I suppose I can do that for one night.” He said with futility, he tapped the spot with his foot to show he understood.

She bared her teeth in a smile.

Ayente released the breath she’d tensely held as the relief of being understood swept over her. Now that he seemed to comprehend her gesture, she turned to her people, though at first they’d seemed comfortable, as they had calmed on the journey the realization of what they were walking with had begun to get to them, and his evidently rising wrath, aside from getting to her mother, had gotten to the rest of the tribe. “My people! We must build a hut for our guest, whatever he is, he is a guest of the Red Ax, and too, he saved some of our people from death! No hut can hold him that we now have, therefore we must build a new hut, or would you have it said that the saviors of the Red Ax can count on no covering but the night sky?!” She harangued them with the disgrace of poor hospitality and shamed the hesitant by reminding them of his generous service in saving and treating the few survivors of the fight against the Cave Children.

They could not refuse, and did not. Ayente stood by him, her mother however, withdrew herself from where her daughter stood though where she went, Ayente could only guess. Several times it appeared that Archos was intending to move from where he stood, each time he did, she tapped his scales gently and pointed to the crossed lines and repeated her request that he stay.

Archos was impressed, watching the alacrity with which they moved, they may have been ignorant, but they were industrious. His scaled brow furrowed with interest as they rapidly mixed dirt and water, he noticed something else. Two of their people stood over a crude wooden frame that had been covered with crisscrossing sticks and mud, and the palms of their hands glowed. Wherever their glowing hands moved, the mud dried almost instantly. ‘They have magic.... Simple magic, but magic.’ He thought as one part after another was finished and carefully brought to where he was. They dug small holes and embedded long rough stakes into them, and that was when he understood. He looked down at the smiling Ayente. “You are building a house around me.”

She didn’t understand the words he just said, but when he spoke, she saw the understanding in his eyes, and nodded firmly.

So they waited together until at last a reed covered roof was gently pushed up the length of the frame, it was crude, it was simple, it was nothing that even the most amateur hunter would have been proud of, yet it was their best. Any doubts about their intention to hospitality was stamped out when an old man approached holding a raw hunk of meat. Beside him was one of the young men Archos recognized that had been nearly killed. ‘So, they are hospitable, and they show gratitude. No, don’t... come on Archos, you have your own home to go to, stay tonight, but do not let yourself get involved more than you need to.’ He reminded himself, but he accepted the offering with a bow of his head, and ate it quickly, it was barely a bite, but no sooner had its thick, juicy flesh started to slide down his throat when another thought occurred.

‘Wait... if they lost most of their hunters... how are they going to... no... he did not... he did not just give me his only food as thanks for saving that one.’ He ran through the thought in his head, but any way he sliced the thought, he couldn’t imagine a scenario in which that old man, or the tribe, had that much space to just give away that much food to anyone.

The hut was finished before the sun went down, and when it did, Ayente took one of his talons in her hand and tugged lightly, pointing outside the crude structure. He stepped out, he did not have to duck. He turned around and looked at it. ‘Not half bad really, efficient use of materials and magic. The mud provides a good seal and the alternating layers of grass and leaves protect against water, might not make it through a hard storm, but I’m guessing they don’t have lots of those. They even made it to hold ‘me’ and that must not have been easy.’

Ayente was looking at him expectantly. “It is a good house.” He said, they looked at him blankly.

“Oh. Right. I have to show you.” He said and laughed at himself a bit, then under the eyes of the surviving tribe, he walked away from them and inside, he crouched down and tapped the ground. Then laid his palm against the wall at the entryway. “Good house.” He said again, and nodded.

There were smiles all around. ‘So hospitality is very important to you... must be if you can smile at my praise after such dreadful losses. Shit, you want to help them, don’t you?’ He asked himself with more than a bit of annoyance.

Ayente was grinning ear to ear, of course her mother wasn’t around. ‘Damned crone is probably kissing Malach’s ass, begging him to use his magic to save us. But wait... where ‘is’ Malach?’ Ayente wondered with an unpleasant sense of dread. ‘By rights he should have been here for our return and he should have been here to oversee the building of a hut for the one who saved our lives.’

She shook the thought off, and looked at the other members of her tribe, “Gather food, we will have to speak to the spirits tonight, we will need guidance to find a wise path for the days ahead, and we must tell the stories of the dead to give them one last night of life. Dragon or no, it must all be done.” She said firmly, and seeing the sense in her words, the crowd began to dissipate.

She however, did not go to any task, instead she approached the dragon’s hut. He stepped aside and pointed to within, she passed the threshold and they looked at one another with mutual uncertainty, each scratched their own head in unison for a moment, then laughed in unison as they realized what they’d done.

“Damn difficult, isn’t it?” She asked.

Without understanding a thing he replied, “Yes, very frustrating.”

Though she did not know the words, their common tone conveyed enough.

He raised a hand and pointed to it, and began to recite words for each part.

She smiled, and did the same in turn, using her own words. For the next few hours they worked, building a slow vocabulary between the two of them between gestures and words and pantomime, they came to understand each other.

The difficult part was explaining the more nebulous and relative concepts. To explain ‘time’ Archos drew a flat line, a stick figure human which he pointed at and said ‘Ayente’, prompting her to laugh.

She shook her head. “No.” The corners of his long scaled maw turned down in an approximation of a human frown, for a moment he thought he’d have to explain ‘art’.

She then drew a large circle onto the chest of the stick figure. “Now Ayente.” She then smiled in satisfaction and nodded firmly.

Archos then erased it, drew a much smaller circle there and said emphatically, “Now Ayente.”

She laughed and turned a strawberry red. “At least you understand humor.” He said, prompting her to nod slightly as she rocked back and forth trying to still her laughter.

He then drew a crude sun over her, and a line from that to explain the passage of it over time. He then broke it up with several smaller lines to explain ‘hours’. That she understood, but when he got to ‘minutes’ she was dumbfounded.

“You measure something so small?” She asked with disbelief.

“We do.” He replied.

“Why?!” She exclaimed.

“How long does it take to lose a fight?” Archos asked.

“Oh.” She replied as the lesson was driven home starkly.

“We measure more precisely so that we may plan more closely.” Archos explained.

She furrowed her brow at that, incorporating the new concept, he then went on to try to explain more complex subjects, the ‘relative’ measures like fast or slow, tall or short, but frustrating as it was for the both of them, in common they understood the necessity of clarity. And so gradually they entered each other’s linguistic worlds.

He learned that the old woman was her mother by pantomiming her so well that Ayente laughed at the absurd impression. She learned that he was a male, and he learned that she was a female. He learned the name of their tribe but they hit a sticking point when he asked how many people they had.

Archos picked up a handful of stones and laid one out. “One.” He said. He then set a second stone next to it. “Two” he said again. She counted them out with him until they got to the number six, where she said ‘Zel’. Only to get to seven and say ‘Zel’ again. At first he thought he hadn’t understood a tiny inflection, so he set down another to make eight, and she said, ‘Zel’ again, quite clearly.

He counted them out three times, each time, everything beyond ‘five’ became ‘zel’.

“So you do not have any numbers beyond ‘five’?” He asked.

“Ibto te’?” She asked, cocking her head to one side.

He had to think about that. “Oh, what for.” He said as he guessed the meaning by the inquiry.

“Some manys are more than other manys, by knowing a number for every many, you can tell others when you are going to run out, or if a number of manys is not large enough.” He explained with care, gently counting out new numbers for her to learn.

Her brow furrowed as he kept going beyond two hundred, finally she threw up her hands and exclaimed, “How many manies do you need?!”

Archos let his jaw fall open in a deep rumbling laugh, “My people have never found a limit to how many manies can be used, we use them to count people and spears, to count stones and beasts, and to count distance as well as size. We count many, many things. Or as you would say, many manies.”

“Why?” She asked, cocking her head in the other direction at such an odd statement.

“Counting these in special ways lets us... damn how do I say this... it lets us see the future... sort of, what will work and what will not.” He scratched under his jaw again as he tried to explain the idea of mathematical predictability.

“Magic?” She asked. “Or are you gods?” Her voice was suddenly filled with awe. “Only the gods know tomorrows...”

He shook his head, “What are gods?”

She blinked. “Gods, those beings that create all beings.” She said.

“Parents?” He asked quizzically, tilting his head slightly at the odd depiction.

She brought her hand up to her lips and laughed slightly, “No, well, maybe? They are the parents of the world and the stars and all living things, and they answer their children’s call when we use our magic.”

“So they are evil?” Archos asked with surprise, “Do I seem ‘evil’ to you?” He asked further.

She looked at him in surprise. “Evil?”

“Oh, right, we didn’t do that word.” He pounded his tail on the ground behind him as he thought the matter over.

“If you have...” He started to say, and she raised her hand to interrupt him.

“What is ‘if’?” She asked.

“It is like thinking of something that could happen, or could not happen.” He said patiently.

“Either something happens, or it does not happen, so how then can there be both?” She asked, a lost expression on her face, she tapped her fingers patiently on her leg as she shifted uncomfortably and took a cross legged position.

“It is both until it is one or the other, until you know, you think of both so that you are prepared for the one that happens. We call it ‘hypothetical’ or simply ‘if’.” Archos explained, and she sat chewing on that thought for several minutes.

“Do you have a word like that?” He asked.

“We do now, we take yours.” She said with a clever, crooked little smile, drawing a chuckle from him in turn.

“Alright, call it my second gift to you. If I am hungry, and you have meat and give me some, then you could say that you were ‘good’ to me. But if I am hungry and you take food from me so that I hunger to death, that would be said to be ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ to me. Does that make sense?” He asked her patiently.

“What if I take your food to feed my hungry child?” She asked, grinning as she incorporated his ‘if’ concept in a return question.

He shook his head, “Ayente, my people have asked that kind of question for far longer than my lifetime. We have defined what it is to be ‘good’ as that which helps, makes happy, makes life better...or reduces harm. We have defined bad and evil as that which prevents good or increases harm. But when it comes to questions like that, we have had many different answers.”

They sat in silence for a while, before she asked him again, “Do you think gods are evil?”

Archos shrugged. “I have met no gods, but if you say they made this world, and all life, well then surely they must be. They help their children to kill and eat one another, what good parent would do such a thing?”

Ayente had no good answer to that, it was an uncomfortable question that struck her in the gut. ‘My mother.’ She wanted to say, but she did not give voice to the bitter thought.

He felt the change in her before he saw it, it was a subtle sort of shift in the air between them both, she looked at the door, it was dark outside, but there was a faint glow visible from there and the occasional spark carried past the entryway before it was extinguished by the wind. She started breathing hard as she remembered what her mother had said.

She turned her mind back to all the stories she’d heard of dragons in the past. That they delighted in the taste of flesh, that people were a delicacy to them. She recalled the stories of the ones that helped and the ones that harmed, but always... always there was a price. ‘Yet what have I to offer... only... me. He seems to favor me, but he is a dragon nonetheless, he must have great hunger and we haven’t enough for ourselves, let alone for him. Then there is only one thing I can do.’ She thought sadly.

Her eyes welled up again, “Ya’me lope.” She choked out. “Help my people.” She said in his tongue as she repeated the phrase. “Patim... I mean... please.” She whispered. She got up out of her position, so that she was on both knees, then lowered her face down so that her forehead was pressed against the talons on his toes. “We will die as we are. If you were a man of my race, I would offer my body to you for your comfort, or to create an heir. We cannot do that, but... if it please you, I offer myself up even if it be as mere food to sustain you. Please, mighty one... let us not fall to death or shame, with your strength, perhaps even in our weakened state, we might survive.”

She turned her face up without changing her posture, she could not see up to his face, but she did not need to. “It was my idea for our hunters to go in force to the contested waters. They died because our chief listened to me, that is what my mother was saying. Please, you saved our lives once, and it shames me deeply to beg you to do more, I will offer anything... anything... if you will help my people a second time...” She trailed off before stammering out, “Oth-Otherwise they died for nothing, and we will either die or shame ourselves to live.”

Archos went very quiet, his jaw fell open in surprise at what Ayente had to say. He in fact did not believe his ear slits. “Did... you offer yourself to me as a ‘meal’?” He blinked several times as he looked down at her.

She gave small, anxious nods from her prostrate posture. “If... if that is what it takes to save us, it is not worse than what would have to be offered to the other tribes for our lives. Too, this was my doing, yet I live and many died. It is right that my life should be traded to save those who still live.” She said resolutely, but with a voice full of fear, her body shook, but she did not move otherwise, she shut her eyes, squeezing the lids tight.

She started breathing hard, was he thinking about it? Or... “I... I can remove the clothing first, so you need not taste that, if...”

“Damn.” Archos said, interrupting her and stepping back from where she was prostrated, “Get up.” He said with exasperation. Ayente slowly rose to her knees and looked up at him.

“The rest of the way.” He added, and she gradually got to her feet.

“If I refuse you after that....” He shook his head, “Let’s go speak at the fire, I need to know everything.”

“As you will it.” Ayente said, wiping the sweat off of her face and her brow as she walked out of the hut thinking of a story told by her deceased chief. ‘Terrible is the price the dragon asked, but so great was the reward, that the terrible price was trivial to the hero who offered it.’ That was what he’d said to the children around the fire that day. ‘Now… now I understand what he meant, one of me, for all of them? Easy choice.’ She thought to herself, and followed behind him.